Washington Post: Young workers are organizing. Can their fervor save unions?
By STEVEN GREENHOUSE
Not long ago, a top official from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce told me that labor unions were relics of the 1930s and that today’s workers don’t really need them — that they can do just fine lifting themselves up individually without an “outside third party” like a union speaking on their behalf.
Workers — particularly young workers — disagree. As we head into Labor Day, they’re more enthusiastic about unions than they have been for decades. Over the last year, employees at some of the nation’s best-known companies — Starbucks, Amazon, Trader Joe’s, Apple, REI and Chipotle — have organized for the first time. Workers at a Trader Joe’s in Minneapolis voted 55-5 to unionize; at an REI store in Manhattan, it was 88 to 14. Unions are no more relics than these young workers are; they’re useful mechanisms to improve pay and the jobs that come with it.