Starbucks workers are still without a labor deal four years after their first union win. Here’s why

(CNN) — August Code works at the first ever Starbucks location to unionize in 2021. But four years after that vote, he and his co-workers in Buffalo, New York, are still waiting on their union contract.

“I would have imagined we would have seen a contract a long time ago,” Code told CNN. “To think we don’t have a contract four years later, yeah, that’s upsetting. I didn’t think we’d be at this point.”

Tuesday is the anniversary of the first union win at Starbucks . The union-organizing campaign there has been one of the biggest successes in the American labor movement in the past few years.

Concerns over working conditions during the pandemic spurred on younger workers, generally pro-union and who make up a large share of Starbucks’ workforce, to unionize. About 560 Starbucks locatio