In 2021, workers at SHoP, a New York architecture firm, filed for a National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) union election with the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers. They felt overworked (Curbed reported on a SHoP worker who “was hospitalized with pneumonia after working a 110-hour week and felt pressured to work while his wife was in the middle of childbirth”), and some of them carried a heavy load of student debt. They wanted a collective avenue of redress and a means to stabilize their work lives. The Architecture Lobby, a nonprofit that advocates for reform within the industry, has existed for nearly a decade, but SHoP was poised to become the first private sector architectural firm to unionize since the 1940s.
The backlash was swift. According to the workers, SHoP management launched an anti-union campaign, hiring prime union-busting law firm Proskauer Rose LLP to craft the strategy. Management warned of losing clients and instituted an employee stock-ownership program (ESOP) that, while not providing a seat at the table or say over the direction of the firm, functioned as a wedge, peeling off support for the union by distributing company profits to workers in the form of company shares. It worked: fearing that it would lose the union election were it to go through with it, the SHoP union withdrew its petition in February of 2022.
Andrew Daley was one of the SHoP workers who supported the union. During the campaign, Daley decided to make a...
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