‘The Labor Force’ Working to Strengthen America’s Rising Union Movement

Interview with Maeg Yosef, Labor Force Mobilization coordinator, conducted by Melinda Tuhus

the labor force

We’re living in a time of growing public support for unions and simultaneously, a hostile environment toward labor promoted by corporations and oligarchs allied with Donald Trump. The current situation is illustrated by workers at Starbucks and Amazon who have successfully voted in unions, but the bosses refuse to negotiate. And under the Trump regime, unionized workers can’t expect any help from the majority of the president’s appointees on the National Labor Relations Board.

Enter The Labor Force, an independent organization founded on Labor Day, 2024, to provide online support and digital outreach to workers organizing and fighting for decent contracts. With a staff of just four, plus some consultants, the group has raised the profile of many union struggles over the past year. The group supports union workers with innovative strategies at coffee shops, grocery stores, the federal government and more.

Between The Lines’ Melinda Tuhus spoke with Maeg (“Meg”) Yosef, the mobilization coordinator at The Labor Force, who explains how the group is building a stronger union movement through public advocacy.

MAEG YOSEF: We realized that only about 10 percent of workers in the U.S. are organized, but the public support for unions is massive. So about 60 or 70 percent of the public is excited about unions and supports unions. They’re like “How can we get the public involved and build a stronger labor movement when there’s that much support, but so many obstacles to workers actually organizing and forming a union in their own workplace?”

So a union comes to us or we find a union and they’re like, “Hey, we have needs. We have stuff going on. Can you support us?” And we kind of form deep relationships with those groups, understand what their needs are, their organizing needs, their technological needs, fundraising, what’s going on in their campaigns and find places where we can both help them behind the scenes with technological and strategic support, but also bring them into our public advocacy program and get the public involved in their campaigns.

So that could look like the example of Blue Bottle, they went on strike last month. They had a successful four-day strike at all locations and our community donated to their strike funds so that baristas could stay on the picket lines and still pay their rent and buy groceries. During the course of their campaign, our community has called managers to say, “Hey, you got to reinstate this worker you fired, bargain with your workers.” We’ve sent letters. So there’s a lot of digital things, digital actions our community takes, donations that our community makes. And also more and more, we are focused as our community grows on connecting folks to in-person events, too. So going to the picket lines, doing leafletting events, getting out and about in the community.

MELINDA TUHUS: Where do you get your funding?

MAEG YOSEF: One of the beautiful and tough things about it is that a lot of our funding comes from other working class people who see the fight as their fight, who make donations. And so a significant amount comes from regular folks making small donations, which has been absolutely unbelievable. Just in October, we were able to raise and redistribute almost half a million dollars in funds during the government shutdown when federal workers were like, “All right, we’re not getting paid. How are we going to eat through this government shutdowns going on and on? ” And there was just a lot of people were in crisis. And so we were like, “Let’s see if we can raise money just to get grocery gift cards to these workers.” And that was really just mutual aid, working class people helping other working class people.
MELINDA TUHUS: It’s not unions per se that are part of The Labor Force. Is that correct?

MAEG YOSEF: There aren’t any unions that are part of “The Labor Force.” It’s more that we partner with unions to help uplift their needs. But we really intentionally created ourselves as an independent organization so we can help all workers.
MELINDA TUHUS: What unions have you been supporting?
MAEG YOSEF: We’ve worked with AFGE and federal workers. We’ve worked with SEIU over the summer. One of their leaders in California was detained by ICE. And so very quickly, members of our community attended and hosted rallies to demand his release. We’ve also done campaigns where we’ve gone out to … Our members have gone out to Home Depot parking lots to share “know your rights” information with other customers there. So we really work with both large established unions, small independent unions, groups that may not be formally unionized through NLRB elections, but are still organizing in their workplace. So we’re really there for all kinds of workers that are organizing, whatever their model is that works for them.
MELINDA TUHUS: When I first learned about you, you had mentioned something about lifting up Starbucks workers on strike.
MAEG YOSEF: The Starbucks workers have been on strike since Nov. 13. And so it’s now been over a month of that union’s longest work stoppage yet and it’s still going on.
MELINDA TUHUS: And how many stores?
MAEG YOSEF: The way that Starbucks Workers United has been doing their strike, it’s kind of going in waves. So every week or so, more stores are going on strike. And I think right now it is about 3,800 baristas at 180 cafes across 130 cities. So it’s expanded pretty far. The first Starbucks was unionized in just four years ago and there are now I think about 550 unionized locations with about 11,000 or 12,000 unionized baristas. So it’s a really significant movement.
And I think that when those workers win a contract, it’s going to be really impactful for the service industry as a whole. For your audience who’s listening, the main thing that they can do right now is just don’t buy Starbucks. Don’t buy coffee, don’t buy beans, don’t get Starbucks gift cards for presents during the holidays. Don’t cross the picket line. Support baristas by not buying Starbucks.

For more information, visit thelaborforce.org.

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