These days, a few weeks can be a long time in US labor organizing.

Recent weeks have seen important victories by unions organizing at Amazon and Starbucks. First, the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) ruled that Starbucks’s decision to exclude workers involved in union organizing from wage and benefit increases was unlawful. Howard Schultz had first threatened to withhold the increases from pro-union workers in early May; this threat, repeated endlessly by store managers and district managers throughout the country, has seriously interfered with the nationwide organizing campaign at the chain.

Over the past several months, the number of new Starbucks stores petitioning for union elections has declined dramatically because of this illegal threat, along with Starbucks’s multiple other unlawful actions. Undeterred by the board’s decision that it had broken the law, Starbucks announced another round of improvements, again only for nonunion stores, in September.