The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
Opinion
6 — Wednesday, May 4, 2022

BRANDON COWIT
Managing Editor

Stanford Lipsey Student Publications Building
420 Maynard St. 
Ann Arbor, MI 48109
 tothedaily@michigandaily.com

Edited and managed by students at the University of Michigan since 1890.

VANESSA KIEFER
Editor in Chief

Change in labor rights is brewing

D

ec. 9, 2021 marked a historic 
day for union organizers, labor 
activists and caffeine enjoyers 
everywhere in the United States, as 
workers at a Starbucks location in 
Buffalo, N.Y., were successful in their 
vote to unionize. With more than 
8,000 locations of the well-established 
chain throughout the country, this vote 
created a domino effect, and dozens 
of different locations have voted or 
made strides to establish unions, from 
Arizona to our very own Ann Arbor. 
Most of the recent unionization 
efforts by Starbucks employees come 
from similar workplace circumstances 
and share common goals as a newfound 
collective unit. In the past two years, 
there have been significant jumps in 
the turnover rate in the foodservice 
industry with no positive changes in 
hiring rates. Employees of chains such 
as Starbucks have been consistently 
mistreated by their employers and 
customers 
alike, 
from 
aggressive 
behavior over the requirement of masks 
in stores to a lack of response from 
Starbucks’s headquarters to workers’ 
requests for help. With this in mind, the 
recent push toward unionization is well 
within reason.
Starbucks employees are not the only 
ones fed up with the maltreatment they 
face under their company management. 
Similarly, in early April, an Amazon 
warehouse voted to establish a labor 
union at their location on Staten Island, 
N.Y. After multiple failed attempts to 
unionize the Bessemer, Ala., location, 
this New York-based warehouse is the 
first successful effort to form a union 
at an Amazon warehouse in the United 
States. 
The fight for this Amazon union 
began in 2020, when former Staten 
Island employee and current union 
co-founder Chris Smalls staged a 
walkout against the unjust working 
conditions at Amazon’s Staten Island 
warehouse. That day, Smalls was fired 
and told he was neither “smart” nor 

“articulate” by a powerful corporate 
lawyer 
employed 
by 
Amazon 
headquarters. 
Quickly 
afterward, 
Smalls began to organize, hosting 
barbecues 
and 
bonfires, 
rallying 
warehouse workers together and 
successfully making a dent in the 
“Goliath” that is Amazon with the 
historic Amazon Labor Union.
Former Amazon CEO and founder 
Jeff Bezos’s net worth, as of 2022, is 
$171 billion. Howard Schultz, founder 
and interim CEO of Starbucks, is 
currently worth $3.7 billion. On the 
other hand, the federal minimum 
wage in the U.S. is $7.25. This raises the 
question, why do the bosses continue 
to profit in such substantial numbers 
when workers are barely scraping by? 
The solution to this ethical dilemma is 
simple: unionization.
The National Labor Board was 
created by President Franklin Roosevelt 
in 1933. It was a federal agency 
dedicated to consulting with union-
organizing efforts and solving labor 
disputes. Weak and ineffective, the 
board expired, and in 1935, the National 
Labor Relations Act established the 
National 
Labor 
Relations 
Board. 
Rather than mediating labor debates, 
it would focus on enforcing the rights 
of laborers. Along with the institution 
of the “new” NLRB, Section 7 of the 
Act gave workers the right to both 
form and join labor organizations, and 
the right to collectively bargain with 
their employers for their own well-
being, as well as restricting company 
interference in these processes. With 
the Act, the right to unionization in the 
U.S. was born.
Unions have been the historical 
path 
toward 
solutions 
to 
labor 
disputes throughout the nation. From 
the American Revolution to today, 
collective action by laborers has 
been successful in making changes 
in various sectors of employment, 
including 
trade, 
artisanship 
and 
industry. The most famous of union 
federations is the AFL-CIO, which 
today represents 12.5 million workers 
in the United States of various labor 
unions. Labor organizations such as 

this share the same objectives: provide 
equal opportunity, safe conditions and 
sustainable benefits for all workers 
everywhere.
So, why is the establishment of 
unions by Starbucks and Amazon 
employees 
so 
revolutionary? 
Increasingly 
common 
successful 
unionizations in large corporations 
like these throughout the nation signify 
a change in the long-standing fight 
for labor rights. With hundreds of 
thousands of employees between them, 
these two corporations have intense 
influence over the labor market, 
the economy and our social lives. 
The success of these unions shows 
that change to the power of these 
gargantuan corporations is possible, 
and entirely necessary. 
Another 
example 
of 
this 
phenomenon is the Alphabet Workers 
Union, a union of Google workers 
that launched in early 2021. Google 
is a super-power of a corporation, 
employing hundreds of thousands 
and worth over a trillion dollars, and 
this union has been successful in 
undercutting some of their positional 
prowess. Organizers have won back 
promised bonuses for employees, and 
protected the rights of marginalized 
staffers. Unionized efforts established 
under the eye of powerhouses of the 
market have been successful, and 
pushes by these new collectives will 
more than likely have the same, if not 
greater, social and political impact.
Joining together as workers to 
protect our rights is essential in our 
modern society. Unions allow laborers 
to voice their complaints and concerns, 
and to protect themselves in an age 
where profit is oftentimes held to a 
greater value than personhood. The 
successes at Starbucks locations across 
the country and the recent win on 
Staten Island for Amazon employees 
are indicative of a change in the tide 
for labor rights, showing workers 
everywhere that collective action 
is possible at any level, from a local 
restaurant to a multi-billion dollar tech

QUIN ZAPOLI
Editorial Page Editor

Social Clout v.s. Social 
Good: The Youtube 
Charity Complex

O

ne March morning, as 
I browsed the Youtube 
trending page, a video 
entitled “Giving a Homeless Man 
$20,000” caught my attention. 
The clickbait thumbnail featured 
two halves of the homeless man’s 
face, seemingly to represent his 
life before and after the $20,000 
was given to him: on the left 
side, the man stood unhappily in 
front of a dumpster with mud on 
his face, and, on the right side, 
he beamed in front of a modern 
business 
building 
wearing 
a 
suit. Surprised by the video’s 
unscrupulousness, I decided to 
click on the thumbnail and take 
notes as I watched. 
The opening was, of course, 
two unskippable Youtube ads, 
meaning that the creator had 
monetized the video and was 
profiting off of each view. Sitting 
atop 
his 
$3,249 
TRX90, 
he 
explained, “Today, I’m gonna go 
find someone on the street that’s 
down and out, and I’m gonna 
show ‘em that we love them.” 
The video quickly cut to Jimmy 
Darts, the creator of the video, 
asking a houseless man, Tom, if 
he would like to participate in 
a game of hopscotch. Much to 
Tom’s shock, Jimmy immediately 
awarded him $500 “for playing 
hopscotch and being a kid again.”
Over the course of the Youtube 
video, Jimmy spoils Tom with a 
brand new phone, two nights at a 
Hilton hotel, $500 in cash, brand 
new dentures and meals at local 
restaurants. After seven minutes 
of b-reel of Tom’s “brand new 
life” off the streets, Tom is hired 
at a car mechanic shop. Like a 

the phenomenon of Youtubers 
filming themselves giving large 
sums of money, food or other 
goods 
to 
specific 
individual 
homeless people on the street. 
In some instances, Youtubers 
add 
an 
additional 
game-like 
element 
to 
their 
charity 
by 
putting 
the 
homeless 
person 
through challenges to assess 
their character before richly 
rewarding them if they “behave 
well” or play along, just like how 
Jimmy gave the money to Tom 
only after he played a game of 
hopscotch. While this Youtube 
charity complex may seem well-
intentioned, exploitative motives 
lurk beneath the surface of its 
supposed benefits.
For one, the Youtube charity 
complex 
thrives 
on 
giving 
homeless 
individuals 
things 
that are hard to refuse — money, 
food, 
clothing, 
temporary 
shelter, etc. — but with a caveat 
that the Youtuber must also 
personally 
profit 
from 
the 
interaction, whether socially or 
monetarily. Instead of simply 
making a charitable donation 
to homeless people or homeless 
shelters, many Youtuber donors 
provide these donations on the 
basis of reciprocity. They expect 
something (often permission to 
film the interaction) in return 
for 
their 
generosity, 
rather 
than doing it solely out of the 
“goodness of their heart.” This 
is the basis of the inherently 
exploitative 
nature 
of 
the 
Youtube charity complex. 
Take the aforementioned video 
for example. One of the most 
important questions to ask in 
this situation is whether or not 
the Youtuber would’ve made the 

LINDSEY SPENCER
Opinion Columnist 

SOPHIA LEHRBAUM
Opinion Columnist

Where are the flowers?

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