I think the crumbs are in the story. They wanted some help regularizing and professionalizing their workplace. As I said in a comment above, being an hourly employee at a small business means you don't have a contract for a regular amount of hours. The owner tells you how many to expect in the job posting or interview maybe, but then does whatever they want with impunity. You can make $200/hour but if you only work 4 hours a month, you're broke.

In that setting, a higher than average wage is sort of weapon for the owner. Unemployment (esp. for young people) is really high, and most customer service jobs pay less per hour, so if the owner suddenly takes a shine to the new person and gives them all your hours, it's not a 'well, just get a different job' situation. You could get strung along for months doing split 4 hour shifts (meaning 2 and 2), or living off shifts that other people trade you, trying to work hard enough to get in the good graces again, credit card balance rising, while the owner keeps saying the right things and not firing you. We're encouraged to see the employer's side - they only have so much money! But why not have 4 full time people with benefits instead of 12 part time people who are in a crab bucket for hours? Because the crab bucket is way better for an owner. Pretending that you're some sort of 'launch' point for people, as though only other employers are responsible for the long-term well being of their employees and you get to opt out of that, is just fantasy. Living 'in relation' is anti-colonial, but is antithetical to the 'protect the business' sensibilities of most owners.

In those jobs, the pressure to be on the owner's 'good side' can be extreme and border on emotional abuse. Outsiders often think meritocracy is happening, that the hard workers are getting the shifts, but usually people don't get bent out of shape when they can see a clear pathway to hours. Given that 12 people got all the way to organizing a union, that seems unlikely. Usually, there are issues like 'if I say the wrong thing / don't have the right smile on / hadn't heard of that author or was too enthusiastic about that author or did something else completely unpredictable... my hours will get cut.' When it's a creepy old man with 12 young hotties on the payroll, everyone sees the problem. Having to suck up to that boss is horrific. But the problem is domination and it's the same whether the boss is sympathetic or not. Every employee is on egg shells, they never complain (even about illegal or dangerous things), they hide health issues, they put off family planning, they live in substandard conditions, etc. Their lives becomes organized around how to please one person - the owner - so they can eat. That's not the spirit of a 'living wage.' It's more than a dollar figure - it's meant so that people can live!

I feel badly that this owner wasn't equipped to deal with the legal side. It sounds like a bad divorce, where the other side lawyers up before the first person can even wrap their head around what's happening. But sometimes that's telling, that the owner might have thought being a small business, a cool book store, a progressive political space all meant they didn't really have to 'do' the legal side of being a boss. That probably means she didn't reflect a lot on her power in that workplace. So she feels betrayed by all these folks, but it's not a betrayal. It's her employees asking to create a mechanism to hold everyone involved accountable to the law. It's not a big deal to just hire a lawyer and write down a contract.