Summer Reads, Union Leads—Just Don’t Judge the Hype by Its Cover
Are you in the mood for a beach read as the weather heats up? You’re not alone, and if you aren’t an eReader devotee, then you might be heading toward your nearest friendly bookseller before vacation time strikes.
Depending on your location, the bookstore that you frequent could be unionized, and as we briefly discussed during an article about Gen Z’s perspective on unions, the UFCW-affiliated RWDSU has been scooping up as many New York City booksellers as possible. LitHub also reported that 40% of the city’s bookstores are now unionized, mainly with RWDSU but also with sprinklings of UAW and NewsGuild-CWA in the mix.
How much importance should the 40% figure carry? This year’s union density numbers from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reveal that the overall private sector union density in 2024 remained abysmally low at 5.9%. And sure, 40% sounds so much better in union-speak, but that figure would only apply to a corner of the retail industry in one U.S. city. Additionally. The UFCW boasted that its Barnes & Noble Union now counts workers at 10 U.S. stores as members. Yet that number isn’t imposing considering that the company has about 600 brick-and-mortar locations within the U.S.
RWDSU has also bragged about ratifying contracts this year for three NYC bookstores. These also happen to be the first ratified contracts for unionized Barnes & Noble locations after two years of bargaining. So… out of 600 stores, ten are unionized, and only three have union contracts. It’s not a negligible development but maintaining perspective on how unions overstate their “wins” is always important.
That is to say, the bookstore goals of RWDSU and other unions are worth watching. After all, the union recently won an election at the Center for Fiction and ratified two contracts for Greenlight Bookstore and Yours Truly locations in NYC. Additionally, News-Guild CWA unionized Quirk Books, and UAW put The Strand workers on strike last holiday season.
The coastal factor: With the above distinctions in mind, a trend is afoot in Manhattan, where unionized bookstore workers have admitted that they found inspiration not only from the nationwide Starbucks Workers United campaign but also from NYC-based movie theater unionization at Alamo Drafthouse and elsewhere.
Notably, California and New York also tend to be labor laboratories, with contagion being prone to spread. In Chicago, workers represented by the Industrial Workers of the World recently went on a one-hour strike at the Seminary Co-op bookstore to protest stalled contract negotiations.
The bigger picture: Retail organizing upticks often make headlines, but it’s also valuable to realize that the bookstore unionizing trend isn’t new. A smattering of organizing campaigns made headlines in 2022. In Boston, Harvard Book Store’s unionized retail staffers have been affiliated with UAW for over 30 years and recently renewed their contract.
Fast forward to the present, and NYC’s booksellers are understandably frustrated at how working in a “passion” industry might not be enough to make ends meet in NYC, which is notorious for being one of the most expensive cities in the world. Salary transparency could be a factor in the current wave of bookstore unionization. Although unions cannot solve NYC’s cost-of-living issue, they will promise to do so and use that selling point to infiltrate workplaces.
