Here's why Gen Z is unionizing
Even among the generally youthful demographic of Starbucks workers unionizing 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 lost economic stability — Panos was laid off from her first job as a hostess due to the pandemic.
"It was just a really terrible time," Panos said. "The structure of my life was falling apart in front of 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 customers straight-up verbally abusing you," Panos said, "You get like a $1 or $2 pay (per hour) increase while you're taking on way more work... and I felt like they were using us."
According to Pew Research, in 1983, 20% of Americans were union members — but by 2020, that percentage had fallen by almost half to 10.8%. It's even lower for workers aged 16-24 who have historically low union participation rates, at just 4.4% in 2020 according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, since many start out in temporary service or retail jobs where unions have little sway.
Yet some 77% of young adults support unions, according to a September Gallup poll. But that doesn't mean they will choose to organize.
Across multiple industries, however — particularly the media and service sectors — interest in the labor movement is gaining traction among the economy's newest and youngest workers.
Gen Z, born between 1996 and the mid-2000s, came of age through Black Lives Matter, the coronavirus pandemic and the Trump presidency. The oldest among them remember the 2008 global financial crisis and the Great Recession, and see echoes of that era's economic instability today.
"They've seen opportunities for their generation disappear and are afraid they are going to be worse off than their parents," said Kate Bronfenbrenner, director of Labor Education Research and a 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.
"[Unions] hadn't crossed my mind, because we learned all these big union movements happened way back," Panos said. "So you think everything should be set up by now. And everything should be fine."
Kaitlin Bell, 23, communications chair of Nonprofit Professional Employees Union and a member of CLINIC Workers United, which represents the Catholic Legal Immigration Network, decided that she wanted to organize after seeing TikToks of millennials working in the non-profit sector, making jokes about overbearing bosses and their fears of getting fired.
"I want to be in a work environment where people feel safe and secure," Bell said. "Those TikToks are funny, but if that's our reality for the next several decades, it can be a little disheartening."
Richard Minter, the organizing director of Workers United, a Service Employees International Union affiliate, said he has organized about 300 new members in the past 18 months. Most of them were young people who work in restaurants and service industries.
"In my history of doing this for 27 years, I don't think I've seen that kind of bravery," Minter said.
Kati Kokal, now a reporter at the Palm Beach Post, was the youngest journalist on the staff of the Hilton Head, South Carolina-based Island Packet when she joined the newspaper at age 22 in 2018.
The Packet's staff began discussing organizing in March 2020, just before the newspaper's owner, McClatchy, was purchased by hedge fund Chatham Asset Management in a bankruptcy sale. Kokal, who grew up in the US Rust Belt where her father was a member of a factory foundry union, joined the paper's bargaining committee. She drove to workers' homes after hours to have them sign union cards.
"When I was in college, we were not talking about unionizing in newsrooms, and now among student journalists there's more of this idea," Kokal said.
Starbucks organizes
When William Westlake, 24, was first approached to organize at Gimme! Coffee in Ithaca, New York, in 2016, he had a list of 140 questions for the organizers before joining the organizing committee, such as what would be the organizing structure and how much the union president would earn. He had learned about labor rights in high school — the 1911 Triangle shirtwaist factory fire, for example — but he wasn't sure if large labor movements were still happening.
Now, he leads the organizing effort at his Starbucks location in Buffalo, where workers at three stores are holding union elections and another three have filed petitions requesting an election to join Workers United, affiliated with the Service Employees International Union.
"It would be rare to not have a friend that I hadn't already talked to about unionizing at some point," Westlake said. "Whether you're in a coffee job or starting out as a medical professional or engineer."
Westlake's store in Buffalo, where employees are mostly young, female and progressive, he said, began mail-in voting earlier in November. Ballots are due early December.
Starbucks (SBUX) is flooding the Buffalo market with top executives who are holding meetings with employees. Former CEO Howard Schultz even spoke in person to employees there before union voting started.
Starbucks says the company is not "anti-union" -- they frequently hold listening sessions across the country and send corporate members to locations when there are operational concerns. Starbucks says its workers have received three wage increases in the last two years.
It was Panos' first time signing a union card, and she said she felt like she was signing an illegal document, and that she felt as if she was being "spied on" by out-of-state company officials. Starbucks said any claims of intimidation are not accurate.
"I'd ask my coworkers, oh, am I going to get fired tomorrow?" Panos said.
这就是美国 Z 世代加入工会的原因
即使在纽约布法罗工会的星巴克员工普遍年轻的人群中，17 岁的玛雅帕诺斯也比大多数人年轻。
在她作为劳动力市场一员的短暂工作中，这位高中生说她失去了经济稳定性——由于大流行，帕诺斯被解雇了作为女主人的第一份工作。
“那真是一段非常糟糕的时光，”帕诺斯说。 “我的生活结构在我眼前分崩离析，我对此无能为力。”
她于 7 月中旬加入星巴克，也就是她的特许经营权宣布工会活动的一个月前，她很快意识到即使是兼职员工的工作条件也可以改善。
“你只是有客户直接口头辱骂你，”帕诺斯说，“当你承担更多的工作时，你的工资（每小时）增加了 1 美元或 2 美元......我觉得他们在利用我们.”
根据皮尤研究中心的数据，1983 年，20% 的美国人是工会会员——但到 2020 年，这一比例几乎下降了一半，降至 10.8%。根据美国劳工统计局的数据，对于 16-24 岁的工人来说，工会参与率处于历史低位，这一比例甚至更低，2020 年仅为 4.4%，因为许多人开始从事临时服务或零售工作，而工会几乎没有影响力。
然而，根据 9 月份的盖洛普民意调查，大约 77% 的年轻人支持工会。但这并不意味着他们会选择组织。
然而，在多个行业——尤其是媒体和服务行业——对劳工运动的兴趣在经济中最新和最年轻的工人中越来越受到关注。
Z 世代出生于 1996 年至 2000 年代中期，通过“黑人的命也是命”、冠状病毒大流行和特朗普总统任期而成长。其中最年长的人记得 2008 年的全球金融危机和大萧条，并在今天看到那个时代经济不稳定的回声。
康奈尔大学劳资关系学院劳工教育研究主任兼高级讲师凯特·布朗芬布伦纳 (Kate Bronfenbrenner) 说：“他们已经看到他们这一代人的机会消失了，并且担心他们的境遇会比他们的父母更糟。” “他们环顾四周，看看谁在做什么，他们看到了劳工运动。”
许多接受 CNN Business 采访的人表示，他们希望加入一项将社会事业作为其工作场所价值观一部分的运动。
“[工会] 并没有让我想到，因为我们了解到所有这些大型工会运动都发生在很久以前，”帕诺斯说。 “所以你认为现在一切都应该设置好了。一切都应该没问题。”
凯特琳·贝尔（Kaitlin Bell），23 岁，非营利专业雇员工会通讯主席，代表天主教合法移民网络的 CLINIC Workers United 成员，在看到千禧一代在非营利部门工作的 TikTok 后决定组织霸道的老板和他们对被解雇的恐惧。
“我想在一个人们感到安全和有保障的工作环境中，”贝尔说。 “那些 TikTok 很有趣，但如果这是我们未来几十年的现实，那就有点令人沮丧了。”
国际服务业雇员工会附属机构 Workers United 的组织总监 Richard Minter 说，在过去的 18 个月里，他组织了大约 300 名新成员。他们中的大多数是在餐馆和服务行业工作的年轻人。
“在我这样做 27 年的历史中，我认为我从未见过这种勇敢，”明特说。
卡蒂·科卡尔 (Kati Kokal) 现在是《棕榈滩邮报》(Palm Beach Post) 的一名记者，她在 2018 年 22 岁加入该报时，是总部位于南卡罗来纳州希尔顿黑德的 Island Packet 工作人员中最年轻的记者。
The Packet 的工作人员于 2020 年 3 月开始讨论组织事宜，就在该报的所有者麦克拉奇被对冲基金查塔姆资产管理公司以破产出售方式收购之前。 Kokal 在美国锈带长大，她的父亲是工厂铸造工会的成员，她加入了该报的谈判委员会。下班后，她开车去工人家让他们签署工会卡。
“当我在大学时，我们没有在新闻编辑室谈论工会，现在学生记者中有更多这样的想法，”科卡尔说。
星巴克组织
当 24 岁的 William Westlake 第一次被邀请在 Gimme! 2016年在纽约伊萨卡的Coffee，在加入组委会之前，他给主办方列出了140个问题的清单，比如组织结构是什么，工会主席能赚多少钱。他在高中时就了解了劳工权利——例如 1911 年三角衬衫腰工厂火灾——但他不确定是否仍在发生大规模的劳工运动。
现在，他在布法罗的星巴克分店领导组织工作，那里的三家门店的员工正在举行工会选举，另外三家门店已提交请愿书，要求选举加入隶属于服务雇员国际工会的工人联合会。
韦斯特莱克说：“在某个时候，我没有和我谈过工会问题的朋友很少见。” “无论你是从事咖啡工作，还是从医学专业人士或工程师开始。”
他说，韦斯特莱克在布法罗的商店于 11 月初开始邮寄投票，那里的员工大多是年轻、女性和进步人士。投票将于 12 月初到期。
星巴克 (SBUX) 正在布法罗市场充斥着与员工开会的高管。前首席执行官霍华德舒尔茨甚至在工会投票开始之前亲自与那里的员工交谈。
星巴克表示，该公司并不“反工会”——他们经常在全国各地举行听证会，并在出现运营问题时派公司成员前往各地。星巴克表示，其员工在过去两年中获得了三次加薪。
这是帕诺斯第一次在工会卡上签字，她说她觉得自己在签署一份非法文件，感觉自己好像被外州公司官员“监视”。星巴克表示，任何有关恐吓的说法都是不准确的。
“我会问我的同事，哦，我明天会被解雇吗？”帕诺斯说。
