This is an excerpt from an op-ed in CNN Business. Read the full op-ed here.

This year, workers at Amazon, Starbucks and other major corporations are winning a wave of union elections, often in the face of long odds and employer resistance. These wins are showing it’s possible for determined groups of workers to break through powerful employers’ use of union-busting tactics, ranging from alleged retaliatory firings to alleged surveillance and forced attendance at anti-union “captive audience meetings.” But workers should not have to confront so many obstacles to exercising a guaranteed legal right to unionize and bargain for improvements in their work lives and livelihoods.

There are good reasons to believe workers’ organizing momentum will continue (union election filings are already up 57% during the first six months of this fiscal year). Frontline workers are asserting their worth after more than two years of risking their health during an ongoing pandemic while watching corporate profits and CEO pay continue to soar.