They were happening via text and social media. “What corporate didn’t realize was that these conversations weren’t happening on the floor,” says Eisen. Workers say their real agenda was to intervene in pro-union discussions. This was particularly handy when Starbucks’ corporate executives began dropping by her store on Elmwood Avenue unannounced, claiming to give workers a helping hand by sweeping floors and taking out the trash. “When we went public, I created a group text with everybody in my store, so anytime there was information that needed to come out, we were able to get that to people,” she says. Although she had no prior labor organizing experience, Eisen says she understands now just how much digital technology gave workers like her an advantage over traditional organizing methods. Michelle Eisen is an organizing member with Starbucks Workers United and a barista at a Starbucks café in Buffalo, New York, the first location in the iconic coffee chain to successfully vote for a union in more than two decades. Meanwhile, workers at Amazon, Apple, Trader Joe’s, and other well-known American brands are also in various stages of union organizing. Starbucks cafés, in particular, are choosing union representation at breathtaking speed, with 150 stores holding successful votes in the six months between December 8, 2021, and June 14, 2022. Michelle Eisen, Starbucks union organizer Starbucks Siren Switches Sides What we have is our ability to communicate with our fellow workers.” ![]() Now, more than two years into a devastating pandemic, many workers who were deemed “essential” in 2020 are eager to flex their power in a tightening labor market. More than 60% of Americans believe the decline in union membership is bad for working people, according to a 2022 Pew Research poll. ![]() In the private sector, things look even worse, with a mere 6.1% of workers in unions.īut the idea of unions is popular. ![]() In 2021, only about 10% of the workforce was unionized, down from 20% in the early 1980s. Organized labor in the United States has been in decline for years. “Biden as president and his appointees to the NLRB have made the legal landscape finally fairer for workers,” says Richman. The current political landscape has also been more favorable to organizing since the summer of 2021, when a pro-union majority on the NLRB began enforcing labor laws and increasingly sanctioning companies for violating workers’ rights. He thinks that today, “Workers are more ready to take action and less apt to buy into the boss’s bullshit in these captive audience meetings” where employers promote anti-union messaging. Richman spent years as a frontline organizer with the American Federation of Teachers and is the author of Tell the Bosses We’re Coming: A New Action Plan for Workers in the 21st Century. “Workers are more ready to take action and less apt to buy into the boss’s bullshit in these captive audience meetings.”
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