“Now you’ve united a bunch of pissed off, passionate queers who want to take action”: Examining How Union Activists Practiced Intersectional Organizing at Work to Unionize Starbucks

Abstract

Since 2021, workers across various large, private-sector employers in the United States have unionized. Groups of marginalized workers have led many of these campaigns, reflecting the need for more intersectional analyses of union organizing. This study explores how union activists practice intersectional organizing at work. Drawing on interviews with 53 union activists and representatives from Starbucks Workers United, the author finds that many workers leveraged management’s virtue signaling and progressive brand image, and their lived experiences as marginalized individuals, to advance their organizing campaign at work. These findings emphasize the linkage, rather than distinction or incompatibility, between social identity and economic action. This study contributes to the field of industrial relations by connecting union activists’ social identities, particularly sexual orientation and gender nonconformity, to the emergence of labor activism.