Upcoming Events 🗓
The seventh series of the Emergency Workplace Organizing Committee’s Organizer Training Series is coming up soon! In four discussion sessions over two weeks, you will be introduced to the fundamental principles of effective shop-floor organizing: mapping and charting, leader identification, bringing co-workers together around common concerns, getting over fear, taking action, and escalating demands. Sessions begin Wednesday, March 9. Sign up here today!
In just this past week, 10 new Starbucks locations have filed for elections! That brings the number up to 100 total Starbucks locations in 26 states having filed for elections, covering more than 2,200 workers across the country — and it seems like many more shops are brewing.
On December 9, when ballots were counted for the first three Buffalo stores that filed to unionize, only seven stores had filed for an election. From there on, the wave has taken off — Aimes Shunk, who works at the Starbucks Reserve Roastery in New York said that “After Buffalo won, I walked into the break room every single person was talking about how ‘If they can do it, we can do it!’”
Do you work at Starbucks and feel inspired to organize at your workplace? Email Starbucks Workers United at [email protected]. Work elsewhere? You can reach out to get support from EWOC.
World of Work 🌍
USA: Workers in their 20s — and even in their teens — are leading ongoing efforts to unionize companies large and small, from Starbucks and REI to local cannabis dispensaries. The Alphabet Workers Union, formed last year and now representing 800 Google employees, is run by five people who are under 35.
OR: A day before the planned strike by 1,200 City of Portland, Ore., workers, members accepted the city’s last-minute offer in a 58 percent “yes” vote.
MI: Baristas from Great Lakes Coffee Roasting Co in Detroit are on strike for union recognition this week. The majority of workers have signed union cards with UNITE HERE Local 24 and asked management to voluntarily recognize their union.
EWOC in the News ✉️
Organizer Dawn Tefft wrote about how EWOC is the only organization that will help any worker, in any industry, at any employer, and in any state make and win demands on their boss for Teen Vogue.
Week in Labor History 📚
On Feb. 16, 1936, workers at Goodyear Tire, a rubber factory in Akron, Ohio, began a sit-down strike to protest reduction in wages and poor working conditions. A sit-down strike, where the workers physically occupied their work spaces (as opposed to a walk-out), made it very difficult for the company to rely on scabs. The tactic worked and the workers won recognition of their union and were able to negotiate a new contract with Goodyear.
Feb. 17, 1926: Beginning of a 17-week general strike and the first union to win a five-day, 40-hour week. Headlines read: DRESS STRIKE TALK AS FUR SHOPS CLOSE; Garment Workers Break With Manufacturers, Charging Abrogation of Contract. SEEK NEW AGREEMENTS Union Says General Walk-Out Will Not Be Called, but 22,000 May Be Affected. 12,000 QUIT IN FUR TRADE Demands for Forty-Hour Week and Aid for Unemployment Fund Denied as “Dictatorial.”
Solidarity,
Team EWOC
