I credit Starbuck employees' unionizing efforts with informing the public of just how bad things had gotten for unions. Until then, people thought it was still the old days, when unions were ubiquitous.

On a side note, Republicans have adamantly opposed labour unions (which operate in the private sector), but fully supported police and prison guard unions (which operate in the public sector). Republican support for public employee unions led to a large wage and benefits imbalance between public and private sector employees. It also fueled higher wages for public employees from the federal level on down to state and local governments.

That said, teacher's unions were the one exception. Republicans, and their loyal public employee unions started attacking teacher unions. That puzzled me, until I realized that Republicans wanted to privatize education - and public school's teacher unions were standing in their way. Unfortunately, the salary and benefits for private school teachers is much lower than public school teachers. However, the owners of private schools are making lots of money and paying their administrators much higher salaries than public school administrators.

Personally, I'd like to see tech-workers unionize but they seem to think they are special.