Haag is part of a wave of young workers who have been unionizing in sectors with little or no tradition of unions: art museums, including the Guggenheim and the New Museum, but also tech companies, digital-media brands, political campaigns, even cannabis shops. At Google, around ninety contract workers in Pittsburgh recently formed a union—a significant breakthrough, even if they represent just a tiny fraction of the company’s workforce. More than thirty digital publications, including Vox, Vice, Salon, Slate, and HuffPost, have unionized. (The editorial staff of The New Yorker unionized in 2018.) Last March, Bernie Sanders’s campaign became the first major-party Presidential campaign in history with a unionized workforce; the campaigns of Eric Swalwell, Julián Castro, and Elizabeth Warren unionized soon after. At Grinnell College, in Iowa, students working in the school’s dining hall unionized in 2016, becoming one of the nation’s only undergraduate-student labor unions.
As a Boomer I grew up in strong union household. I saw the decline of my Dad's union—he was a printer—and how people just didn’t seem to get that unions were so much more then advocating for wages. I also grew up in the climate of “do what you love and the money will follow" an idea that seemed at odds with unions and individuality. The employer is not your friend—they will certainly take advantage of the …do what you love adage. I’m so encouraged to see the resurgence of unions in young people especially in work not traditionally seen as benefiting from collective bargaining.
This one was a trip! I had little-to-no exposure to unions growing up and bought the Republican messaging hook, line, and sinker as a younger adult. Ironically, the only time I was ever in a union (Teamsters while working in the Seattle UPS facility), I was not nearly as appreciative of it as I should have been.
In my current field (software engineering) I'd be interested to see increased unionization as a check against workplace abuses as well as workers having the collective power to say "no" to certain kinds of work (ICE contracts, etc).
As a Boomer I grew up in strong union household. I saw the decline of my Dad's union—he was a printer—and how people just didn’t seem to get that unions were so much more then advocating for wages. I also grew up in the climate of “do what you love and the money will follow" an idea that seemed at odds with unions and individuality. The employer is not your friend—they will certainly take advantage of the …do what you love adage. I’m so encouraged to see the resurgence of unions in young people especially in work not traditionally seen as benefiting from collective bargaining.
This one was a trip! I had little-to-no exposure to unions growing up and bought the Republican messaging hook, line, and sinker as a younger adult. Ironically, the only time I was ever in a union (Teamsters while working in the Seattle UPS facility), I was not nearly as appreciative of it as I should have been.
In my current field (software engineering) I'd be interested to see increased unionization as a check against workplace abuses as well as workers having the collective power to say "no" to certain kinds of work (ICE contracts, etc).