By Adam Kadar
The decline of unions does not mean the finish of the labor movement. Certainly, the last handful of years have seen a proliferation of new kinds of worker organizations and workers’ rights campaigns. Some of the most thrilling of late have been conducted by community-based groups (rather than workplace-based unions), such as the Coalition of Immokalee Workers and these portion of the National Domestic Employees Alliance.
In Solidarity Unionism at Starbucks, a current pamphlet published by PM Press, Daniel Gross and Staughton Lynd highlight an increasingly critical feature of today’s labor movement—nonunion employees employing direct action tactics protected by the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA)—while examining the Industrial Workers of the World’s (IWW)’s ongoing efforts to organize Starbucks.
For the duration of the last decade, Chicago-based IWW has noticed a resurgence of organizing activity and visibility. That’s in portion simply because the 106-year-old international union, which as soon as had 100,000 members but is now only a fraction of that size, formed the Starbucks Employees Union (SWU) in 2004 in New York City. It was the coffee chain’s very first union, and it has because expanded.
The Starbucks campaign is remarkable due to the fact it draws from both IWW’s background and the greatest practices of worker centers, which are the principal heir of the union’s rich organizing legacy. Ironically, today’s IWW activists, or Wobblies, can discover from worker centers. In reality, 1 sign of the IWW’s revival is the emergence of the IWW-affiliated Lucy Parsons Employees’ Center in Chicago. Gross and Lynd’s pamphlet is specifically instructive to Wobblies who are challenged by the activity of reaching out to employees in need to have of organizing.
Gross and Lynd, both proponents of rank-and-file unionism, union democracy, and direct action, concentrate on the practice of solidarity unionism amid IWW members working for Starbucks. The story is compelling, in aspect because of the symbolic importance of the coffee chain. The ubiquitous corporate giant is emblematic of the precarity of the service economic climate. The authors make the crucial point that new organizational forms of organization demand new types of worker organization.
Starbucks, for instance, argues that a bargaining unit would necessarily contain all of the retailers in a provided region. This, along with ideological reasons, is why the IWW is organizing Starbucks workers across coffee shop places, rather than shop by store.
Gross and Lynd share the stories of employees like Laura de Anda, who deal with overbearing managers, low-wages, unilateral scheduling and repetitive motion injuries. For readers without private experience in service-sector jobs, some of these abuses might seem like mere annoyances not almost as exploitative or shocking as, these in say, the meat-packing market.
But taken together, the at-instances idealized barista can locate herself in a state of psychological pressure and physical strain. I need to know—I did time as a barista in a coffee store in Chicago’s banking district. My fingertips became so raw from the continuous handling of coins and hand washing that I had to wear Band-Aids to stop infection. I also had to corner my boss and make an appeal to his wife following he didn’t give me my promised raise at the end of my training period.
Solidarity Unionism at Starbucks is beneficial simply because it names and describes a collection of tactics nontraditional worker organizations like worker centers increasingly employ. This is specifically genuine for groups that do not limit their organizing by market or geographic community. Rather of in search of geographic or sector monopoly power, worker centers like New Brunswick’s New Labor, Cincinnati Interfaith Workers Center, and the organization I operate for, Arise Chicago, pick to develop a base of employees organized close to the principles and energy of direct action and mutual aid.
This means workers joining together to alter conditions and terms of operate, regardless of what or where their perform is. In a recent and common Arise Chicago action, a retired factory worker, social worker and house healthcare worker joined a butcher to confront his boss about paying the minimum wage, signing a discrimination-free of charge workplace statement, and covering the medical costs of a work-connected injury. Worker centers are effective in mobilizing marginalized and low-wage employees due to the fact they are rooted in the communities they organize, address workers’ instant wants and create them into leaders.
Gross and Lynd describe how IWW-SWU members take bold actions to win concrete gains. We learn how workers disobeyed management to create a cozy break place, and organized a function stoppage to demand reasonably priced healthcare options and sick days. Apart from getting dramatic and interest-grabbing, some of these campaigns are notable for their tactical use of legal complaints.
Organizations like the SWU are successful in aspect simply because the employees they organize are covered by the NLRA. When folks believe of the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB)—the agency charged with regulating union elections and protecting workers’ rights in the process—most frequently they think of union organizing campaigns. But if 1 studies the NLRA, the pamphlet authors point out, any employees have the proper to engage in “collective concerted activity” and are protected from retaliation for undertaking so.
SWU employees in New York City won a complaint and have been reinstated, altering a business policy against distributing union data in the method. In the instance cited above, the threat of filing a legal charge for violation of protected concerted activity was sufficient to win demands related to a comfortable break area.
The IWW has a lengthy and fascinating history of solidarity unionism, even ahead of the passage of the NLRA in 1935. From its founding in 1905, the IWW was radical in its aim to organize workers as a single class, instead of as members of a specific trade or market.
The IWW faces enormous challenges, nevertheless. Even though it has a background to be proud of, the union would do well to update its image for the 21st-century worker. I have witnessed earnest IWW organizers dressed with newsboy-styled caps, singing “Solidarity Forever” by themselves at a rally. I suspect that some Wobblies are moved by the romanticism of the union’s heyday, but do not know how to speak the language of the 21st century service worker.
I’ve observed IWW activists feverishly go over the power of the basic strike, but strain to create a tactic for combating wage theft in the workplace. The IWW has begun to revive the “Chicago Idea” (a mixture of anarchism and unionism), but thus far has not managed to create a Chicago presence.
Solidarity Unionism at Starbucks offers a glimpse into campaigns that have successfully spoken to disgruntled employees in need to have of organization. None of the campaigns described in its pages attribute their accomplishment to appealing to co-workers’ innate but hidden thirst for innovative activity. On the contrary, SWU appears to be productive since of its appeal to workers’ immediate and standard needs: a fan a breakroom sick days.
Gross and Lynd’s excellent storytelling and legal tutorial should serve as a standard introduction to solidarity unionism for rank-and-file worker activists. And with its appealing and portable zine design and style, political cartoons and accessible text, the pamphlet speaks to today’s employees in a way that should serve as a model to other IWW activists and worker center activists alike.
Adam Kader is the director of the Arise Chicago Worker Center, blogs for Labor Notes.This post initially appeared on the Working In These Times weblog.
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