UNION FEVER! A wave of Ithaca workers and others organizing for a better living
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By E dw i n J. Vi e r a a n d M at t Bu t l e r fter a prolonged era of falling labor union interest and participation, it appears workers’ organizing efforts are gaining momentum, both nationally and locally. A wave of unionization efforts has appeared in Tompkins County, most notably over the last year or two, which has seen a wide range of workers from adjunct faculty at Ithaca College to baristas at Gimme! Coffee successfully unionize, with several more efforts either in progress or failed for any number of reasons. Union-centric headlines have been frequent even just over the last few months, with around 50,000 workers at General Motors staging one of the largest worker strikes in recent history, organized by the United Auto Workers. That work stoppage ended in late October after over a month of negotiations. Locally there’s been nothing that has reached that extent, but unions have certainly been more visible and vocal recently, whether it be the trade unions alleging that Cornell neglects local organized labor, or Ithaca Coffee Company workers calling for a boycott of the
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company for anti-union tactics, or GreenStar workers holding demonstrations outside of downtown locations. “Something is happening in the United States, and globally,” said Ian Collin Greer, a senior research association in Cornell’s Industrial Labor Relations school. “This is a time when there’s a lot of labor activism taking place all over the world. [...] It’s young workers taking the lead, and it seems like there’s a lot going on at once.” Greer said most economists would consider the country’s low unemployment rate as a motivating factor, since people are less fearful of losing their jobs under those conditions. A stronger contributor, though, is that younger people generally just seem less tolerant and more apt to confront perceived mistreatment at work by management. In Ithaca and Tompkins County, Greer said, it also helps that the public is mostly inclined to support the efforts of workers to unionize; the term “union-busting” still carries some punitive weight here, he said, which isn’t necessarily true elsewhere. “I don’t know if I’ve ever been any-
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where that’s as favorable to organized labor as Tompkins County,” Greer said. “Ithaca is about as union-friendly as towns in the United States get.” Greer noted the existence of the Tompkins County Workers Center and Legal Assistance of Western New York as examples of places that work quite a bit with people who are unionizing to help them navigate the logistical and legal aspects of it. That’s not especially common elsewhere, he said, especially not in a place of this population size. Yet even in a place that is perhaps more amenable to unionizing, it can still be quite difficult. 2017 was a successful year for unionizers in the area, as the aforementioned Gimme! Coffee baristas and adjunct faculty members at Ithaca College both unionized and were able to ratify contracts. Yet other efforts stalled, and some turned ugly, like the National Labor Relations Board hearings that year between Cayuga Medical Center and two nurses who felt they’d been unfairly fired for unionization activities. Others have struggled to gain ground recently as well: Coltivare workers were in the early stages of unionizing but the effort dissipated after turnover disbursed the organizing leaders, and workers at vegan eatery Nikki Green were having similar conversations, but the res-
taurant shut down too soon. GIMME! COFFEE
Gimme’s baristas union came together fairly quickly, over a span of about two months in 2017, and has made some progress with management about improving work conditions, pay, sick leave, etc., though complaints still exist. Sam Mason, a Gimme barista who has been one of the leading voices in the unionization since the beginning, has had an up-close view of all the ups and downs that come with the efforts. “We’ve been in contact with over two dozen baristas across the country who have been inspired by us,” Mason said. “It’s super cool to watch. You’re waking up people to their own power at work. I don’t want to go to work every day of my life, for the rest of my life, just to be able to survive.” Another union member, Bart Feberwee, said that he’s heard criticisms from people who say that if he’s upset about not being paid more or not having better working conditions, he should simply leave the company. But that sheds light on a larger problem, in his mind. “When you make a comment like that, ‘Oh, it’s the service industry, try to get a different job and make more money,’ you implicitly accept that there should be a whole class of people who make so little money they can barely survive,”