The Immigrant Women Workers Learning To Disrupt The Cleaning Industry

Graduate student unions, like Oregon State University’s Coalition of Graduate Employees, use collective bargaining to allow student employees to successfully negotiate for fair wages, reasonable hours, and other terms of employment.

Unit of Work, an organization backed by venture capital, helps unions organize and win contracts. Organizers provide free consulting to groups of workers forming unions within their own workplaces. Once a contract is in place, members of the new union can decide to pay Unit of Work a monthly fee — like traditional union dues — to keep providing support.

Siragugal Bricks is a community-owned brick kiln operated by rescued bonded laborers, aiming to rehabilitate and empower them to explore business endeavors and find more sustainable, safer sources of income. Since April 2022, 100 families have worked for Siragugal and local government organizations have helped obtain funding and supplies to facilitate Siragugal’s operations, such as power supplies, a work shed and a borehole for water.

The Industrial Commons (TIC) strives to create an inclusive economy based on community between employee-owned social enterprises and industrial cooperatives, creating a more democratized, worker-centric environment. Since 2015, TIC has launched five cooperative businesses, employing more than 100 workers, and is working to grow the number of businesses to 75 by 2025.

A 42-day strike coordinated by the Temple University Graduate Students’ Association resulted in a new contract that raised wages and eliminated the previous wage system among other improvements to the student workers’ benefits.

After enduring unfair working conditions, an organizing committee at a Starbucks in Tennessee, later dubbed the Memphis Seven, became the first of the state to attempt, and succeed, to unionize with help from Starbucks Workers United. Their work inspired a nationwide movement, and now over 250 Starbucks are unionized.

An association of cooperatives has provided fair labor practices and equity for almost 70 years. Members of the coops vote on critical decisions that impact working conditions. When business is booming, everyone does well and when times are hard, everyone has a reliable security net.

Digital communication is allowing American employees to unionize at large corporations. In conjunction with face-to-face organizing, and more positive perceptions of unions from the public, digital communication such as social media and text messaging has led to an increasing number of unions. The current pro-worker political climate and the transparency of poor working conditions through social media have also contributed to the rise in unionization.

With help from national labor union Workers United, employees at Starbucks stores across the country are launching union campaigns in an effort to secure safer conditions and better pay. In all, 171 stores in 30 states have won union elections so far, and Workers United has filed to unionize at 302 stores in all.

Washington and California are improving access to overtime pay. Washington is using phased increases to the income threshold requirement over several years. And California mandates extra pay for over eight hours of daily work.