Over at Capital & Main, Jesse Baum has a report about the successes of “premajority unionism”:
What [Dollar General stocker David] Williams needed, he thought, was a better job. He wasn’t looking to unionize his workplace — a tall order in the right-to-work South. He just needed things to change.
In 2022, Williams joined an organization that seemed, to him, like his best shot: Step Up Louisiana. Like several successful campaigns before it, Step Up organizes workers to improve their jobs, but stops short of calling for a union under the National Labor Relations Board. The approach, sometimes referred to as “premajority unionism,” is a natural fit for places like the South, with histories of public hostility to unions. Today, suggest experts, it may also be workers’ best bet for building power amid the hostility of the Trump administration.
The story discusses three recently successful efforts to improve working conditions:
- After some of their employees engaged in public demonstrations and placed stories in the press, Dollar Tree (a) announced an average hourly wage increase of $2 over two years and (b) approved a shareholder proposal to conduct a safety audit, which ultimately found that safety at Dollar General stores is in line with the industry norm.
- After some Waffle House employees organized alongside the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), the company announced it was increasing pay from $2.13 an hour to $5.25 an hour by 2026.
- After some app-based delivery workers began lobbying as part of an organization called Los Deliveristas Unidos, New York City passed a city law mandating that delivery drivers be paid the minimum wage, which is $21.44 per hour in 2025.
Baum’s enthusiasm for these kinds of efforts is reminiscent of the excitement around worker centers and “alt-labor,” which reached its peak in the early 2010s. In this earlier form, there was a burst of reporting focused on organizations like the…
Auteur: Matt Bruenig
