Gen Z's not lazy — they're just refusing to put up with the toxic work culture that boomers created

I saiah Thomas was only 7 years old in 2008, but he was old enough to understand that his family was struggling. He noticed his parents were around less: They'd go straight to sleep once they got home from work and were out the door first thing in the morning. They were being forced to pick up extra shifts at work to make ends meet, and the lack of family time left an impression on Thomas. "That made an impact on me because my parents worked for a living, and we lived paycheck to paycheck," he said. "And I personally think that all of us in Gen Z, when we experienced that with our parents, we were like, 'Fuck that. We don't want to continue going through that.'"

As a young Black man working to organize an Amazon warehouse in deep-red Alabama, Thomas has his work cut out for him. But he's committed to making his workplace better and ensuring future generations don't have to miss out on time with their parents because of job pressures. He isn't alone in his activism. There's a growing wave of labor organizers and reformers in their 20s who have been working overtime across the country to change the workplace. Workers born between 1997 and 2012 have come of age at a time when college degrees no longer promise job stability and economic anxiety is high.

More than any other generation, these new entrants to the workforce prioritize fair treatment on the job and refuse to bend to exploitative or outdated corporate norms. And now, Gen Z is turning to organizing as a way to stand up to corporate bosses. Recent union drives at varying workplaces such as Starbucks, Amazon, Home Depot, Minor League Baseball, and even North Hollywood's Star Garden Topless Dive Bar have all involved Gen Z workers — and some have been led by Gen Z outright.

'There comes a point where enough is enough'

The internet is littered with articles fussing over Gen Z's alleged distaste for workplace "norms," but young workers are not lazy, entitled, or keen on slacking off — they're simply choosing to reject some of the practices that previous generations were forced to accept. Surveys have found that Gen Zers are less likely than their elders to go along with long hours, overbearing bosses, or a lack of boundaries between the personal and the professional. Instead, this new wave of workers is actively pushing back on the behaviors that make the workplace a toxic environment.

"When I started at Starbucks, I never understood why I had to deal with the treatment I was given," Laila Dalton, a 20-year-old college student who was fired from Starbucks earlier this year after organizing a union in her store, told me. "I think my generation is finally starting to realize that it doesn't matter if you're in the food industry, retail, construction, healthcare, etc., we all deserve to have healthier working conditions."

When Dalton would complain about being disrespected on the job or the prevalence of poor working conditions, others would brush off her concerns, saying, "It's the food industry. What do you expect?" But she and her Gen Z peers are not ready to accept that mode of thinking. A recent National Society of High School Scholars survey of 11,000 high-school and college-aged people found that Gen Z's highest priorities when choosing an employer were the fair treatment of all employees (across genders and races), followed by quality of life, employer flexibility, and corporate social responsibility. They are also more likely to leave jobs that don't meet their needs and find better-paying employment elsewhere (though they're not alone in that propensity; Gallup dubbed millennials "the job-hopping generation"). Put simply, young workers want something better than their parents had and aren't afraid to seek it out. The content creator Jade Carson, 22, told Vox's Terry Nguyen: "I want to be in a role where I can grow professionally and personally. I don't want to be stressed, depressed, or always waiting to clock out."

Younger workers have spent their lives facing crises from climate disasters to the erosion of reproductive rights. Rebecca Givan, an associate professor of labor studies and employment relations at Rutgers University, told me that as a result, they were far more likely to speak out against injustice. "They are used to holding power accountable, and they understand the deep flaws in the system," she said. "These workers are demonstrating that they will not accept a lack of voice in the workplace, or employers who pay lip service to progressive values and then fall woefully short."

As Jun Shin, a 23-year-old labor activist in Honolulu, put it: "There comes a point where enough is enough."

Quitting isn't for everyone, though, and many young workers have opted to create change from within instead, whether that's been by workplace activism or unionizing. "Young workers are open to finding ways to make their workplaces and jobs better, especially if they could not afford to quit and find another job," Shin told me.

As Jacqui Germain recently wrote in Teen Vogue, a new report from the Center for American Progress labeled Gen Z "America's most pro-union generation," and its members have spent the past two years flexing their collective muscle on the picket lines and at the bargaining table. "A lot of us in Gen Z are saying we need an alternative, something that actually gives us a voice, something that's a mechanism to implement some kind of change," Thomas told me. "And so we're like, the union is the way to go because these companies are not offering us anything."

'I'm not going to stop fighting anytime soon'

Jonah Furman, the former national labor organizer for Sen. Bernie Sanders' 2020 presidential campaign and a staff writer and organizer for Labor Notes, points toward the upswing in union-election petitions as a sign that the young generation is turning to labor organizing as an outlet for its political energy. The number of new filings at the National Labor Relations Board, which oversees union elections, has jumped significantly. According to new data, 2,510 union-representation petitions have been filed in 2022, which represents a hike of 53% from 2021 and is the highest number of petitions filed since 2016. In September, Gallup found a whopping 77% of adults ages 18 to 34 approved of unions (compared with 68% overall). And many members of the "pro-union" generation have been at the forefront of the current organizing wave.

"Not only are young workers pro-union, but they're actively turning to the NLRB to assert that stance, which is pretty unheard of," Furman told me. While other generations challenged the status quo using other means of dissent or protest, Furman said Gen Z was "turning to union-authorization cards and unfair-labor-practice charges."

And while identity markers like race, gender, and country of origin have long been used by employers to drive divisions in the workplace and prevent organizing, Gen Z isn't biting. According to the Center for American Progress report, the racial and ethnic diversity that characterizes the generation has contributed to an uptick in support for unions, and even across a highly polarized political divide, Gen Z's gap in union support between Democrats and Republicans is the narrowest of any generation. As Thomas told me, a union makes it clear that "this bigotry shit is just meant to divide us so that the employer class can continue making as much profit as they want to." He added: "I'm not going to stop fighting anytime soon."

Every new generation forges its own relationship with the powers that be, and Gen Z has made it quite clear which side it's on. As a loudly pro-worker, pro-union cohort, it's saying no to exploitation and standing up against corporations that want to grind them down the same way they did with these young workers' parents and grandparents.

Rethinking the worker-boss struggle

Since Gen Z is perhaps America's most online generation, it's no surprise that young organizers have found success using platforms like Twitter and TikTok as organizing tools to educate labor-curious workers. "We're tired of the lack of political action from those who supposedly represent us," Elise Joshi, 20, told me. "We shouldn't be handing our life away for a CEO that couldn't care less about us."

Joshi is the acting executive director of Gen-Z for Change, a youth-led nonprofit that works with a network of 500 online creators and activists to promote "civil discourse and political action" around issues like the climate crisis, reproductive rights, voting, and workers' rights. The organization has also been taking on corporations trying to screw over their workers. In one notable example, when the grocery giant Kroger was attempting to hire replacement workers ahead of a strike, the digital strategist Sean Wiggs wrote a script of code that was used to flood its careers website with bogus applications to keep the scabs out.

"We're using creative tactics that we've learned from growing up in the digital age, from social media to online scab campaigns," Joshi said. TikTok, in particular, has proved a powerful tool for organizations like Joshi's and individual content creators to spread pro-union messages and educate their peers about their rights as workers.

Unlike some older union members, who may prefer to focus solely on "bread and butter" economic issues, younger workers understand the need to take a more intersectional and inclusive approach to bring in as many workers as possible to their cause. Instead of focusing solely on better pay, Gen Z organizers are also fighting for racial justice, trans rights, and reproductive freedom, recognizing that economic well-being comes from more than a paycheck. "It's obvious to Gen Z how all of the issues are connected, and how in order to combat one issue, we must address them all," Joshi said.

Givan, the Rutgers' employment-relations professor, sees this surge in youth-led organizing as a significant moment for labor, and one that may have a lasting influence on the workforce as Gen Zers continue in their careers. "Many of them may go on to organize in their next jobs as well," she said.

The current US labor movement is stronger, and more digitally savvy, thanks to Gen Z's contributions. And because of this new generation of activists, the future of the American working class is shining a little brighter than it was only a few short years ago. Because if there is one quality that Gen Z has in spades, it is audacity — and no mass movement has ever succeeded without it.

As Shin summed up: "Young workers have decided to make a very simple demand, which the Irish socialist and trade unionist James Connolly put best: 'For our demands most moderate are, we only want the earth.'"

Kim Kelly is an independent journalist, organizer, and author of the book FIGHT LIKE HELL: The Untold History of American Labor.