The Seattle Times surveys the landscape after a historic unionization vote at an Amazon warehouse in New York — and finds the same sentiments are spurring activism by workers three timezones away:

As the world watched thousands of Amazon warehouse workers in New York form on Friday the company’s first U.S. union, a handful of employees of a Seattle thrift store celebrated their own victory. Sixteen workers at Crossroads Trading Co. in search of higher wages, more hours and better benefits voted unanimously Wednesday to form a union at the chain’s store in Seattle’s Capitol Hill neighborhood. Organizers at Crossroads said they built off the momentum and union support in the neighborhood from another successful union drive at a Starbucks store just a few blocks away.

Now, a group of security workers who have contracts with Amazon, Microsoft and Sound Transit are taking a similar tack, hoping to use the swell of enthusiasm created by Amazon workers in Staten Island to bring more workers in Seattle into the union fold….

Since Amazon Labor Union started organizing — unofficially with a walkout in 2020 in protest of the company’s treatment of workers amid the COVID-19 pandemic — the union wave appears to have swelled in the Seattle area. A group of workers at an Amazon Fresh store in Seattle’s Central District organized to form Amazon Workers United, and now three more stores in the area are starting their own drives, according to organizer Joseph Fink. Workers at Verizon retail stores in Everett and Lynnwood are currently casting votes in a union election. Ballots were sent to workers in March and votes will be counted this month. In Seattle, a Starbucks retail store on Capitol Hill became the first unionized store in the region….

Watching workers at companies including Starbucks and Amazon face anti-union tactics did stoke fears of retaliation for union efforts at Crossroads, said Emma Mudd, a sales associate and one of the lead union organizers. But it exposed the playbook that companies might follow — and showed what workers could do to push back, engage one another and put public pressure on the company.

“It was helpful to have tangible examples, because we did have conversations to prepare for union busting,” Mudd said. “It was really helpful to see how those workers were able to push through it.”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Source: Slashdot – Unionization Wave ‘Swelling’ in Seattle, with Votes at Local Verizon, Amazon Fresh, and Starbucks Stores