Organizing your workplace: some 101-level things to know
I know a lot of people in non-profit, education, and advocacy work who have been seeing their employers ignore the whole “do not comply in advance” directive of resisting fascism. Despite the fact that the president’s EOs have limited scope and enforceability and are already being fought, they’re bending over backwards to scrub any mentions of DEI, equal employment, or queerness.
This is enraging and cowardly, and I’ve seen a lot of folks wondering how to effectively push back on it.
So welcome to labor organizing 101, expanding a bit on a Bluesky thread I posted last week. Please feel free to share this as a resource with friends, coworkers, family, and anyone who can use it.
As a caveat, I’ve been out of organizing for five years, but I have experience that I’m happy to share. There are many people who are more up to date on contemporary labor politics than me. Kim Kelly is a cool person to follow, and Labor Notes and In These Times are publications that both cover a lot of union news.
This guide focuses less on the procedures for organizing a union, and more about general tactics for building collective power. I’m emphasizing this because collective power builds unions, not the other way around. A union won’t save you if you and your fellow workers aren’t united and willing to struggle together. For a procedural guide to unionizing, this guide from Rand Wilson is good and accurate.
1) You can organize your workplace. You can start today.
There is nothing special about the people who start organizing. I started at age 29 with no knowledge or experience because I was tired of moving between different, miserable jobs where nothing actually improved.
Once you start, you will almost certainly find coworkers who are doing this work as well, or at least interested in starting. Join your efforts together!
2) Build up your collective power, act like a cohesive unit, work towards common goals.
(Sidenote before we get started: legally, organizing during working hours is a protected activity, but employers will find other reasons to discipline or fire you if you’re not already in a union. The safest place to talk is anywhere that’s not your workplace. Moving on!)
Start having conversations with your coworkers. Focus on building a vision for what you all want to see. It’s easy for conversations about your job to fall into a complaint spiral about everything that sucks. That’s important to process, but it does not move people to act. What do you all want? What are you willing to do to get it? Start breaking down those big dreams into smaller goals; achieve smaller goals by flexing collective muscles. One person doing something small gets fired (at worst) or individually appeased (at best); everyone doing something small gets change.
You also need to start thinking as a collective group and not individuals. One of the most common tactics of managers busting unions is to divide and conquer: exploiting existing rifts, dramas, and prejudices. You do not need to invite your entire union to your wedding, but you need to have each others’ backs. You have to care about what happens to each other. (If you’re like, “But what if I hate Janet from accounting? She’s gone full MAGA and has an altar to RFK Jr.!!!” see the next point. But if you just don’t like Janet because she chews with her mouth open and is obsessed with Love Island or whatever, deal with it. )
3) Bring people in, but focus on the ones that people trust first
Some people are just contrary assholes. They will suck up all your time and energy arguing while giving nothing in return. You don’t have to invite the people who are anti-union into any planning conversation. They’ll be butthurt, but they’d be butthurt anyway, and this way, you can actually get stuff done without their obstruction.
Instead, focus on building up the folks that want change, are respected and trusted by others, and can bring people together. Figure out who those people are (this is called mapping your workplace) and talk to them about what they’d like your workplace to be, then give them the resources to have their own conversations.
4) Do NOT have any organizing conversation on your company’s Slack
Do not have organizing conversations on anything that belongs to your company: no email, no Slack, no Zoom (not even in the chat, no Teams, no company phones/laptops, nothing. If someone messages you on a company device/server/comms, tell them you can’t use company resources to talk about this, and connect with them elsewhere. If someone signs up to receive emails with their company email, kick them off and tell them they need to sign up with a personal one.
I’ve seen some people saying that everyone needs to get on Signal. But this depends on your coworkers — is them downloading and learning an entirely new app going to be an extra obstacle that prevents them from engaging? Yes, it’s more secure and not owned by Meta, but it’s not useful if nobody is going to use it. Go where people are willing to follow, as long as it is reasonably secure.
5) Every workplace can (and probably will) become a hostile workplace once you’re organizing.
I have met many people that believed organizing a union would be easy because their boss is a progressive leftist or generally a chill person. Their boss’s subsequent heel turn takes them totally off-guard. Even if your individual manager is cool, their employment hinges on maintaining the company’s bottom line, and those companies will fight union efforts tooth and nail. If managers don’t fall in line, they often get fired or pushed to resign. Act accordingly, and make everyone else do the same.
6) You gotta make it fun.
Look, organizing is a long and stressful slog, and at its heart, you’re asking people to contribute unpaid labor to make everyone’s job suck less. You gotta find ways to make it fun as well. Organize a karaoke or bowling or trivia night. Happy hours. Dance parties. ANYTHING. Why do you think so many old unions had big-ass family picnics? I knew one excellent organizer who ended every meeting with singing — which I personally did not enjoy, so I just went and washed dishes while everyone sang “Solidarity Forever” because everyone else loved it. MAKE IT AT LEAST A LITTLE FUN OR NOBODY WILL SHOW UP.
7) Take care of yourself or your nervous system will never forgive you.
Organizing is going to activate your fear response in ways you don’t expect, even if you’re not a habitual people pleaser. I remember being really surprised by how many big tough dudes I worked — ones who would get wrecked in death metal mosh pits — would quail at the idea of marching on the HR manager’s office to demand better wages. Preparing for your nervous system to go apeshit sometimes, processing stress, and building up some good coping mechanisms will help stave off burnout, which has taken out a LOT of activists.
Are you ready to start? Or at least learn more? I’d suggest starting with two much more advanced guides: Jane McAlevey’s No Shortcuts: Organizing for Power and Labor Notes’ Secrets of a Successful Organizer. Labor notes also has a ton of free handouts distilling the same information in more accessible and distributable formats.
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