The following article is from the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation’s bi-monthly Foundation Action Newsletter, November/December 2023 edition. To view other editions of Foundation Action or to sign up for a free subscription, click here.

Good Karma Café coffee shop employees vote out SEIU officials also opposed by many Starbucks workers

SEIU officials’ aggressive campaign targeting coffee shop employees across the country for union control is fast unravelling, as workers nationwide are now exercising their right to vote unions out, often with Foundation aid.

PHILADELPHIA, PA – Workers United (WU), the same union that runs Starbucks Workers United (SBWU) unions across the country, has been the subject of considerable media attention for its top-down organizing campaign against Starbucks. Little do people know that WU’s puppet masters at the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) have expended millions of dollars in hiring union activists to agitate for union control at these shops — including “salts,” paid union agents that pose as normal employees but often quit soon after they’ve achieved their actual goal of installing the union.

However, aggressive and deceptive WU union tactics did not stop Marco Camponeschi and his coworkers at two locations of Good Karma Café in Philadelphia from voting out the union with free legal aid from the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation.

Camponeschi submitted a petition in August asking the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) Region 4 in Philadelphia to hold a vote to remove the union. The petition contained signatures from enough of his colleagues to prompt the election, and this September, the Good Karma employees voted to send WU officials packing.

Signs of SEIU “Salt” Tactics in Philly

“After the Workers United union was installed, there was a lot of employee turnover, and we soon found ourselves very short-staffed,” Camponeschi commented before the vote. Employee turnover after a union’s installation often indicates “salts” may have been present.

Pennsylvania, because of its lack of Right to Work protections for its private sector employees, permits union officials to make deals with employers that require workers to pay union dues just to stay employed. So by nixing the union, Camponeschi and his coworkers ended both forced union representation and the threat of forced dues. In states with Right to Work laws, in contrast, union membership and all union financial support are strictly voluntary and the choice of each individual worker.

Coffee Workers Leading Nationwide Charge to Boot Out Unwanted Unions

Since the beginning of this year, Starbucks employees in Manhattan, NY; Buffalo, NY; Pittsburgh, PA; Bloomington, MN; Salt Lake City, UT; Oklahoma City, OK; and Greenville, SC, have all sought free Foundation legal aid in pursuing decertification efforts against Workers United union bosses at the NLRB.

Outside of coffee shops, union decertification efforts are becoming much more common. Currently, the NLRB’s data shows a unionized private sector worker is far more likely to be involved in a decertification effort than their nonunion counterpart is to be involved in a unionization campaign. NLRB statistics also show that the number of worker-filed decertification petitions has increased each of the last three years.

“Workers United union officials seem to have a penchant for trying to expand their control over employees without regard for the employees’ interests,” commented National Right to Work Foundation Vice President and Legal Director William Messenger. “So it’s unsurprising that coffee employees nationwide are banding together to vote Workers United out.

“While we’re glad the Good Karma employees were able to successfully exercise their right to oust the unwanted union, it should be noted that NLRB officials across the country are blocking Starbucks employees from exercising that same right at the behest of Workers United union officials,” Messenger added. “Workers should be allowed to vote out unwanted unions, and the NLRB should not stifle that right based on union officials’ whims. That’s especially important as the Biden NLRB seeks to make several rule changes which will make it harder for workers to vote out union officials.”