Starbucks on Monday asked the Countrywide Labor Relations Board to briefly suspend all union elections at its U.S. merchants, citing allegations from a board employee that regional NLRB officers improperly coordinated with union organizers.

In a letter to the board chairman, Starbucks claimed the unnamed job NLRB employee educated the business about the action, which happened in the board’s St. Louis office in the spring though it was overseeing a union election at a Starbucks shop in Overland Park, Kansas.

The keep is just one of 314 U.S. Starbucks areas where by workers have petitioned the NLRB to keep union elections considering the fact that late very last 12 months. More than 220 of all those Starbucks outlets have voted to unionize. The firm opposes the unionization effort and hard work.

The Seattle coffee big alleges that St. Louis labor board officials manufactured specific arrangements for professional-union staff to vote in man or woman at its place of work when they did not receive mail-in ballots, even nevertheless Starbucks and the union had agreed that shop elections would be taken care of by mail-in ballot.

In its letter, Starbucks referred to memos the regional business sent confirming that workers were authorized to occur to the office and vote in person after the union informed the regional office that some personnel had not been given ballots in the mail. The memos, citing “board protocol,” stated the workers voted alone in an empty business office, according to Starbucks.

“Because observers have been not existing, no a person can be absolutely sure who appeared to vote, regardless of whether NLRB staff had inappropriate communications with the voters, told them how to vote, confirmed them how to vote or engaged in other undisclosed conduct,” Starbucks wrote in its letter.

Starbucks claimed regional board officers also disclosed confidential details to the union, including which workers’ ballots experienced arrived in the mail to be counted.

Starbucks Staff United, the group seeking to unionize U.S. Starbucks retailers, accused the business of hoping to “distract focus away from their unparalleled anti-union marketing campaign, which includes firing…