• Unionized Starbucks staff plan to launch a strike vote on Friday amid tense labor relations. • The vote determines if unionized baristas will stop work for the fourth time in two years. • It comes a week after some investors urged Starbucks to return to the bargaining table.

Unionized Starbucks baristas plan to launch a national strike authorization vote on Friday, escalating a long-running labor conflict that has spilled beyond the coffee counters and into the boardroom.

The workers are fighting to ratify their first union contract. The latest efforts come about a month after a wave of sweeping store closures that left thousands of baristas out of work. Amid Starbucks' massive turnaround campaign, the company also faces new pressure from shareholders to address its increasingly co

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