Organize!

Whether we are engaging in acts of resistance or creating new, alternative institutions, we need to create sustainable, democratic organizations that empower their members while also protecting against disruption. This section provides articles about effective organizing, creating democratic decision-making structures, building coalitions with other groups, and more. Visit the Resources Page for tools to assist your organizing efforts.

Southern Worker School Charts Course For Power

June 4, 2024 Southern Workers Assembly. Organize! Labor Movement, Popular Assemblies, The South, Worker Rights and Jobs

Southern politicians have gone out of their way in word and action to make clear they stand on the side of big business and racism as they’ve recently lamented that the “Alabama [ie – Southern] model for success is under attack” and vowing to “fight unions to the gates of hell.” Nearly two hundred rank and filers who are developing a movement of workers in the South that can build power to make these politicians’ fears a reality gathered in Charlotte, NC on May 17 – 19 for the 2024 Southern Worker School. These convenings are the annual organizing conference of the Southern Workers Assembly network, which includes local workers assemblies, worker organizations, and other workers from various sectors and states throughout the region.

Starbucks Resumes Bargaining Amid Fresh Wave Of Unionized Stores

June 3, 2024 Michael Sainato, The Guardian. Organize! Contract Negotiations, Labor Movement, Starbucks, Unions, Worker Rights and Jobs

Starbucks has resumed bargaining with union leaders amid a fresh wave of organized stores after the world’s largest coffee chain agreed to open talks over labor agreements. After a long, embittered campaign, the Seattle-based coffee giant jointly announced a new framework with Workers United in February to reach contracts with unionized stores. Bargaining got under way on Wednesday, and is due to continue on Thursday. Since baristas in Buffalo successfully formed the first unionized US Starbucks store in December 2021, an organizing drive by Starbucks Workers United has spread nationwide, to more than 425 Starbucks stores in 43 states, representing over 10,500 workers.

From ‘An Economy Of Hope’ To The US Federation Of Worker Cooperatives

May 31, 2024 Jessica Gordon-Nembhard, Grassroots Economic Organizing. Organize! Capitalism, Cooperatives, Economic Democracy, Worker Rights and Jobs

The first Eastern Conference for Workplace Democracy was attended by 96 people mostly worker co-op owners and members of support organizations from Ohio to Maine, New Orleans to Washington, DC, and in between. We had agreed we would have been happy if only 20 people showed up, so having almost 100 people at our first conference was quite an achievement! We also felt strongly that any democratic workplace (such as 100% worker owned ESOPs (Employee Stock Ownership Companies) and democratically run nonprofits) was welcome.

How Tens Of Thousands Of Graduate Workers Are Organizing

May 30, 2024 Valentina Luketa, Labor Notes. Organize! Graduate Students, Higher Education, Labor Movement, Unions, Worker Rights and Jobs

It’s the biggest organizing wave the U.S. labor movement has seen in decades. Graduate workers are unionizing in huge numbers, winning drive after drive with 90 percent support or more. What’s more, the workers are in the driver’s seat of these campaigns, with little help from union staff. Most union organizing these days relies on a staff-heavy approach that’s tough to scale up. But the grad worker upsurge offers a sketch of a worker-led model that could help reverse labor’s decline. The United Electrical Workers (UE) alone has organized close to 30,000 graduate workers over the past year and a half. We’ve won elections at eight major universities, including MIT and the University of Minnesota.

Over 400 Physicians From Delaware’s Christiana Care Move To Unionize

May 29, 2024 Jennifer Henderson, MedPage Today. Organize! Delaware, Doctors, Health Care, Unions, Worker Rights and Jobs

More than 400 physicians from Delaware's Christiana Hospital, Wilmington Hospital, and Middletown Free-standing Emergency Department -- all part of the ChristianaCare health system -- filed to unionize with Doctors Council SEIU Local 10MD. "If successful, this will be the first physician union in Delaware and the first union of any kind at ChristianaCare," Doctors Council SEIU said in an announcement of the filing, which pointed to the ongoing corporatization of medicine as driving the physicians' efforts. Some of the specific concerns that physicians detailed in regard to their filing included understaffing and inadequate resources, corporate influence on medical decision making, limited input in matters affecting patient care and physician safety and autonomy, and moral injury caused by pressure to place profit over patients.

Organizing One Of The Largest Black Led Unions In The United States

May 28, 2024 Keith Kelleher, The Forge. Organize! Black Working Class, History, Labor Movement, The South, Unions, Worker Rights and Jobs

McMaid workers, led by Irma Sherman, Doris Gould, Juanita Hill, and Mary Williamson, transformed labor organizing by successfully unionizing homecare workers in Chicago in 1984, setting the groundwork for the largest union in the Midwest, and catalyzing the organizing of a field predominately staffed by working-class Black and brown women. In Part One, the McMaid homecare workers, with their union, United Labor Unions Local 880, a small, independent union founded by ACORN, the national community organization, overcame an intense anti-union campaign by management to win a solid union election victory in January, 1984. But even more obstacles lay ahead in their fight for Justice.

UAW Admits Digital Heavy, Organizing Committee Light Approach Failed Them

May 27, 2024 Mike Elk, Payday Report. Organize! Alabama, Mercedes-Benz, The South, union busting, Unions, United Auto Workers (UAW), Worker Rights and Jobs

Rather than using traditional organizing committee structures, the UAW relied heavily on digital meetings, a light staff approach from the international union, and getting workers to sign union cards via QR codes. Given the positive media coverage of the UAW in the “Stand Up Strike,” many UAW leaders were confident they could win using this approach. After filing with 70%, the UAW believed they would maintain their margin and win at similar margins to the 73% victory of UAW workers in Chattanooga. However, the UAW lost 44%-56% in Alabama amid charges that the company used backroom manipulation tactics against workers.

Unity Through Resistance: 3,000 Pro-Palestine Activists Converge In Detroit

May 25, 2024 People's Dispatch. Organize! Detroit, Gaza, Genocide, Michigan, Palestine, Palestine Solidarity

With 3,000 people and hundreds of pro-Palestine organizations converging in a metropolitan area with the largest concentration of Arab Americans, amidst the largest movement for Palestine in US history, the People’s Conference for Palestine feels nothing short of historic. “Eternal glory to our martyrs, speedy recovery to our wounded, and freedom for our steadfast prisoners,” Mohammed Nabulsi, leader in the Palestinian Youth Movement in Houston, Texas, opened the conference with these explicitly revolutionary invocations on the first day on Friday, May 24. “In the last eight months, we, the Palestinian people, have demonstrated to the entire world, that the only way we can author our own history, and transform our present reality, is the path of unity through resistance.”

How Workers Are Revolutionizing The South

May 25, 2024 David McCall, ZNetwork. Organize! Labor Movement, The South, Unions, Worker Rights and Jobs

Donneta Williams, president of United Steelworkers (USW) Local 1025 and a longtime optical fiber maker at the Corning plant in Wilmington, North Carolina, knows how important it is for workers intent on forming a union to speak directly with peers who walk in the same shoes. So Williams agreed to send three of her colleagues to Corning’s Tarboro facility, about 145 miles away, when workers at that site approached the union with questions about organizing. Local 1025 members shared firsthand accounts of how the union boosted their wages, gave them a voice, and kept them safe on the job. And in May 2024, the workers at Tarboro filed for an election to join the USW.

Essential Voices For The Turn Away From Car Dependency

May 24, 2024 Bart Hawkins Kreps, Resilience. Organize! Car-Free Community, Disability Rights, Transportation, Urban Design

In forward-thinking municipalities across North America, elected officials and staff members can learn important lessons by taking on the Week Without Driving Challenge. As Anna Letitia Zivarts describes it, “participants have to try to get around for a week without driving. They can take transit, walk, roll, bike, or ask or pay for rides as they try to keep to their regular schedules ….” In most municipalities, the challenge leads to a difficult but eye-opening week. That’s because in most areas getting around without driving is inconvenient, dangerous, very time-consuming, or next to impossible. As Zivarts writes, Even for participants who might already bike, walk or take transit for some of their weekly trips, we’ve heard that the experience has helped them comprehend the difference between taking the easy trips and taking all trips without driving.

How Reformers Doubled Vermont AFL-CIO Membership

May 23, 2024 Gordon Simmons, Labor Notes. Organize! AFL-CIO, Book Review, Labor Movement, Unions, Vermont, Worker Rights and Jobs

Transforming an existing union into a more democratic and member-run organization has often proven to be a daunting—though possible—task. The pressing need to revitalize organized labor in the U.S., however, depends on such movements. Beginning in 2017, a slate of reform-minded union activists won leadership offices in the Vermont state federation of labor, reinvigorating that organization. Within just a few years, the federation’s membership doubled. Insurgent Labor: The Vermont AFL-CIO, 2017-2023 is two-term president David Van Deusen’s participant-retelling of the emergence of the UNITED reform group.

Weaving A Feminist Movement

May 22, 2024 Panthea Lee, In These Times. Organize! Art, India, Patriarchy, Women's Activism

Artist Indu Antony was enjoying conversation over chai at a women’s center in Bengaluru, India, when an angry man walked in. He tore a piece of art off the wall, took a lighter from his pocket, and set it on fire. Antony’s companions recognized the man as a local official in a right-wing political party; they scampered away. “This is a center that is attacking men,” the official fumed. It was three in the afternoon, and Antony smelled a day’s worth of drink on his breath. “You cannot burn our stories,” Antony shot back. The man’s eyes flared; he was not used to being challenged. The two went back and forth, debating the community center she had founded: Is something created for women inherently against men?

Strengthening Our Movement In Times Of Crisis

May 20, 2024 Palestinian Youth Movement, People's Dispatch. Organize! Conference, Israel, Palestine, Palestine Solidarity

Two hundred days into the Zionist war of aggression on Gaza, the Palestinian struggle is in the midst of a critical conjuncture. For months, organizations in North America have been strengthening and leading a mass movement to advance the cause of Palestinian national liberation from within the imperial core. The popular and revolutionary character of the movement has been borne out by the millions marching in the streets, direct actions across all major cities, new and newly-energized sector-based organizing and campaigns, victories across ideological and media struggle, and most recently, student encampments demanding divestment in the universities and colleges.

Won’t You Please Come To Chicago?

May 20, 2024 Ann Garrison, Black Agenda Report. Organize! Chicago, Democrats, DNC, Illinois, Mass Action

Students are protesting Biden and Netanyahu’s war on Gaza all over the City of Chicago while city, state, and Democratic Party officials worry about what it portends for the Democratic National Convention (DNC) scheduled for August 19 to August 23. Comparisons to Chicago 1968 are common, and the city’s police will be supported by Secret Service, FBI, Homeland Security, and neighboring police departments. Chicago Police Superintendent Larry Snelling is frequently interviewed about preparations, and he says, “We’re the Chicago Police. We’re ready.” Politico warned that Mayor Brandon Johnson “unabashedly sympathizes with the protesters,” while the World Socialist Website accused him of deploying SWAT teams against peaceful, anti-genocide protestors at the Chicago Art Institute.

US Undergrads Are Getting A Crash Course In Labor Organizing

May 20, 2024 James Anderson, Truthout. Organize! Higher Education, Student organizing, Student Workers, Unions, Worker Rights and Jobs

When Grinnell College wanted to begin compensating community advisors (CA), who work to provide students living in residence halls with programming and support for personal and academic issues, on an hourly basis, undergraduates at the private liberal arts school in Iowa took collective action. They went on strike at the end of the spring semester in 2023. Hannah Sweet, a third-year student at the school who works as a CA, opposed the change because it would have amounted to a substantial pay cut given the 24/7 nature of the job. “One of the main things we did was we performed ‘structure tests’ leading up to the strike date,” said Sweet, who’s now co-president of the Union of Grinnell Student Dining Workers (UGSDW), which now represents all undergrad labor on campus.

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