(Image: CHS)

Starbucks is violating labor law and must negotiate with union workers at its massive 15,000-square-foot Capitol Hill roastery despite the company’s objections to how the unionization vote was conducted, the National Labor Relations Board has ruled.

“We find that the Respondent’s conduct constitutes an unlawful failure and refusal to recognize and bargain with the Union,” the board ruling (PDF) issued this week reads.

The ruling comes as the coffee giant announced it will close its cafe at Broadway and Denny, the last stand-alone store the company has in the Capitol Hill neighborhood besides the huge Starbucks Roastery and the first shop in its home city to unionize.

In April, workers at the popular Melrose Ave roastery voted to join the Starbucks Workers United effort and unionize the store, at the time, the second location in the company’s home city to organize.

The vote finished 38-27, as employees of the roastery voted to certify unionization through the NLRB. There were more than 100 eligible employees at the store.

Starbucks protested the by-mail vote and has continued to refuse to negotiate with the unionized workers, according to the board.

Bloomberg reports that Starbucks is planning to appeal the ruling in the “refusal-to-bargain case,” the latest fight in a series of federal court battles as the company and union representatives jockey for the legal upper hand.

Bloomberg also reports that NLRB regional directors have issued “dozens of pending complaints against Starbucks over the last year” accusing it of union busting tactics.

Starbucks Workers United agrees. “Starbucks is continuing its aggressive anti-union campaign against workers by delaying, confusing, and flat-out refusing to bargain with them,”  the union said in a statement on the ruling.

Under the decision, Starbucks must post a notice with employees’ rights under the National Labor Relations Act and begin formal bargaining with the union. The board also will reset a one-year frame after election certification that parties have to reach a contract before further intervention.

The Starbucks Roastery stands at the corner of Melrose and Pike at the base of Capitol Hill and is a more than $30 million coffee retail marvel and the most visited Starbucks store in its home city after the Pike Place Market shop. “I think the roastery is a metaphor for the whole company,” CEO Howard Schultz told investors when the facility opened in 2014.

With the coming closure of the Broadway and Denny store, the roastery will now become the only stand-alone Starbucks cafe on Capitol Hill. The coffee giant’s presence here beyond the roastery will soon be made up only of counters inside busy grocery stores and hospitals.

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