College-Educated workers leading movements to unionize

Over the past few months, the news has been filled with stories of workers of giant corporations unionizing. In fact, compared to the past few decades, more and more working-class people are opting to unionize. The main reason for this is the current generation of workers consists of college-educated employees who've faced some harsh realities. 

Since the Great Recession, the college-educated have taken up many frontline jobs at companies like Amazon and Starbucks. Once, they came to terms with the harsh reality that it is much more difficult for them to reach the middle-class than the previous generation, the change has been profound. This set of workers' efforts to unionize is driving shifts in the country's politics and mobilizing employees to demand fairer treatment at work. It may also be giving the labor movement its biggest lift in decades. College-educated working class typically earns less than what they hand hoped while going to college. Let's take the example of Tyler Mulholland who holds a bachelor's and master's degree yet earns $23 an hour. Couple with the less pay, they've had to deal with multiple bouts of unemployment forcing them to take up jobs at chains like Amazon. Some say that they have to work at say a Starbucks that does not utilize their talents in order to keep steady health insurance. According to researchers such experiences seemed to increase after the great recession and acted as a uniting factor. These graduate workers have established two facts: the first being that the chain of success guaranteed by their parents which was to go to college, work hard, and live a comfortable life, is now broken, and unionizing is a way to resurrect it. 

Support for workers' unions among college graduates has increased from 55 percent in the late 1990s to 70 percent in the last few tears, the number is even higher in recent younger graduates. 

Source: New York Times