Commentary: Why a union victory at a single Starbucks is a good sign for the labor movement

Last week’s union victory at a single Starbucks in Buffalo, New York, may seem small, but it has huge symbolic importance. It is the only one of Starbucks’ more than 8,900 company-owned cafés in the United States to unionize, but it probably won’t be the last.

Nelson Lichtenstein, a labor historian at the University of California, Santa Barbara, predicts that emboldened baristas at many more Starbucks across the U.S. — including perhaps in union-friendly cities like Los Angeles and