The Conversation: Pro-union votes at Amazon and Starbucks are wins for unconventional organizing — will they also revive the labor movement?

April 1, 2022, may go down as a pivotal day in the history of American unions.

In a result that could reverberate in workplaces across the U.S., the independent Amazon Labor Union – first formed in 2020 by Chris Smalls, an Amazon worker fired for protesting what he saw as inadequate COVID-19 safety precautions – got the better of the previously successful anti-union efforts of the online retailer AMZN. It means that Smalls’ warehouse in Staten Island, New York, will be the first to have a unionized workforce.

On…