What Everyone Gets Wrong About Unions
Too many people still operate under the assumption that unions are only necessary in “bad workplaces.” Here’s why that’s wrong—and why it’s time to leave that limiting framework behind.
First, a quick note: It looks like we now live in a country where you can be arrested for expressing your points of view. That is not democracy, nor is it freedom of speech. Mahmoud Khalil should be free, and his arrest should make plain to us all what this government is willing to do to dissenters. Contact your representatives and let them know how you feel about this threat to democracy.
In 2023, I interviewed unionizing workers at Madison Sourdough, a bakery near me, for a local publication ( we also had a separate conversation on the Boss Barista podcast). Spencer Schlenker, one of the company’s bakers, said something during the interview that has stuck with me ever since:
“Some people might say you don’t need a union if your workplace is good. But even if the contract we signed just kept things the way they are, there’s value in that.”
Schlenker’s comment reveals something crucial in how we think—or don’t think—about unions. I’m still surprised by how many people question why a group of workers would form a union, as if only outright abuse or mistreatment could justify doing so. This hunt for a smoking gun, or disbelief that a union could exist for any other reason, feels frustrating, like a time-wasting distraction.
And we don’t have time to waste. Amidst the active threat of weakening labor laws, we need to lead with the idea that unions are simply allowed to exist. They do not need a specific justification, and aren’t only meant to respond to work conditions we view as undesirable.
Employees have the baseline right to form unions, full stop. It’s time to stop asking why—and to start recognizing their inherent value.
Sign the Contract
When you break it down to its simplest form, a union is a contract. It’s a set of guidelines brokered by employees and employers to dictate how their workplace will operate.
Of course, that’s a very broad understanding, and like any contract, things can get complicated. But per Schlenker’s point, a contract doesn’t have to be anything more than saying, “Let’s define the current work landscape—and commit to that for X number of years until we sign a new contract.”
This framing is all the more pertinent because, from my experience, contracts are rare in low-wage or hourly jobs. Usually, you’re hired quickly and onboarded with a verbal agreement or a handshake. Meanwhile, 49 out of 50 states in the U.S. give companies the right to terminate your employment “at will,” meaning they do not need to provide cause (discriminatory practices is one exception).
In contrast, think about how many so-called “rich-people jobs” require contracts. Actors sign contracts when they agree to work on a movie, whether or not it’s ever released; athletes sign contracts to play for teams and get paid even if they get hurt.1 In coffee, just look at Brian Niccol, the current CEO of Starbucks, who signed a contract when he took on the position late last year; I encourage you to check it out for yourself.
Besides the gross amount of money Niccol is promised (including $75 million in equity, called a Replacement Grant, to replace the equity he lost by forfeiting shares from his previous employer, Chipotle), the contract plainly lays out all the monetary conditions of his job, including his salary and what happens if he’s terminated.
I’m not arguing against the use of such contracts. But they’re arguably more essential for waged workers. Waged workers are significantly more endangered by losing their jobs or changing workplace conditions than millionaires are by losing money. And shift workers face even more dangerous instability. They might work 40 hours one week and 20 the next; we’ve seen Starbucks target unionizing workers with just this tactic, reducing their hours without notice.
We seem all too comfortable telling low-wage workers they need none of the protections that the rich utilize to protect their money.Why is it so difficult to offer hourly workers the same guardrails around their employment? And in the absence of those protections, why is it so hard to believe that unions can be an essential way to codify terms of employment?
Logistically Unsound
On his former Apple television show, “The Problem with Jon Stewart,” pundit Jon Stewart pointed out that the American government offers a lot of protections to corporations that are inaccessible to everyday working people.
“When corporations fail, you pay for it. But when they succeed, it’s theirs,” he says. “They socialize their losses and privatize their gains [...] Government intervention for corporations is the free market, but government intervention for workers is socialism.”
Stewart is certainly not the first person to point out this discrepancy, but it only further demonstrates that we’re very comfortable giving rich people and moneyed interests as many safety nets as possible, all while bristling when regular people ask for the same. We’re not even comfortable with the idea that regular people need protections when they have a “good workplace” (a subjective and hard-to-define target in itself).
This tension came up during former Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz’s testimony in front of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions in 2023 (I revisited the hearing in a recent piece pondering whether Starbucks is doomed). Schultz kept emphasizing how good he believed workers had it at Starbucks. In his mind, unions were clearly only for “bad companies.”
It might be that Starbucks offers workers more perks than other comparable employers, but we’ve recently seen those so-called benefits be taken away as punishment:
In 2022, workers at a unionizing store in Oklahoma City say management implied that trans healthcare benefits would be taken away from unionized stores. Starbucks also implied that unionized stores would lose protection for workers who live in the U.S. under DACA, and issued threats that unionized workers could not transfer stores (an important perk for many, especially college students). After one store in Indiana unionized, a worker tweeted that all their safety mats were thrown in the trash.
It’s clear that we need to move past this binary narrative when we talk about workplaces and unions. And yet, I see it come up again and again when people write and talk about collective bargaining, even among commenters who are generally supportive of union efforts
I don’t believe suddenly having a contract is a silver bullet that will solve all workplace problems. After all, we’ve seen rich people manipulate the legal system in myriad ways, including “waiting out” waged opponents who can’t afford to sit back for years as court cases slowly progress.
But I do think we have to reappraise what we think unions are for—and to do that, we need to consider why certain systems are in place. Why do the rich benefit from policies that are vehemently fought against for working-class people? Why does Brian Niccol get a contract for his job, but many coffee workers aren’t afforded the same?
And why do we think unions need to justify their existence amidst these baseline conditions?
As they should. For all my basketball heads, I have a lot of feelings about Jimmy Butler’s time with the Miami Heat, and how he, I’d argue rightfully, withheld his labor from the organization. Of course, it’s very different discussing strikes and labor violations when we’re talking about millionaires; however, athletes produce what makes sports valuable through their labor, and what they earn pales in comparison to team owners, who produce no value. There’s a lot to unpack.