In high-cost Santa Cruz County, a generation of young workers increasingly turns to unions

Sasha Pavy, a leader of the push by Verve Coffee Roasters employees for unionization, said she was tired of feeling like she and her co-workers were not being listened to. 

An employee at the company’s Pacific Avenue café for almost three years, she said that workers had asked for a security guard many times for years due to repeat run-ins with people who appeared to be suffering from serious mental health issues, but did not actually get one until about a month ago. When the company moved to a new system for issuing paystubs, she felt that upper management was often difficult to reach for questions and provided unclear answers. So she began talking to some of her co-workers about unionizing.

“The illusion of being heard was starting to melt away,” Pavy said. “I don’t think our voices are respected and unionizing was the answer for me. I can’t play this game anymore.”

Verve is the latest company in Santa Cruz County to see its workforce begin the unionization process, following a flurry of union pushes over the last several years.

In 2021, workers at Bookshop Santa Cruz formed a union after voting to unionize for the first time in the business’ then-55-year history. The following year saw two county Starbucks locations become the first stores in California to unionize as cafés across the country joined a push that began in Buffalo, New York. Since then, other Starbucks stores have followed suit, including as recently as July. Since last year, workers at outdoor and athletics equipment retailer REI, adult store Good Vibrations and Woodstock’s Pizza have all followed suit, forming unions of their own.

If that seems like a lot of union activity in a short period of time, a joint study by UC Santa Cruz and UCLA from earlier this year lends credence to that feeling.

The survey of about 2,000 Santa Cruz County workers ages 18 to 34 across various industries from agriculture and education to tourism and retail showed that more than 80% were at least somewhat open to the idea of unionizing. Of the respondents, 44% said they would join a union if given the opportunity, and another 37% were “union-curious,” meaning that they were unsure if they would join a union. Just 19% said they would not join a union. Education workers (48%) and transportation and warehouse workers (47%) expressed the most interest in joining a union, while those who worked in tourism were easily the most “union-curious” (51%). Those strongly opposed to unionizing were in the minority across every industry.

Traditionally, young people in lower-wage, often temporary service industry jobs weren’t as interested in unionizing. However, young workers in the county joining the push to organize their workplace have begun to look at the collective benefits, rather than individual ones, researchers and workers say.

At Woodstock’s, union representative Jamie Cunin said the push to form a union came after the company’s CEO sent a message to employees that they might not receive an annual raise, since the company overall didn’t turn a profit — even though the Santa Cruz location was doing well.

“A lot of the workers felt that was unfair, that they were taking a loss on their income even though we had been putting in hard work,” they said. The company was also opening new locations elsewhere. “It showed where their intentions were,” Cunin said.

But Cunin added that workers mainly discussed fighting for the well-being of workers in Santa Cruz in general: “Even if you’re not going to work here for a long time, it doesn’t mean that unionizing won’t lead to positive changes.”

Joe Thompson, the lead organizer of Santa Cruz County’s Starbucks union push, believes the sentiment of unionizing on behalf of future generations is more widespread among younger workers than one might think.

“The idea was that I want to leave this workplace better than when I got here,” Thompson said. “They still want dignity in the workplace and we need to bring people in and uplift everybody. I think that’s the point that people see and are recognizing. It doesn’t have to be this way.” 

Veronica Hamilton, a researcher at the Center for Labor and Community at UCSC who led the study, said that Santa Cruz County’s high housing costs and comparatively low wages are among the top issues for most workers in the county, given that it’s the least affordable rental market in the country. That pressure makes workers more inclined to unionize and advocate for better wages to support the high cost of living: “There’s no place in the United States where a minimum-wage worker can afford a two-bedroom apartment, I believe.”

However, she added that the study identified other notable workplace issues, including widespread scheduling unpredictability and disparities in workplace protections for LGBTQ+ workers, who make up about 29% of the local workforce in the surveyed age group. This group was more likely to experience wage theft and workplace injuries, and 35% of LGBTQ+ respondents reported working additional unpaid hours, well above 21% of their heterosexual co-workers.

“I think there have been these problems for a while, so in some ways, we’re just identifying something that’s been around,” Hamilton said. Modern business practices have exacerbated the issues, she added, particularly the use of automatic scheduling technology to set a calendar, which often leads to even more unpredictable work schedules.

Hamilton added that beyond workplace problems, the success of major unionization efforts at large corporations such as Starbucks instills confidence in workers at other companies to push forward with their own organizing.

“That’s had an incredibly valuable impact on young workers’ sense of power and efficacy in the workplace. You can’t understate the importance of those successes,” she said.

Thompson said that while wages, safety and housing stability were at the forefront of Starbucks workers’ concerns, too, younger workers view organizing as a way to support each other and stand up for themselves in tumultuous political times.

“I think that Gen Z specifically has been through so much with the pandemic, the rise of fascism and authoritarianism, and seeing billionaires control and dominate politics,” they said. “I think the response has been to organize, and that is a concrete step that any worker can take.”

Hamilton added that forming good workplace friendships has also helped bring co-workers together in fights for unionization. While many of those friendships have always been there, seeing the power of unions motivates tight-knit groups to take action.

“In terms of my experiences talking with newly unionizing workers, the relationships can really help with high turnover and things like that, because they care about their co-workers and about the people who they would identify with in the future,” she said.

Pavy said seeing the Starbucks union successes was an inspiration for Verve workers, and that it gave her and her co-workers an “if they can do it, we can do it” attitude. She added that the local community has shown tons of support less than a week after she and her colleagues launched their union drive, which greatly increases morale and confidence. Thompson recalls a similar experience.

“The amount of support that we saw in the community, whether it was the bus drivers union, teachers union or whatever, we had tons of people come out and support because we all face the same issues,” they said.

As of 2024, just 17.5% of workers in the Santa Cruz-Watsonville-Salinas metropolitan area were represented by a union, according to a report published last month by UC Berkeley’s Labor Center. But Hamilton said she sees the gradual increase of local union activity as part of a larger trend that puts the county in a position to see a union boom in the future. 

Thompson said the recent local unionization efforts, many driven by young service workers, could dispel the notion that younger generations are simply “lazy.”

“Gen Z is full of hard workers,” they said. “I just think it’s that we’re not going to work unless you treat us with respect. That’s the clear distinction.”

Even beyond workplace benefit, Woodstock’s Cunin said that learning to organize is extremely valuable: “This is an experience that people are going to need in some capacity in the future. Even if you’re not trying to start a union, being able to form a community and connect with your co-workers on this level is really important in any field you go into in the future.”

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