The first attempt to unionize a privately owned architecture firm since the 1970s started at SHoP Architects in New York City, where I was working at the time. This was part of a wave of nontraditional organizing efforts taking place around 2020 that included tech workers at Kickstarter and Google, baristas at various Starbucks locations, writers at Vice, and partners at Apple stores, just to name a few.

During the summer of that same year, while most “nonessential workers” were working remotely under stay-at-home orders, some of us hit the streets of cities all over the country to protest police brutality and the assassinations of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor. Several workers at SHoP Architects participated in those marches and brought that energy back to the office. We were told to keep conversations on related topics off of SHoP’s platforms, so those discussions spread via Zoom meetings with obscure titles and external chat apps.

At first, these communication tools allowed us and our coworkers to grieve the injustices happening outside of our office. But soon our conversations turned inward, toward what was going on at our own workplace. Since so much our lives took place there — sixty to seventy hours per week was fairly standard — many of us felt that our workplace needed to reflect our moral values.