When Michelle Eisen told a congressional hearing last year about her experiences working as a barista at a Buffalo, New York, Starbucks, she did so without disclosing that she was also a paid activist helping to organize the coffee chain’s first unionized shop.
Eisen was reportedly paid nearly $50,000 by the Workers United affiliate of the Service Employees International Union for helping in the campaign to organize Starbucks, an effort that, to date, has succeeded in unionizing more than 330 additional shops since 2010. A spokesman for the union also didn’t respond to a request for comment.
