Welcome to Group Project, a series on the many ways young people are building and engaging with community. From queer resistance to finding new hobbies to forging alternate paths, working together is more important than ever. Here's how young people are getting off their phones and seeking community IRL.
One World Trade Center looms over Manhattan's Financial District, a tower of steel and glass visible from miles away. The building, which is the headquarters of Condé Nast, Teen Vogue’s parent company, is intimidating, and walking through the revolving doors on my first day, I felt nervous and isolated.
Nearly six years later, I’ve met colleagues from almost every brand under the Condé umbrella. I’ve gone to rallies with Bon Appetit recipe developers, had park picnics with SELF commerce editors, and sat on countless Zooms with copyeditors at GQ and Glamour. Through my involvement with the Condé Nast union, this sprawling global company has become much more navigable. Instead of a big, anonymous institution, it’s a place made up of individuals.
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Below, five young people working across industries and across the country share how organizing helped them find community and changed their relationship with work.
Autumn Sancho, 25, New York City
Autumn Sancho first learned that her team was unionizing while on a break in the Cookie Monster Conference Room. A colleague asked Sancho if she supported unions, “and without even thinking, I was like, ‘Yeah, of course,’” she recalls. That’s how she ended up on the organizing committee — the core group of employees who coordinate actions, gather feedback from their peers, and educate coworkers about union matters. She calls unionizing “a crash course in professional development” that’s allowed her to hone leadership and interpersonal skills she never anticipated flexing.
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“I joined at the time because I was envisioning how a union would affect my circumstances. At the time, I really wanted a higher salary,” she tells Teen Vogue. “I wanted more transparency regarding promotions as a junior professional. But now, throughout the three years of organizing, my focus has shifted from just thinking of myself to really caring so deeply about all of my colleagues and ensuring that all of them have equitable working conditions today, and for the future, for anyone who walks through the doors of Sesame Workshop.”
The Sesame Workshop union went public on March 6, with more than 200 staffers affirming their interest in joining the Office and Professional Employees International Union. That same day, their CEO announced mass layoffs. “We called it emotional whiplash,” Sancho says. “We went from having our block party in Dante Park to all being corralled on the top floor and being told that 20% of our workforce would be cut and our benefits would be as well.”
Sancho and her colleagues are now rallying around those impacted by the layoffs, talking to them about their severance packages, and providing mutual aid. On April 23, the staff voted 55 to 19 to unionize, and on May 15, the National Labor Relations Board certified that result. Sancho said the bumpy ride toward winning that recognition has strengthened her commitment to organizing and protecting her coworkers.
“I'm so lucky to work with some of the nicest, most hardworking and compassionate individuals who tirelessly dedicate themselves to delivering on Sesame Workshop's mission of helping children everywhere grow smarter, stronger, and kinder,” she says. “And throughout my campaign, I've discovered that every single person is irreplaceable. They're indispensable to the work that we do, and their voices matter as much as mine. And when we all come together, we're able to advocate for each other and ourselves so that we can continue doing the work that we love and helping families everywhere.”
Sabrina Martinez, 25, Gilbert, Arizona
In the four and a half years since workers at a Buffalo, New York, Starbucks decided to form a union, their peers at some 570 other store locations have followed suit. One of those locations is the Gilbert, Arizona, store where Sabrina Martinez serves as a shift supervisor, bargaining delegate with Starbucks Workers United, and a member of POCKET (People of Color Keeping Everyone Together), an affinity group within the union.
“Being able to have a space to talk and advocate for yourself is so important, especially learning how to do it at my age,” Martinez says. “It can be really scary, especially when you have higher-ups kind of down your neck and on your back about almost everything. I think the most important thing to do is just remember we're starting a huge labor movement, and it's not just Starbucks that we want to join our fight, it's our community and even other coffee shops, or even other retail or food service workers.”
That community involvement includes holding teach-ins about crackdowns on diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives, and immigration enforcement under the Trump administration. One recent highlight for Martinez was a visit to meet with college students at Northern Arizona University, “to talk about the importance of unionizing and what it looks like to be a part of your community.”
“That was such a fun experience because I feel like it's really scary, especially at that age, ranging from 18, 19 to 25, 26, while you're still in school and you're struggling to make those day-to-day purchases. So getting gas, paying for your rent, getting groceries, and having to battle, which one am I going to sacrifice because I don't have a livable wage right now? So being able to speak to that and talk to them, and empower them to make those movements, it was just so incredible.”
Isabel McMahon, 25, New York City
After graduating from college, Isabel McMahon was thrilled to receive her first corporate job offer from Hearst Magazines. Less thrilling was the salary: $50,000, which she says was standard for an assistant editorial role at the company, but was “not really a livable wage.” Still, she very much needed a job and wanted to work in media. So she took it. Two months after starting, the Hearst union ratified its contract with the company, and McMahon’s salary jumped up $10,000.
“I just remember being like, ‘Wow, that is so awesome!’” McMahon says of the new salary floors guidelines. “I am benefiting from all of this previous union work, and it's improving my life drastically.”
So when she was asked to become a shop steward (a union representative for other employees at her publication), she said yes. “That's when I started being in different group chats and having different meetings where people would share, 'Hey, my brand, we're filing this complaint, or we're having this issue. Let's talk about it,” McMahon says. “Sometimes when I'm talking with my coworkers, I don't want to bring the vibe down. Or you're at work, you don't want to make people feel uncomfortable. So it just became a safe space to really vent about the weird dynamics at work or the issues that we all see are happening, but are afraid to talk about.”
Hearst owns some 25 US brands and 175 websites, which makes it “pretty easy to just stay in your own little bubble.” Through her involvement with the union, McMahon has befriended the shop stewards at ELLE Decor and Town & Country. They get lunch. “It's been really nice to just meet other people across brands and see how the issues we have are not just at our brand. It's a Hearst-wide thing,” she says.
Ash Judd, 21, St. Peters, Missouri
Ash Judd’s job at an Amazon warehouse requires being on his feet all day, packing customer orders, storing inventory, and using a pallet jack to load boxes. Though he’s barely out of his teens, Judd says he experienced joint issues caused by the physical strain of the work. It wasn’t until he joined the union’s organizing committee that he learned he could “relax a little bit more.”
“While I still do work hard, there's also an importance in sustainability and being able to not just push yourself as hard as humanly possible to try and run yourself ragged,” Judd tells Teen Vogue. “And it's not always about what the company thinks that we should do.”
Beyond feeling empowered to seek physical relief, he finds emotional relief in being able to connect with his coworkers after long days on the clock. “There have been so many times when I've come off of work, and I'm tired,” he says. “I am just kind of emotionally defeated from working a 10-hour, an 11-hour shift, and moving constantly. And then I'll go to one of our organizing committee meetings, and I look up and there will be all my friends, and there will be snacks. And not only am I able to hang out and chat, I'm also able to do something to make a difference in the workplace.”
Last winter, Judd and his coworkers went signature-gathering for Prop A, a ballot measure in Missouri to increase the minimum wage and require that employers provide paid sick leave. (Voters passed the measure in November 2024, though Republicans in the state legislature are trying to repeal the sick leave provision.)
“One of the times we did this was in Historic St. Charles, and it got really cold,” Judd recalls. “It was snowing. I remember our hands started cramping up from holding the papers where we were trying to get people to sign and put their signatures in for which voting county they lived in.” The group took a break in a café to get hot chocolate and unwind before heading back out into the cold. There are “a lot of little moments like that,” he says. “Nothing that stands out as huge or life-changing on its own, but the combination of all of those little moments of connection.”
Valeria Mejia-Guevara, 28, Indianapolis
Valeria Mejia-Guevara is a fifth-generation unionist. In Mexico, where her family is from, her great-great-grandfather was part of the railroad union. Both her great-grandfather and grandparents were part of the newspaper communication workers' union, and her mom was in the teachers’ union. “I'm really grateful that I get to continue this tradition here in the US,” Mejia-Guevara says.
Mejia-Guevara’s organizing “started from a young age,” she says. As a Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) recipient, she would skip school to take part in marches calling for immigration protections for young immigrants like her. Living her values is essential to Mejia-Guevara, and it's why she works at a nonprofit that builds tools for progressive causes to fundraise and mobilize supporters. But she knows that “the causes we fight for don't always fit in a nine-to-five schedule,” so her involvement with the Non-Profit Employees Professionals Union (NPEU) helps her advocate for standards and support for workers, and is focused on issues like climate justice and immigration rights.
Mejia-Guevara decided to run for union leadership after attending the Labor Notes conference in Chicago in 2022, where she made friends, hung out with other NPEU members, connected with another DACA recipient in her union, and even met her husband. She's now vice president of communications at NPEU, a member-led union. “That was definitely a before and after for me,” she says. The conference was not only an opportunity to learn “about how we can collectively make the world better,” she adds, “but you truly find those ties and those values within each other.”
