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2021 – should be taken with a grain of salt, as changes in employment can sway the data, which is calculated by a sample survey. “You can’t read too much into these small fluctuations,” said Ruth Milkman, chair of the labor studies department at the CUNY School of Labor and Urban Studies. “That said, there has been some interesting new organizing. It’s very small in terms of the numbers of workers involved. But it’s something we haven’t seen for some time.” Recent federal labor statistics pointed to significant growth in union membership in certain industries, including agriculture, publishing and food services. Retail, meanwhile, saw a slight increase in membership in 2021. Anecdotal echoes of those national trends can be found in New York, where newsroom employees, museum workers and nonprofits fought for a new wave of unionization, and farmworkers on Long Island just formed the first union of its kind in the state. And in addition to Starbucks, roughly 115 employees at an REI store in Manhattan filed to unionize. In new and old industries, labor leaders are hopeful that New York is in the midst of a unionization movement, – a handful of coffee shops, newspapers or museums at a time. “You have this employer, and it’s Starbucks, and you’re thinking, ‘I can’t beat this big business corporation.’ But they’re recognizing that they can, and it’s not as daunting as they thought,” said Mario Cilento, president of the New York State AFL-CIO. “One begets another, begets another.” But while there may be some steps that local lawmakers can take to remove barriers to organizing, many roadblocks come from federal labor law that allows employers to interfere in union campaigns and offers little in the way of penalties for companies that violate worker protections. A bill to enhance protections for workers, called the Protecting the Right to Organize Act, also known as the PRO Act, passed the House of Representatives last year but faces an uphill battle in the Senate. The challenges that workers face haven’t necessarily changed – companies are hitting back as hard as ever. But interest in taking on those challenges may be growing. A Gallup poll last fall found that 68% of Americans approved of labor unions – the highest percentage since 1965. “I think organizing into a union very often can come across as a very daunting task when you’ve never done it before,” said state Sen. Jessica Ramos, who chairs the Labor Committee. “But when you see people in other stores organize and
February 21, 2022
Electeds like New York City Public Advocate Jumaane Williams, above left, and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, right, have publicly supported union organizing at Starbucks. Staff at the SoHo REI, opposite, have also launched a unionization drive.
win, it serves as tremendous inspiration for organizing in your own workplace.” THE BARISTAS UNITE Despite an aggressive opposition campaign waged by Starbucks, workers at the Elmwood store voted 19-8 to unionize last year, becoming the company’s first unionized location. Like other workplaces that have organized and formed or joined unions in the past few years, the COVID-19 pandemic added urgency to workers’ calls for better health and safety conditions, higher pay and more benefits. But early organizing efforts at Starbucks stores in the area predated the pandemic. Spot Coffee, another Buffalo coffee chain, voted to unionize with Workers United in 2019, making it one of just a few unionized cafés in the country at the time, The Wall Street Journal reported. After that, Workers United started receiving calls from baristas at Starbucks, according to Gary Bonadonna, the leader of Workers
United in upstate New York. And as in other industries that are seeing revived or new interest in unionizing, the Starbucks movement has been driven by younger people, Bonadonna said. “It’s majority millennials and Gen Z. I call them Gen U, or Generation Union,” Bonadonna told City & State. “They realize that rebuilding and reimagining unions is their hope for a positive economic future.” Employees at a SoHo location of REI, an outdoor goods retailer, launched a union-
