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C Story / Yiping Guo
Beans

&

Bargaining

Brewing Labor Revival

I n September 2022, the U.S. state government
published an article on its official website on
the growing unionization across the country,
highlighting the case of Starbucks. The govern-
ment’s unusual attention to employment relations issues
in the coffee industry might have seemed slightly con-
fusing at the time, but it was later justified by the surging
labor movements in the following year, including a series
of Hollywood strikes and unions winning historic contract
gains against giant organizations such as Ford. Simply
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put, one of the key social trends in America at the moment
is the revitalization of trade unions, and the coffee in-
dustry is at the center of it.

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