Labor Day 2022 comes smack bang in the middle of what is increasingly looking like a pivotal year in the history of American unions.
The summer has seen a steady stream of workforce mobilizations. Employees at Trader Joe’s locations in Massachusetts and Minneapolis both voted to unionize. Meanwhile, restaurant chain Chipotle saw the first of its stores unionize, following a vote by workers at an outlet in Lansing, Michigan.
It comes on the back of a wave of successful efforts to mobilize at Starbucks and Amazon. The growth of unionized stores at Starbucks in particular has been stunning. Since baristas in Buffalo, New York, became the first at the chain to unionize in December 2021, colleagues at a further 234 outlets have followed suit in recent months.
Likewise, the success of an independent Amazon Labor Union – formed in 2020 by Chris Smalls, an Amazon worker fired for protesting what he saw as inadequate COVID-19 safety precautions – in forming the first plant of the retail giant to have a unionized workforce has inspired others to do likewise.
It comes as polling shows that public support of unions is at its highest since 1965, with the backing of 71% of Americans. Something is definitely happening in the labor movement in 2022.
As a scholar of the labor movement who has observed union drives for two decades, what I find almost as...
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