Posts tagged EWOC
Can Distributed Organizing Unionize Millions?
September 17, 2024 // Together with similarly bottom-up union campaigns like Starbucks Workers United (SBWU) and the reformed UAW’s organizing across Southern automakers, EWOC has demonstrated the viability of a new strategy of seeding unionization efforts, rather than passively waiting for workers to reach out (“hot-shopping”) or exclusively organizing pre-chosen workplaces (“strategic targeting”). Along these lines, Svoboda describes EWOC’s proactive efforts to provide organizing tools to as many workers as possible as “planting seeds of worker power.”
Booze, Bard, Union Card: Drunk Shakespeare Troupes Get Organized
July 18, 2023 // That almost instantaneous recognition has also caught fire across other branches of Drunk Shakespeare. There are five groups of Drunk Shakespeare troupes nationwide: Chicago, New York City, Phoenix, D.C., and Houston. So far two other troupes, in Phoenix and D.C., have joined the march toward a united front. Drunk Shakespeare D.C. ensemble member and union representative Kit Krull said the D.C. branch had been considering coming together for a few months. “Back in April, D.C. had a reckoning that led to us approaching management about structural and equity issues that accumulated over the year we’d been open,” they explained. “We weren’t using the word ‘union,’ but I believe we were beginning to think along those lines. When we heard that Chicago had unionized, we knew that we had to get in contact with them as soon as possible.”
Labor of Love: EWOC is Pioneering a New Model for Empowering Workers
May 26, 2022 // EWOC is most strongly concentrated in California, Illinois, Texas and New York. In New York City, the group has over 500 people — workers, volunteers and trainees — involved in its network. Its volunteer organizers have successfully organized workers at Sara Lawrence College and at Bright Horizons, the nation’s largest provider of employer-sponsored child care. Some of the REI-Soho worker-organizers who would eventually see through a successful union drive with the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union went through EWOC’s training program. EWOC volunteers also help to funnel Starbucks workers who reach out to them to Starbucks Workers United, the newly-formed, independent Starbucks union.