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MILLENNIALS UNITED: LABOR UNIONS ENJOY A YOUTHFUL SURGE

By Carly Stern

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Employees unpack samples of Starbucks' new "everyday" brew, Pike Place Roast, in
Bryant Park, New York City.

Source Mario Tama/Getty


WHY YOU SHOULD CARE

They’re recruiting over happy hours and work breaks, staying flexible and giving
America’s labor movement a fresh lease on life. 







Mark Medina and his coworker John Szalay had spoken about their working
conditions before — how hard it was to live on such low wages, the meager
benefits they received and the lack of respect they felt on the job at
Burgerville. But their conversation one chilly May 2016 evening in Portland,
Oregon, was different. Sitting on a bench in their matching black shirts during
a 10-minute break, Medina openly brought up the U-word for the first time.    

Szalay didn’t know that the 92nd and Powell branch of Burgerville Workers Union
(BVWU) was on track to go public in just a few weeks, announcing its membership
in the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) and its intention to speak with
Burgerville management. Two years later, in April 2018, the BVWU
became America’s only formally recognized fast-food union — the first successful
one in nearly four decades, after a brief campaign in 1981 at a single Burger
King in Detroit. 

From nonprofits to digital newsrooms, and from Silicon Valley cafeterias to
Hollywood writers’ rooms, unions are cropping up across workplaces with little
or no history of traditional organizing. These unions advocate for specific
goals outlined by their members and speak the language of a generation with a
demonstrated appetite for activism. Some, like the Nonprofit Professional
Employees Union (NPEU), don’t take direction from the AFL-CIO — America’s
largest federation of unions — or any umbrella organization above their local
one. Others, like the Starbucks Workers Union, aren’t officially recognized by
their employer, but members care more about accumulating benefits than securing
this formality.   

> There’s no cookie-cutter approach.
> 
> Jake Johnston, vice president of organizing, NPEU

These malleable approaches are working. Millennial-aged workers are now leading
growth in overall union membership, upending historical stereotypes that younger
workers don’t identify with the labor movement. For decades, total union
membership numbers were seemingly in terminal decline, coming down from 16.27
million in 1996 to 14.37 million in 2012. Between 2012 and 2017 too, the number
of union members over the age of 35 dropped by 1,000. But over this period, the
number of union members under the age of 35 rose by 452,000, according to the
Bureau of Labor Statistics, leading to an overall increase in union memberships
over the past five years, by 451,000. That means millennials are effectively
offsetting dips in the membership of older workers, and adding tens of thousands
more to union rosters — though they comprise less than 40 percent of the
workforce. In 2017, workers under 35 made up 76 percent of the growth in union
membership. The Ruth Ellinger Labor Leaders School, a Texas-based program that
teaches organizing skills and is a part of the Texas AFL-CIO, more than doubled
its graduating class just a year after launching in 2016. And NPEU fields a
steady stream of phone calls from people who want to learn more about
organizing.

 
        

Burgerville Workers Union

Source Courtesy of Burgerville Workers Union

“There’s no cookie-cutter approach because all of these organizations are very
different,” says Jake Johnston, vice president of organizing for NPEU. “[The
nonprofit industry isn’t a] field that has a ton of history with organizing, so
it really sort of demands a more novel approach.” 

A few patterns do stand out, according to Ken Jacobs, chair of the Labor Center
at the University of California, Berkeley. These include an increase in public
sector membership, in professional areas and among young workers, he says.
Television writers, graduate students, adjunct faculty, technical workers, UPS
workers, Maine lobster fisherfolk, contract workers in tech companies and
digital journalists make up the growing list of “new economy” workplaces that
have been organizing. Unions’ demographics are also beginning to mirror that of
the workplace. Traditionally, Whites dominated union membership. Now, about
two-thirds of workers between ages 18 to 64 covered by a union contract are
women and/or people of color, according to the Economic Policy Institute’s
August 2017 report “How Today’s Unions Help Working People.” 

 


Unions are using innovative and often informal means to recruit, connecting in
spaces native to their cultures. NPEU’s outreach is driven by word of mouth,
so volunteer organizers like Johnston share information over happy hours in
Washington, D.C., bars. At Education Austin, the teachers and employees union
for the Austin independent school district, the approach is more personal. As a
senior officeholder there from 2012 to 2017, Montserrat Garibay would reach out
individually to between four and six promising young teachers each year. The
strategy worked. Many have become stewards in their schools, while others have
led Education Austin committees, she says. 

****

It might seem counterintuitive that young people are turning to organized labor
— stereotypically regarded as a bureaucratic institution and an arm of the
Democratic Party — when trust in most societal institutions remains low. Of 15
major U.S. institutions, a majority of people had trust in just three: the
military, small businesses and the police, according to a 2018 Gallup poll
report.

 
        

Burgerville Workers Union

Source Courtesy of Burgerville Workers Union

But while there have been decades of fear-mongering around unions, millennials
didn’t grow up with as much of that stigma, Johnston says. Instead, younger
millennials were searching for their first jobs during the Great Recession
and potentially have an understanding of what it means to be economically
vulnerable, says Jessica Schieder, an economic analyst at the Economic Policy
Institute. And unlike older age groups, adults younger than 30 are much more
likely to have a favorable view of unions than of corporations, according to the
2017 Fact Tank report by Pew Research Center. Although the economy has rebounded
overall, those gains are concentrated at the top, according to Jacobs.

Jacobs says this is precisely why interest in unions is rising: The growing
economy creates some kind of hope, but the fact that it’s not being shared
creates recognition of the need for action and solidarity. As the younger
generation feels excluded from the system they’ve inherited, they’re seeking new
outlets to get involved, Johnston says.  

> The name of the game is being relevant to what it is that people need in the
> workplace of the future.
> 
> Liz Shuler, AFL-CIO

These newfangled unions are often very local, and flexible. Members across
different regions can dictate their own priorities and adapt to their members’
changing needs. Policy priorities could vary for union members across Starbucks
shops, for instance, depending on location and the ages of their workers, says
Cole Dorsey, press officer for the IWW and a former organizer for the Starbucks
Workers Union. Employees in New York City may focus on improving pay and
scheduling stability, while those in Michigan may care more about “bean to cup”
transparency, or supply-chain traceability for Starbucks coffee
farmers throughout the world. 

Even the giants of the American labor movement aren’t untouched by these shifts
in the ways millennial workers are organizing. The AFL-CIO’s May 2018 Commission
on the Future of Work and Unions explores how unions can become nimble and
responsive as automation becomes more prevalent, says Liz Shuler, the
secretary-treasurer of the organization. 

“The name of the game is being relevant to what it is that people need in the
workplace of the future,” says Shuler. 

***

Make no mistake, the future remains uncertain for the labor movement.
Traditional bodies like the AFL-CIO face the challenge of reframing a powerful
narrative that’s been constructed against unions for decades, says
Shuler. Looking forward, she says the AFL-CIO is presenting itself as more
issues-focused rather than partisan, particularly in light of the 2016
presidential election. Beyond this stigmatized perception, decreased visibility
has also hurt growth. As union density declined, community chatter and awareness
of organizing declined with it. Young people weren’t necessarily opposed to
unions; they just didn’t know anyone in one, Shuler says.

Unions have their problems, though. Often, they have coercive powers over
workers, suggests Patrick Semmens, a vice president of the National Right to
Work Legal Defense Foundation. Individuals, he cautions, should have the choice
of whether or not to associate with a union. Many people who support unions
still want dues to be voluntary rather than forced, according to Semmens.

Others point out that the individual, localized organizing that’s shaping this
emerging millennial labor movement remains limited by our broken, outdated
system of labor laws. The law’s emphasis on the firm level, rather than industry
or sector, means small bargaining units have less economic leverage as employers
are consolidating, Jacobs says. Having workers on the picket line was a serious
problem for owners when their businesses were in only a few locations but is
less of a threat to multinational corporations.

Still, despite these structural challenges, young workers are claiming small yet
significant wins. After more than five years of lobbying management, the IWW
secured time-and-a-half pay on Martin Luther King Jr. Day in 2011 for Starbucks
workers. When a Texas judge in November 2016 halted the Department of Labor’s
Overtime Final Rule aimed at raising millions of salaries by increasing the
threshold of eligibility for overtime pay, NPEU member organizations like the
Center for American Progress agreed to put overtime protection language in their
contracts anyway.

 
        

And BVWU’s recognition proves that a low-cost, local method can be viable as
long as workers care about the cause. “We were at the forefront of our own
movement. We didn’t feel hamstrung by anyone above us pulling the strings and
telling us to move in this direction or that direction,” Medina says. “We could
choose that direction for ourselves.”

It’s gains like these that make Medina optimistic. When he had broached the
plans for a union during their break time conversation, Szalay was initially
shocked. But by the time they got back to work, Medina witnessed what he
described as the “beginnings of determination” in Szalay. “This is not going to
change unless we make it,” Medina had told him. “No one’s coming to the
rescue.” 

Medina is excited that BVWU’s precedent-setting campaign can be a link in the
chain that ends poverty wages in Portland. They’ve shown, he says, that it
doesn’t take the gigantic resources of a major union to do this kind of work. He
hopes larger unions feel pressured to funnel greater resources into organizing.

“If this ragtag group of low-wage workers can do this,” he says, “you can do
this.” 

 * Carly Stern, OZY Author Contact Carly Stern




The Daily Dose September 18, 2018

TOPICS

 * Economics
 * Millennials
 * SOCIETY
 * United States
 * Work
 * Workplace


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