Why Generation Z is Unionizing in the US

Even among the generally young population of Starbucks workers who unionize in Buffalo, New York, 17-year-old Maya Panos is younger than most.

In her short stint as a member of the labor market, the high school senior says she has lost economic stability – Panos was fired from her first job as a receptionist due to the pandemic. “It was a really terrible time,” said Panos. “The fabric of my life was crumbling before my eyes and I couldn’t do anything about it.”

She joined Starbucks in mid-July, a month before her franchise announced its union campaign, and soon realized that even as a part-time employee, working conditions could improve.

“You just have clients verbally abusing you,” said Panos, “You get a raise of $1 or $2 (per hour) while you’re taking on a lot more work. And I feel like they’re using us.”

According to Pew Research, in 1983 20% of Americans were unionized – but by 2020 that percentage had nearly halved to 10.8%. It’s even lower for workers ages 16-24 who have historically low union participation rates of just 4.4% in 2020, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, as many start in temporary jobs or retail jobs where unions have little influence.

However, about 77% of young adults support unions, according to a September Gallup poll. But that doesn’t mean they will choose to unionize.

In many sectors, however – particularly in the media and services sectors – interest in the labor movement is gaining traction among the economy’s younger and younger workers.

Generation Z, born between 1996 and the mid-2000s, came of age through the Black Lives Matter, the coronavirus pandemic, and Trump’s presidency. The oldest among them remember the 2008 global financial crisis and the Great Recession, and see the echoes of the economic instability of that time today.

“They’ve seen the opportunities for their generation disappear and they fear they’ll be worse off than their parents,” said Kate Bronfenbrenner, director of Labor Education Research and senior lecturer at Cornell University’s School of Industrial and Labor Relations. “They look around and see who is doing something, and they see the labor movement.”

Many of those interviewed by CNN Business say they want to join a movement where social causes are part of their workplace values. “[Os sindicatos] they didn’t cross my mind, because we learned that all these big union movements were happening a long time ago,” said Panos. “So you think everything should be resolved by now. And everything should be fine.”

Kaitlin Bell, 23, president of communications for the Nonprofit Professional Workers Union and member of the CLINIC Workers Union, which represents the Catholic Immigration Legal Network, decided she wanted to organize after seeing TikToks of millennials working in the industry. nonprofits, making jokes about arrogant bosses and their fears of being fired.

“I want to be in a work environment where people feel safe and secure,” said Bell. “These TikToks are fun, but if that’s our reality for decades to come, it might be a little disheartening.”

Richard Minter, the organizing director of the Workers Union, an affiliate of the International Service Workers Union, said it has organized about 300 new members in the past 18 months. Most of them were young people working in restaurants and service industries. “In my 27-year history of doing this, I don’t think I’ve seen that kind of bravery,” Minter said.

Kati Kokal, now a reporter for the Palm Beach Post, was the youngest journalist on the Island Packet team from Hilton Head, SC when she joined the paper at age 22 in 2018.
Packet’s team began discussing unionization in March 2020, just before the paper’s owner, McClatchy, was bought by hedge fund Chatham Asset Management in a court liquidation.

Kokal, who grew up in the Rust Belt of the United States where his father was a member of a factory foundry union, joined the newspaper’s negotiating committee. She drove to workers’ homes after hours to have them sign union cards.

“When I was in college, we weren’t talking about unionization in newsrooms, and now among student journalists there’s more of that idea,” Kokal said.

Starbucks is organized

When William Westlake, 24, was first approached to join Gimme! Café in Ithaca, New York, in 2016, he had a list of 140 questions for organizers before joining the union committee, such as what the organizing structure would be and how much would the union president earn.

He had learned about labor rights in high school – the Triangle factory fire in 1911, for example – but he wasn’t sure if major labor movements were still taking place.

Now, he leads the organizing effort at his Starbucks unit in Buffalo, where workers at three stores are holding union elections and three more have filed petitions requesting an election to join the Workers’ Union, affiliated with the Industry Workers’ International Union. Services.

“It would be rare not to have a friend that I haven’t talked to about union at some point,” said Westlake. “Whether you’re working in coffee or starting out as a medical professional or an engineer.”

The Westlake store in Buffalo, where employees are mostly young, women and progressives, he said, began voting by mail in early November. Voting expires in early December.

Starbucks is flooding the Buffalo market with top executives who are holding employee meetings. Former CEO Howard Schultz even spoke personally to employees before the union vote began.

Starbucks says the company is not “anti-union” — they often hold listening sessions across the country and send corporate members to locations when there are operational issues. Starbucks says its employees have received three pay increases in the past two years.

It was the first time that Panos had signed a union card, and she said she felt like she was signing an illegal document and that she was being “spyed on” by employees of out-of-state companies. Starbucks said any allegations of intimidation are not accurate.

“I would ask my co-workers: will I be fired tomorrow?” Cloths said.

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