
Fred Wang is a student at Harvard Law School.
In today’s News & Commentary, a lookback at a historic year of unionizing at Starbucks and across the tech industry.
It’s been a little over a year since the first Starbucks store in the U.S. organized, as Kevin summarized this weekend. A lot has changed in that time, to put it mildly.
As the Seattle Times recounts, while over 260 of its U.S. stores have unionized, Starbucks — “seen historically as employee-friendly” — has clashed with union workers the entire way. Claims of Starbucks retaliating against unionizing efforts are surely familiar at this point. Since January, the Starbucks Union has filed 548 unfair labor charges against Starbucks, per data collected by Matt Bruenig. Perhaps not coincidentally, election filings have started to level off in recent months. And as many stores shift from the union-organizing phase to the “slow contract negotiation process,” Starbucks’s efforts to obstruct to impede the labor movement are sure to continue. In short, “Starbucks has changed, and so has its relationship with workers.”
Still, many workers are committed to seeing this entire fight through. As one Seattle barista, Rachel Ybarra, put it: “Starbucks can’t get rid of me. I’m going to stay with this company until I can make it the company that it should be.”
“2022 saw an unprecedented rise in labor organizing in U.S. tech firms,” Axios notes, in a piece briefly summarizing the year’s major news in tech workers’ labor activism — such as organizing efforts at Amazon, Apple, and across the video game industry. Although labor organizing in the tech space is “still in its infancy,” Axios notes, the momentum that’s been built in the past year may well carry over into the next, especially as national approval of labor unions continues to rise.
Daily News & Commentary
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March 24
Duke opposing unionizing grad student workers; NLRB prosecutors find merit to ULPs against Amazon; Starbucks investors weighing outside audit of company's labor practices.
March 23
Trader Joe's workers in Oakland file a petition to form a union; a Kenyan court temporarily blocks Meta contractor’s mass layoff of content moderators; and Starbucks workers at more than 100 stores walkout ahead of shareholders’ meeting.
March 22
NLRB's General Counsel issues two memos clarifying priorities and a recent Board decision, LA teachers go on strike, and Bloomberg Law reports higher pay raises from labor contracts
March 20
Residents and fellows at Mass General Brigham hospitals prepare to unionize; divisions in the New York Times NewsGuild union deepens as contract negotiations remain ongoing; the six-month Pittsburgh Post-Gazette strike turned violent on Saturday; Los Angeles schools prepare to close this week as workers plan to strike
March 19
Ninth Circuit reinstates Uber's Equal Protection challenge to California's AB5; reduction in SNAP benefits could lead to "hunger cliff" for low-wage workers; Amazon workers start unionizing campaign at Kentucky facility; ex-Google employees ask company to honor parental leave.
March 17
Texas committee considers sweeping legislation limiting municipal power; University of Chicago graduate students unionize; Tennessee Nissan technicians reject a unionizing effort; and protestors in France take to the streets after President Macron activates nuclear option to raise retirement age.