🔒Union Divide: Younger workers take to labor organizing as employers struggle to keep pace with regulations

As a new barista at New Haven’s Graduate New Haven hotel in November 2021, 19-year-old Esme Gutierrez would sometimes work nine days in a row as the hotel struggled to staff shifts in the wake of the worst of the COVID-19 pandemic.

“I was extremely tired,” said Gutierrez, who took the position at the boutique hotel to be closer to her New Haven home. “I wanted this job for a better life, because it was more convenient for me. But at first, it was just a really bad experience.”

Managers at the hotel were just as overwhelmed, so Gutierrez started talking to a coworker who had a potential solution: Graduate workers could form a union and demand better conditions. She hadn’t considered unionization as an option prior to those conversations.

“After hearing what exactly a union was and understanding how much it could actually benefit me, I was like, ‘Yeah, why wouldn’t I want this?’ ” Gutierrez said. She started helping to organize the hotel’s workers by getting to know staffers in the housekeeping and front desk departments and listening to their concerns.

On July 28, hotel workers joined with representatives of the UNITE HERE! labor union on the New Haven Green to announce they had signed a three-year contract with the Graduate New Haven.

Part of a Nashville-based chain of academic-themed boutique properties, the hotel voluntarily chose to recognize the employee union, which covers workers in both public-facing and housekeeping roles.

“We're so excited about this contract at the Graduate – it is a really amazing victory,” said Hannah Schmitt, an organizer in New Haven with UNITE HERE!. “The company really did the right thing in sitting down to negotiate in good faith. We hope that will be an example to other hotel owners.”

Uptick in union activity

The Graduate’s unionization reflects a larger trend: The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) reported in July that the number of union representation petitions filed jumped 58% in the first nine months of this year, compared to the same period in 2021.

Unfair labor practice charges filed with the NLRB also increased 16% year over year.

Workers seeking to form unions must first file with an NLRB field office, which determines if it will conduct an election to allow employees to decide whether or not they wish to be represented by a union.

Under the Biden administration, the NLRB has been more active on the side of unions and was seen as playing a key role in recent successful union drives at Amazon. The online retailer agreed to a critical settlement with the NLRB late last year that would allow workers to organize inside Amazon facilities.

The NLRB also filed in federal court in May seeking the reinstatement of seven Starbucks workers fired for union activity in Tennessee. Another national chain has seen its first union take shape in the New England region: Trader Joe’s workers in Hadley, Mass., voted in July to become the first of the grocer's more than 500 locations to unionize.

In Connecticut, the national upsurge in union activity has played out mostly with national companies. Starbucks workers at stores in both Vernon and West Hartford voted to support a union this summer, and are awaiting contracts.

In 2021, 14.6% of the state’s 1.5 million workers — or about 223,000 people — were union members, and 16.3% of the state’s labor force was represented by unions, according to data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Texas-based Avelo Airlines, which established Tweed New Haven Airport as its East Coast hub in November 2021, found itself in the crosshairs of the Association of Flight Attendants-CWA (AFA) union when its West Coast flight attendants started organizing.

In a news release, AFA President Sara Nelson accused Avelo of mounting “an aggressive anti-union campaign.” On April 13, the National Mediation Board ruled that a majority of eligible workers had voted to join the union and contract negotiations began.

New Haven’s largest home-grown employers, Yale University and Yale New Haven Health, have taken an oppositional stance to unions in the past and continue to fight organizing efforts. Even so, hundreds rallied on Yale’s campus in April in support of graduate students, who formed a union decades ago that the university has so far refused to recognize.

The university's public statements at the time of the rally focused on improved pay and benefits for graduate students, including stipend increases set to kick in this fall to help students deal with rising costs due to inflation.

According to Yale spokesperson Karen Peart, stipends for Ph.D. students in humanities and social sciences increased by 14% for the 2022-23 academic year, from $33,600 to $38,300.

Stipends for science students increased by 5% – from $36,750 to $38,600 in physical sciences and engineering, and from $38,050 to $40,000 in the biological sciences.

A potential future headache for Yale is the rise of undergraduate-worker unions at campuses nationwide. The student worker groups have gained a foothold at several private campuses, including Yale’s “Little Ivy” neighbor to the north, Wesleyan.

In March, Residential Life student workers at Wesleyan became the first confirmed undergraduate-worker union to be voluntarily recognized by their university, according to Connecticut Public.

The state’s hotel industry, still recovering from the pandemic, sees unions as another challenge facing them in a tight labor market, said Ginny Kozlowski, executive director of the Connecticut Lodging Association.

Since the start of the pandemic, more than a third of the sector’s workers have left the field for good, she said.

“I would say their biggest challenge right now is finding staff,” Kozlowski said of the state’s hotels. “And there are still challenges around the supply chain, but I would say that staff is going to become a bigger issue in the next few weeks as college kids go back to school.”

Entry-level hotel workers are getting $19 to $22 an hour in some markets within the state, Kozlowski said. At the same time, leisure travel has returned to pre-pandemic levels and beyond, and new hotels are opening in New Haven, like the Hotel Marcel on Long Wharf and Cambria, set to open soon at 20 Dwight St. as a unionized property.

Tips for employers

In the New Haven area, companies ranging from health care to manufacturing are seeing upticks in union activity, said Jason R. Stanevich, a New Haven-based attorney and shareholder at employment law firm Littler.

“I’ve never seen such a surge in my nearly 20-year career,” Stanevich said. “We’re seeing organizing in the areas that have not traditionally been subjects of union election.”

Stanevich attributes the increase in part to anxiety arising from the pandemic, along with the accompanying “Great Resignation” that has left many companies desperate for workers. In addition, “right now, we have a younger workforce that is very interested in potential representation.”

“There’s a certain affinity for movements and causes,” he added, speaking of Millennials and their younger counterparts. “This is a workforce that doesn't have that historical perspective that many other employees have about unions. There really is not a lot of information about what a union truly does mean to the workforce and how it can impair relationships and flexibility.”

With younger workers, labor activity can happen mostly online in social media and escape the notice of employers, Stanevich added.

“We’re seeing a tremendous amount of virtual organizing, … we don’t see the union organizer outside of the building, you know, passing out flyers like we did in years past,” he said. “This is conducted through social media platforms, through text messages, through Zoom. That's really hard for the employer to keep up with.”

Connecticut employers also face the new “captive audience” law that took effect July 1, which prevents them from holding mandatory meetings with employees to discuss unions. Stanevich said the new law may yet be preempted by federal regulations, but companies must still tread lightly when faced with labor activity.

“It’s a very technical process when you’re faced with a union-organizing campaign,” Stanevich said. “It’s just incredibly easy to violate the law, not because you intentionally want to do so, but it’s just so technical in terms of what you have to do and what you’re allowed to say to employees.”

Stanevich said he has seen more employers who decide to voluntarily recognize unions, like New Haven’s Graduate hotel.

“But that's really just the first step in the process,” he said. “At that point, the parties have to sit down and negotiate a collective-bargaining agreement.”

Employers should seek advice as soon as they learn of organizing efforts to avoid making costly missteps.

In addition, managers at all levels should constantly strive to improve relationships with workers, Stanevich said.

“Focus on employee relations, focus on being the reliable and credible source of information,” he said. “It’s only when there's that breakdown, generally, between the frontline leadership and the employees – that's when employees may reach outside of the organization for support.”