A Rhodes scholARship to the
University of Oxford can open doors to
elite worlds—to a life spent in board-
rooms and at gilded galas. Bill Clinton,
for example, famously smoked (though
“didn’t inhale”) marijuana there before
becoming President. Pete Buttigieg
served as his cohort’s whiskey purveyor
before serving as a Cabinet Secretary.
But Jaz Brisack was so unenthusiastic
about her Rhodes acceptance that she
almost didn’t go. At the time, she was a
University of Mississippi student volun-
teering on union picket lines. Going to
a fancy school to learn about organiz-
ing, rather than doing it, lacked appeal.
“I wanted to be in the movement,” says
the 24-year-old.
So she raced through her studies,
where she uncovered an early-1900s
labor rallying cry: “Get on the job and
organize.” That became not just a sec-
tion in her thesis, but a call to action.
After Oxford, Brisack didn’t try for a
law degree at Yale or anywhere else. In-
stead, she got a job at the Elmwood Av-
enue Starbucks in Bufalo, N.Y. A year
later, she helped lead its staf in the irst
successful unionization at a company-
owned Starbucks. “There’s no unorgan-
izable workplace,” she says. “There’s
just workplaces that haven’t been orga-
nized yet.”
Inspired by Brisack’s work in Buf-
falo, 60-plus other locations have
unionized, and at least 170 more have
iled to hold a vote—despite Starbucks’
retaining a union- busting law irm and
withholding raises from unionized
workers. It could take years before cor-
porate Starbucks and union members
codify contracts aimed at improving
conditions for employees. But Brisack
isn’t going anywhere. “I have no plans
to leave Starbucks,” she says. Neither
is the unionization efort. “It would be
amazing to see every Starbucks in the
country unionized,” she says. “I think
that’s very possible.”
UNITED STATES
Jaz Brisack
A labor leader who went
from Oxford to Starbucks
BY ABBY VESOULIS
PHOTOGRAPH BY WYNNE NEILLY FOR TIME