IS UNIONAZATION SWEEPING THE NATION?

 

                                           This is a “Union Yes” bumper sticker

 

Even magazines like “Vanity Fair” is organizing a union

 

“UNION YES” stickers don’t only adorn the lunch boxes of industrial workers these days.  They’re also showing up on the laptops and backpacks of workers in businesses and institutions, long assumed to be immune to, and often disdainful of, labor organizing.  Places like Starbucks, M.I.T., Netflix, Amazon, Uber, Google and even luxury magazines like Vanity Fair and Architectural Digest. 

But as the saying goes, “Even a dog knows the difference between being stumbled over and being kicked.”  And all sorts of employees are increasingly aware that they’re being kicked by a corporate hierarchy that is aloof, arrogant, and structurally abusive.  Thus, unionization is booming in nontraditional sectors (including among so-called “professional” employees), where pay is meager and arbitrary, schedules are sporadic (and arbitrary), overtime hours are demanded, with no additional compensation, sexual harassment is winked at, physical safety is ignored, etc.

Importantly, this renewed unionizing energy is organic.  Rather than arising from drives by national union staffs, it’s coming directly from workers who’ve reached their not-going-to-take-it-anymore moment. They’ve been organizing themselves, even forming their own independent start-up unions that seek advice and support from professional organizers.  But they retain control as worker-led unions are coming around to this democratic model of what are being called “solidarity unions.”

As Mark Dimondstein, president of the American Postal Workers Union and a fiery, innovative leader of the progressive movement, puts it: “We have to be homegrown.  We have to be driven by the workers.”

This is the new, “Union Movement” that is sweeping the nation.

Copyright G. Ater 2022