Portside

Between 2019 and 2021, the overall percentage of U.S. union members stayed flat. But the percentage of workers ages 25-34 who are union members rose from 8.8% to 9.4%, or around 68,000 workers, according to the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Petitions to organize have come faster than even those involved first believed possible, according to Richard Bensinger, union organizer with Starbucks Workers United and a former organizing director of the AFL-CIO.

Today's labor upsurge could simply evaporate, but it's also possible that we're at the dawn of a new era, one in which the working underclass is drawn, like the industrial workers of the 1930s, into the mainstream and the labor movement is empowered.

Since the initial victory in Buffalo, workers at several other Starbucks stores throughout the country have filed for union elections, including in Boston, Chicago, Seattle and Knoxville, Tenn.

Starbucks corporate fought the Buffalo organizing effort. Massachusetts workers are preparing for a similar campaign by Starbucks.

Many of the Gen Z generation say they want to join a movement where social causes are part of their workplace values.

Labor board approves elections for Starbucks workers in Buffalo, N.Y.

Starbucks portrays itself as a “community of partners,” not an average workplace. But now that workers are organizing a union drive in Buffalo, that warm and fuzzy rhetoric has vanished, replaced by coercion and union-busting.