Microsoft and Starbucks as exceptions to corporations’ union busting; Starbucks baristas as beacons of bottom-up organizing.
In a historic breakthrough, Starbucks and its workers announce they’ve come together. In a joint announcement Starbucks and Workers United agreed “to begin discussions on a foundational framework designed to achieve…collective bargaining agreements.”
Workers at the Crown Heights pizzeria Barboncino are organizing a union with Workers United. It would be the first pizzeria of its kind to go union in New York — and perhaps not the last.
This summer’s labor fights are an important opportunity for an increasingly militant labor movement to win critical battles. But it could be more than that. It might also be an opportunity for allies to begin to build a solidarity machine.
Activists known as “salts” have been a key to recent successful organizing campaigns. And they say they’re just getting started.
Cracks have started to appear in red states’ anti-union front.
In light of the youth-driven surge of union drives at Starbucks, Amazon, Apple and elsewhere, the AFL-CIO – the main US’s labor federation – is facing growing pressure to undertake a bolder effort to help today’s burst of unionizing expand far faster
Based on current filings alone, the Starbucks Union is already on track to have 6,400 workers at 230 stores.
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.
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.
Spread the word