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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