Perhaps no one spends more time on Starbucks workers’ picket lines and helps turn away more Starbucks deliveries than Lenny Lamkin.
The seventy-three-year-old retired government worker has been a force of nature during the strike by Starbucks Workers United (SBWU) at stores across Chicago. His heartfelt pleas (and occasional reprimands) have convinced countless would-be Starbucks customers to take their business elsewhere, and he has educated many a Teamster about their contractual right and working-class duty to refuse to deliver milk and supplies to Starbucks stores.
Lenny might seem like an exception. How many retired people would rather spend their time fighting on the front lines of the class war than engaging in more relaxing activities? After all, if unions act like “special interest” groups that are narrowly focused on advancing the interests of their members, as a common narrative goes, we might expect nonworkers like Lenny to be generally less than enthusiastic about unions on average, or at least to be less supportive of unions than workers.
That was our prediction when we recently conducted what we believe is the first analysis of union sentiment among nonworkers.
But our results suggest there are probably more Lennys than you might have thought — or at least more would-be Lennys or Lenny-lites — waiting in the wings for inspiration, recruitment, and mobilization by the labor movement.
Contrary to our expectations, retirees and other nonworker groups — including the permanently disabled, homemakers, students, and the unemployed — have generally expressed more support for unions than workers, even after controlling for a range of other factors.
These statistical findings are yet another indication that unions are better understood as what we would call a “general interest group,” not a “special interest group.” They also underscore the potential for unions to collaborate with and mobilize not just nonmembers, but nonworkers —…
Auteur: Kathy Copas
