Insider spoke with people organizing workers at Amazon, Trader Joe's, Target, Wells Fargo, and Starbucks, in conversations spread over several weeks, about what drives them to try to unionise in America today. A 2019 report by the Economic Policy Institute estimated that US companies spend nearly $340 million a year on 'union avoidance' consultants, and illegal firings are alleged to happen in up to 30% of union-election campaigns. A Gallup poll last year found support for unions to be at its highest since the '60s.īut the ordinary people leading this workers-rights revival have their work cut out.Īmerican corporations often fiercely resist union efforts. Union-representation petitions filed with the National Labor Relations Board jumped almost 60% in the nine months that ended in June. This year has seen a wave of union activism after decades of declining membership.Ī flurry of workers have won elections to form unions in industries that have never had them, including at more than 200 Starbucks stores and at Apple, Trader Joe's, and the outdoor store REI.

Their efforts were rewarded in April this year when JFK8, which has more than 8,000 workers, became the first and only Amazon warehouse in the US to unionize following a vote - the process to formally establish a union by showing enough workers support it. On windy winter nights, the tent would often blow away.

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