Starbucks workers in Los Alamitos file union petition with NLRB

A 29-worker Starbucks in Los Alamitos has asked the National Labor Relations Board for an election, giving Workers United another foothold in a campaign that is still expanding store by store in 2026. The petition was filed June 18 as case 21-RC-389132 in Region 21 in Los Angeles, and it targets a small café where the staffing mix is tight enough that every opening shift, close, and rush matters.

The proposed bargaining unit covers all full-time and regular part-time baristas and shift supervisors, while excluding store managers, assistant store managers, office clericals, guards and supervisors as defined by the National Labor Relations Act. At a store that size, the stakes are immediate for the people on the floor: who gets enough hours, how schedules are set, how discipline is handled, and whether workers have any leverage when labor runs thin.

The filing lands as Starbucks Workers United keeps building a national record it can point to in new organizing drives. The campaign says it has won elections at nearly 700 locations and represents more than 12,000 union partners, while another update puts the organizing tally at more than 700 stores across the United States. For Starbucks workers weighing whether to sign cards or vote, that footprint matters because it shows the campaign is no longer confined to a few early-adopter markets.

It also comes against a long, unresolved bargaining fight between Starbucks and Workers United. Starbucks said in April 2025 that the sides had exchanged more than 130 proposals and spent nearly 200 hours in negotiations, and later said they had reached more than 30 tentative agreements on full contract articles. The company has also said Workers United walked away from the bargaining table, while Starbucks was ready to resume talks if the union returned. By March 2026, formal negotiations had last taken place in December 2024, and the union represented about 6% of Starbucks company-owned U.S. stores.

For Starbucks workers in California and elsewhere, the Los Alamitos filing shows that the organizing drive still has momentum even after years of legal fights and stalled contract talks. NLRB representation cases for Starbucks commonly cover baristas and shift supervisors, and prior cases have moved from petition to election to certification in a matter of months. Under chairman and chief executive officer Brian Niccol, who has led Starbucks since September 2024, the company has also said it has invested more than $500 million in partners and coffeehouses through its Back to Starbucks plan, but the new petition suggests many workers still see a union vote as the clearest path to better hours, steadier scheduling and stronger protections.