Since then workers at 243 other stores spread over 38 states have voted to join Starbucks Workers United — that’s more than five stores a week. Still, most of the fired workers nationwide remain off the job, including Tambellini. “The pizza place next door [to the Starbucks store I worked at] offered me a job almost immediately,” said Tambellini. Starbucks employees and supporters react as votes are read during a union-election watch party in Buffalo, New York. The Starbucks workers are really demonstrating that it’s possible to unionize in an industry where it was thought of as impossible to organize, due to high turnover and a large percentage of young people,” he said.

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