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This is why Gen Z is uniting


In her short time as a member of the labor market, High School Students says she’s economically unstable – Panos was fired from her first flight attendant job due to the pandemic.

“It was just a really terrible time,” Panos said. “The structure of my life is collapsing before my eyes and there’s nothing I can do about it.”

She joined Starbucks in mid-July, a month before her franchise announced a partnership campaign, and quickly realized that even as a part-timer, the working conditions of part-timers time can also be improved.

“You’ve just had clients who outright insult you,” says Panos, “You get a payoff like a $1 or $2 increase (per hour) while you’re doing more work… and I feel like they’re taking advantage of us.”

Based on Pew Research, in 1983, 20% of Americans were union members – but by 2020, that proportion has fallen down almost half to 10.8%. It was even lower for workers aged 16-24, who had previously low union participation rates, only 4.4% in 2020 According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, many people start off in temporary retail or service jobs where unions have little influence.
However, some 77% young people support unions, according to a September Gallup poll. But that doesn’t mean they will choose to organize.
American unions are better off, but still a long way from their former strength
However, across many industries – especially the media and services sectors – interest in Labor movement To be increase traction among the economy’s newest and youngest workers.

Generation Z, born between 1996 and the mid-2000s, grew up through Black Lives Matter, the coronavirus pandemic, and the Trump presidency. The oldest of them remember the global financial crisis of 2008 and the Great Recession, and see the echoes of the economic turmoil of that era today.

“They saw the opportunity for their generation to disappear and feared it,” said Kate Bronfenbrenner, Research Director of Labor Education and senior lecturer at Cornell University’s School of Industrial and Industrial Relations. that they will be more disadvantaged than their parents. “They look around and see who’s doing something, and they see the movement of labor.”

Many of those interviewed by CNN Business said they wanted to join a movement where social causes are part of their workplace values.

“[Unions] I didn’t think about it, because we knew that all these big union movements happened not that long ago,” Panos said. So you think everything should be set up now. And everything will be fine. “

Kaitlin Bell is communications chair for the nonprofit Professional Employees Union and a member of Clinic worker United, which represents the Catholic Legal Immigration Network.

Kaitlin Bell, 23, communications chair for the nonprofit Federation of Professional Employees and a member of the United Workers CLINIC, which represents the Catholic Legal Immigration Network, decided that she wanted to organize the following. when he saw the millennial TikTok working in the nonprofit sector, joking about overbearing bosses and their fear of being fired.

“I want to be in a work environment where people feel safe and secure,” says Bell. “Those TikToks are funny, but if that’s our reality for the next couple of decades, it might leave you a bit disappointed.”

Richard Minter, United Workers’ organizational director, an affiliate of Employee Service International, says he has organized about 300 new members in the past 18 months. Most of them are young people working in the restaurant and service business.

“In my 27-year history of doing this, I don’t think I’ve witnessed such bravery,” Minter said.

Kati Kokal, now a reporter for the Palm Beach Post, was the youngest journalist on the payroll of Hilton Head, South Carolina-based Island Packet when she joined the newspaper at the age of 22 in 2018.

Packet employees began discussing the organization in March 2020, shortly before the newspaper’s owner, McClatchy, purchased by hedge fund Chatham Asset Management in a bankruptcy transaction. Kokal, who grew up in the US Rust Belt, where her father was a member of the foundry union, joined the newspaper’s bargaining committee. She drove to workers’ homes after work to have them sign union cards.
Kati Kokal, now at the Palm Beach Post, was the youngest reporter on the staff of the Bluffton, South Carolina-based Island Packet when she joined the paper in August 2018.

“When I was in college, we didn’t talk about consolidation in newsrooms, and now there are more of these ideas among student journalists,” says Kokal.

Starbucks organized

When William Westlake, 24, was first approached held at Gimme! Coffee in Ithaca, New York, in 2016 he had a list of 140 questions for organizers before joining the organizing committee, such as what the organizational structure would be and how much the union president would earn. much. He studied labor rights in high school – 1911 Triangle shirt factory such as fire – but he’s not sure if major labor movements are still happening.
Now, he’s leading the organizing effort at his Starbucks location in Buffalo, where workers at three stores are holding union elections and three other people filed a request for an election joins Union Workers, affiliated with Service Employees International Union.

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

William Westlake, left, and Jaz Brisack, two of the Starbucks employees in Buffalo, New York, who are leading the effort to organize stores there.

Westlake’s store in Buffalo, where The staff are mostly young, female and progressive, he said, having started voting by mail as early as November. Ballots are due in early December.

Starbucks (SBUX) are flooding the Buffalo market with top executives holding employee meetings. Former CEO Howard Schultz even talk directly to the staff there before the union vote begins.

Starbucks says company is not “against unions” – they regularly hold nationwide listening sessions and send company members to locations when there are operational concerns. Starbucks says its workers have received three raises in the past two years.

Howard Schultz tells a story about the Massacre to pitch Starbucks & # 39;  benefits

This was the first time Panos signed a union card, and she said she felt like she was signing an illegal document, and she felt as if she was being bullied by foreign company officials.” monitor”. Starbucks said any threatening claims were inaccurate.

“I want to ask my colleague, oh, will I be fired tomorrow?” Panos said.

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