Union Organizing for People With Jobs

PA

Feb 1, 2022 • 29 min read

I wrote this booklet because I hate your boss, and I think you probably do too. I want to give you and your coworkers tools to start a radical fighting union and get more money/safety/respect for less work, as soon as possible. UO4PWJ is short and to the point because working people don’t have extra time.

Part 0: Build Trust, Fight Kyriarchy

The most important part of organizing a union at our workplace is to build friendly, trusting relationships with our coworkers.

Today, we live in a society based on patronage. I work for my boss and give other people things, so that other people will do work for me and give me things. Patronage teaches methat I should only do things for other people if there's going to be something in it for me. It also teaches me that we don't have anything in common, we're all merely individuals in competition with each other. But in reality, we're all in this together, and we have a lot more to gain by cooperating with each other instead of competing. Our goal is to live in a society based on solidarity.

Solidarity is not an abstract political idea or ideological tool. Solidarity is giving our coworker a ride to their doctor's appointment because their car broke down. It's getting to know people. Shit like hanging out with coworkers, whether in groups or even just one-on-one for a few minutes while waiting at the same bus stop. Asking someone how they're doing, listening to them vent, or buying them a cup of coffee. Solidarity is a man calling out his boss for saying something misogynist when there are no women around.

Solidarity means having someone's back without expecting anything in return. Sometimes it even means having someone's back when we stand to lose something. It means looking for the best in people, and showing them that you see it in a way that makes them want to fight boldly towards their own liberation. It's also the recognition that all of our destinies are tied together: a victory for one is a victory for all! Solidarity is the practice of focusing on people's needs before assigning them duties.

Hand-in-hand with this is the necessity of our movement fighting against bigotry and the kyriarchy. The kyriarchy is a catch-all term for different spokes which make up the intersectional wheel of racism, misogyny, homophobia, ableism, ageism, transphobia, classism, colonialism, and the many other fucked up things which crush us on a daily basis. These privileges & marginalizations assigned to various people serve a practical purpose within capitalism: to keep the people divided. In our daily struggles, many of the cleverest ideas come from marginalized comrades. And none of your colleagues will fully trust you if you allow even one of them to be oppressed.

Ending oppression is at the core of what we are doing here. To dismiss combating kyriarchy as unimportant, or of secondary importance, would be a massive mistake, and has been the primary failure of the labor movement so far. Fighting racism, misogyny, homophobia, ableism, and other types of workplace oppression and marginalization is no less important than fighting for raises, and will probably be far more important in most cases.

When we focus on friendliness and mutual respect, along with transparent, honest communication and fighting bigotry, mutual trust will naturally follow. To build a union, you and your coworkers don't all have to like each other, but you have to trust each other. None of the information in this zine will be useful if your coworkers don't trust you, and they won't trust you if you don't respect them. But with trust in each other and a plan of action, nothing can stop you.

Part 1: Start Asking Questions

Why unionize? Starting a union is the most effective way to turn the balance of power in the workplace against your boss. If you want more control over your daily life, cooperating with your coworkers against your boss by unionizing is the best & fastest way to get there. Unionized workers have, on average, higher pay, morale, and job retention, and it is more difficult for them to be arbitrarily fired or laid off. They generally have more control over scheduling and stronger workplace safety standards.

What is a union? A union is 2+ workers acting together to change their workplace. A union doesn’t need recognition from the government, or your boss, or any other, larger unions. Although these things can be good long term goals, the very first unions obviously didn’t have them. Early unions started from small groups of workers deciding they had had enough, that something had to be done, and that they were the only ones who were going to do it. No one told them to do it, in fact, a lot of people told them they couldn't do it. They did it anyway.

Unions began in the middle of the 19th century as secret organizations of workers uniting against workplace abuse, lousy pay, dangerous conditions, long hours, workplace harassment & bigotry, and a million other problems. It took many years of unionists facing violence, imprisonment, financial hardship & death, but ultimately their struggles and sacrifices brought us many things which we now take for granted. They fought for first the 12, then the 8 hour workday – and when they won that, they kept fighting for the 4-hour workday, which we'll accomplish soon. From the creation of workplace safety standards, and retirement plans, to the end of child labor, and legal racial/gender discrimination in the workplace, the historic labor movement achieved massive advances for working people, some of which still benefit us today.

In the 1920’s and 30’s, strong unions controlled hiring and firing across their whole industries, and built apartment buildings for union members to live in. This was cut back by the ruling class with the red scare in the 1950's, and then the Reagan-era attacks on labor in the 1980's. But we can have all of this again when we build a new, stronger, resurgent labor movement. All it takes is a few secret organizations of workers taking a stand against capitalism. There is power in a group of working folks.

Solidarity unionism is the practice of building democratic unions from the bottom up. Those of us practicing solidarity unionism don’t focus on negotiating a contract with management like, say, more traditional trade unionism. We don’t have expensive union dues or a ton of bureaucrats. We don’t even need to organize with anyone beyond our own workplace if we don’t want to. We’re just ordinary working people struggling so that we can all have better lives. We believe that workers on the shop floor know how to do their jobs better than anyone else. As a result, we should be collectively making the decisions around our workplaces.

As workplace organizers, our most effective tool is asking our coworkers questions. Here are the most important:

“What would change if you were in charge?”

“Who benefits from that?”

“Do you think that’s right?”

“How are we going to change it?”

Part 2: Record Everything

From now on, you’re going to record everything that happens at work. Get a notebook and write down every significant interaction you have with management. Send email copies of the entries to yourself so you have timestamps for later. Record things that may seem mundane, because what you’re doing here is establishing patterns while also covering your butt.

Recording everything gives you evidence of a timeline of your workplace campaign. You can use this evidence later in many unexpected ways. If your boss is inconsistent, for example, you can prove that he said one thing and then reneged on it.

Here’s a scenario to illustrate the importance of recording interactions: One day, your boss says you’re all no longer allowed to use your phones on the shop floor anymore. You write it down. The next day, all your coworkers are still using their phones as normal, including your manager. You write that down. Your boss never really follows up about it or says anything. You write that down too. Months later, one of your coworkers is fired for union organizing, but the boss uses the excuse that he was using his phone on the shop floor. Since you have a record of no one following this policy for months, including managers, you can present this as evidence to the NLRB in a wrongful termination suit.

Part 3: 1:1’s and Meetings

A one-on-one (1:1) meeting is just a conversation between you and a coworker. Ideally, they happen outside of work. Don’t mention the word "union" at work. Be clear that this is not a date. Say something like “hey, do you want to hang out later and talk about some of this shit [insert stupid work policy]?”

This is one of the main ways we build a union, especially early on. In a 1:1 you should ideally be talking 20% of the time and listening 80% of the time. Also, it shouldn’t last for more than about an hour. In general, 2 hours should be a hard limit for any union meeting (including a 15 minute break in the middle -- this break is non-optional as it is necessary for many people, including disabled folks), and 1 hour is usually more useful. In any kind of meeting, using time wisely is extremely important. We’re all already tired and overworked. Asking people to take extra time out of their schedule is already kind of ridiculous. We should be humbly and respectfully grateful for this time, and recognize our coworkers' strength for taking time out of their day to show up and make the world a better place.

Don’t drink a bunch or smoke hella weed or anything silly like that. We don’t want anyone to get braggadocious, or agree to something while they’re drunk and then feel manipulated later. We’re not hanging out. We can hang out immediately afterwards, but make a clear space for an organized conversation about work. Coffee/tea and snacks are good though. Sharing food and music builds trust between people.

You should take some kind of notes. A meeting is different from an informal conversation because a meeting has an agenda beforehand, and notes taken for afterwards. You can also use these notes to show your coworkers examples of the social charting/workplace mapping you’re doing (see parts 5 & 6) to show what you’re doing.

Larger meetings: Ultimately, the point of having 1:1’s with your coworkers is, of course, to form a union and start having union meetings. Union meetings should be more formal than 1:1’s and have an appointed facilitator and separate note taker. Note that the facilitator is not in charge, presenting information, or telling anyone what to do. The facilitator is there to take stack*, support the group in staying on topic, address the role of privilege dynamics, and use time wisely. The notetaker is there to record how people voted, and write clear notes to communicate relevant information/what happened at the meeting to people who aren’t able to make it.

These tasks are crucially important to building unions and ending oppression and should be undertaken by fair, emotionally aware people. But to avoid the development of harmful power dynamics, these positions should also be regularly rotated. Ideally, everyone in the union should learn all the skills involved in running the union, for redundancy and transparency.

(*Taking stack is a tool of democratic decisionmaking which we typically aren't taught in this oppressive society. Here it is in a nutshell: if someone decides they have something to say during a meeting, while someone else is talking, they raise their hand. The person who is taking stack then writes down their name. When the person who is currently speaking is done, the stack taker calls on the next person on the stack to speak.

A progressive stack involves pushing people with traditionally marginalized identities and perspectives to the "top of the stack" above those whose perspectives are more dominant in our culture. This can be a great way to make arrogant white dudes less likely to derail shit, while encouraging those who are wary of speaking up due to the constant bigotry in society.

However, a progressive stack must be approached with care, as it also involves necessitating that people out themselves as queer, trans, disabled, an immigrant, or marginalized in some other invisible way that they don't wish to be public about. Progressive stacks can be contentious and/or alienating to some people, but enacting their spirit, if not letter, is ultimately crucially important to building a culture of liberation. A lot of how you proceed here depends on the character of your specific workplace community.

As you can see, this is why choosing a good facilitator to take stack is important. You need to find someone who's aware of both privilege dynamics and people's emotions.

An in-depth analysis of these methods is beyond the scope of this zine. At the end, in the recommended reading section, are some links about meeting facilitation, taking stack, and other liberationary social tools.)

If coworkers of yours have children, it’s also important to offer childcare so working parents can make the meeting. Having food and coffee/tea at your meetings is extremely cool and will make your campaign much stronger. Looping in with food/drinks, a larger meeting should start & end with some kind of group centering exercise that contributes to a sense of community & welfare between the people present. This will look like very different things in different workplaces and communities. But it’s really important to build trust & unity in the group. Union meetings are as much about building emotional connections as much as practical concerns.

A meeting needs an agenda. It’s good to set up the agenda in some kind of google doc so people can contribute to it in the leadup to the meeting. An agenda means discussing & determining concrete goals & outcomes of previous actions. Start and end on time. Informal talking is OK afterwards, but don’t make hard decisions. A meeting is not a conversation, because a meeting has notes and a facilitator. A conversation is not a meeting, because it is not transparently accessible to union members not present, and it is not a space for formal, democratic decisionmaking.

When you begin discussing an agenda item, decide how long you will talk about it, and actually stick to it by using a timer. It's rare that agenda items truly need more than 10 minutes of discussion. Use meeting time wisely. It is possibly the most valuable resource we have.

Encourage people who are generally long winded to keep it short, and support people who are usually stay quiet to speak up. Build a culture that supports progressive attitudes towards questioning narratives, uplifting traditionally silenced perspectives, unorthodox thinking & liberated, nonviolent communication. Face conflict with serenity & trust.

If your meetings are regularly going beyond 2 hours they need better facilitation. You're not going to accomplish much with poor facilitation, no matter how much time you spend in meetings. Meetings going on for too long will sap energy from your campaign. Avoid long meetings at all costs. Prioritize agenda items so you talk about anything time sensitive first. Be honest with yourselves: most things can wait until the next meeting. Treating everything as a crisis is a form of toxic urgency.

It's almost always better to deal with something next week than it is to make everyone stay later than planned at a meeting. By the same token, make sure your meetings start on time. Activist meetings starting late is a bad, boring stereotype. It's fine if individuals show up late, but formal meetings with facilitators should start sharply at their posted time. If your meetings are regularly starting late, address the problem, don't accept it. People have other appointments, they have to make it to their shifts, or go to sleep, or pick up relatives, or take medications. The entire point of what we're doing here is getting more free time for working class people. Don't waste people's time. Do not waste people's time.

Part 4: AEIOU

This is a way to remember a good general flow that a 1:1 conversation could follow. AEIOU: Agitate, Educate, Inoculate, Organize, Understand.

Agitate: The idea is to get fired up with our coworker about a situation at work that’s currently fucking up both of our lives. Sometimes you might have to ask a couple questions to figure out exactly the best workplace issue to push someone on. “Better hours, wages, and conditions” is a little too abstract sometimes. Everyone already wants more money for less work. What we wanna do is to find how our coworker is emotionally impacted by specific problems at work.

When talking about pay, it’s not just about dollars. It’s about fixing our shitboxes so we can keep driving to work in the first place. It’s about how this place isn’t going under if they pay us more. It’s about how it sucks that even though we all work so hard, we’re still living paycheck to paycheck.

When talking about scheduling, it’s not just about time. It’s about family events we’re missing out on. It’s about how tired we are from working with less than 8 off hours between shifts. It’s about the stress of not knowing your schedule in advance.

When talking about conditions, it’s not just about compliance with labor law. It’s about keeping fingers. It’s about confronting bigotry, violence, and sexual harassment in the workplace. It’s about how we all deserve safety, respect, & dignity.

Educate: Suggest a solution to the problem that all of us coworkers could accomplish together. (See Part 7, Workplace Tactics). Or tell a story about a successful union campaign in our industry (See Part 8, Stories). Agitation poses a problem, and education demonstrates how we think solidarity unionism can solve that problem.

Ask people to imagine how their workplace could be different. Who has the power to resolve these issues? Why aren't they? How can we take the power to resolve these issues ourselves?

Inoculate: We don’t want to get anyone fired. The whole point is to make more money. As a result, we don’t want to get people so riled up that they do anything hasty. So, we “inoculate” by discussing the very bad things that can & do happen as a result of union organizing. But, we also discuss some plans we have for dealing with those setbacks.

This serves two purposes. One, we give people realistic expectations and don’t set their hopes too high. Two, we also show that we have seriously thought these things through, and have not just a plan, but we’ve considered how that plan might go wrong, then made backup plans.

People don’t want to get fired. This is a realistic fear because people get fired all the time for union organizing. There are things you can do after getting fired, but they’re all a pain in the ass. No one wants to get fired. You’re inherently asking people to risk getting fired, but it’s so that all of you can live a better life. Think of ways to address this natural anxiety beforehand, but be realistic. Don’t act as though what you’re doing is without risks. But you’re already taking risks by coming in to work anyway. The boss can already fire anyone right now. A union could protect people from being fired, and control hiring.

Prepare people for union busting, and what the boss will say about unions.

Organize: Ask our coworker to take on a concrete task related to organizing the workplace, such as:

- having a 1:1 with a coworker they get along with, but you don’t know very well.

- developing a social chart or workplace map of their section

- it can even be meeting up and having another 1:1

Giving people tasks is crucial, not only because it makes them feel wanted and included, but also because sometimes they actually do them!

It’s extremely important to check in with people like a week or two later and see if they did the task. Approach it casually and nonjudgmentally because we’re all busy and they probably didn’t do it. If they did it, that’s awesome. If they didn’t, they just need some support, or maybe a different task. Nothing wrong with that.

Understand: Here we pause and take stock of the workplace situation and what we’ve learned. We think about whether it’s time to escalate the situation, or if our coworker isn’t quite fired up enough. Escalating could mean something like asking our coworker to take out a union card and/or commit to taking part in a workplace action, or voting “Yes” in a union election. But if they don’t seem interested, then you circle back up to agitation and repeat the whole process as necessary (possibly/probably in a future 1:1).

Escalating things is important, however, because if you don’t, you’re not organizing. If your coworkers just see you forming committees and having endless meetings, but not actually accomplishing things, they’ll start to lose confidence in the union campaign.

After you have a 1:1, take notes on what you talked about as soon as possible afterwards, what the person seemed to feel, &c. (see Part 2: Record Everything).

Part 5: Workplace Mapping & Social Charting

Draw a map of the place you work. Mark things like where the managers usually hang out, where the security cameras are, where all the vehicles are parked, where all of the exits and entrances are. Where could we have a secret conversation with our coworkers, without being seen talking together on a camera? In the event of a strike, what could we block with a picket line? A loading dock, or a drive-thru lane? Or should we picket a block away, because that would have much higher visibility? If we march on the boss's office, is there an easy way for him to run outside?

Now you’re going to draw a map of the relationships between people in your work.

Social Charting has several purposes. Primarily, it tracks how information flows around the workplace. It allows us to see both formal and informal lines of communication in the workplace. An example of formal communication could be a manager meeting, and informal communication could be social conversations or gossip outside of work.

Social charting answers questions like: Who drinks together after work? Who goes to football games together? Who plays DND together? Who in the workplace is friends outside of work? Who is a punk? Who is a communist? Who is a republican? Who are some people who just don’t get along with each other? Who is dating or married? Who in the workplace shares religious community?

Social charting also allows us to see how the identity of individual workers intersects with the workplace, and critically examine the ways our coworkers are variously privileged & marginalized. It is our most important duty to make sure that our organizing doesn’t reproduce any oppressive behavior. We are here to liberate all of our coworkers, and that means we start by supporting the most oppressed. When the most oppressed people get what they want, we all get what we want.

Social charting is also the foundation of relational security. By allowing us to visualize how information flows around the company, we can see who we should be organizing with first, and who we should avoid because they’ll probably talk to the boss. When you’re drawing up social charts, think about: who turns to whom for help when shit goes down? As we all know, this isn’t necessarily the formal workplace chain of command. Who talks to the bosses outside of work, because they’re family or friends? Avoid asking people like this to struggle against their boss because it puts them in a very awkward position.

Many workplaces have some individuals who wield informal social power for various reasons. We need to be aware of these people and the influence they can have, positively and/or negatively, on a unionization campaign. Anecdotally, I think in any given situation roughly 15% of people will do something positive, 15% of people will do something negative, and everyone else just does whatever the person next to them does. These aren’t meant to be exact numbers, just something to think about. We need to be very aware of people’s tendency to go along with the majority group dynamics, and take advantage of it rather than let it be used against us. Basically, I’m not saying organize the popular people first but like. Do think about how popular people will react if they’re not included.

Finally, social charting allows us to assemble contact information for all of our coworkers. It’s one of the many power imbalances inherent to the workplace which we often don’t think about. Our boss typically has all of our phone numbers, email addresses, home addresses, and sometimes more (social media, etc). But we don’t necessarily have efficient ways of getting in touch with all of our coworkers. A good social chart includes some kind of contact list as well.

Part 6: Escalation Strategy

Going public too early is bad for a lot of reasons. It’s very, very important to keep the union a secret at first. As soon as management knows there is a union campaign, they will start working to shut it down. If you go public with your union without reaching out to certain coworkers, they could feel left out and, best case scenario, be less interested in working with you in the future.

When planning an action, consider the Issue, Demand, and Goal.

Issue: What is the specific, immediate problem?

Demand: What could the boss do to fix the situation?

Goal: What is the desired outcome beyond the demand? Such as growing campaign strength by showing your coworkers the union accomplishing things, or setting the boss up to deny your reasonable demands so they look like an asshole, etc.

Target: Who specifically are you demanding do something? The big boss, shift supervisor, company stockholders, general public, etc.

Tactic: How are you going to make the target do what you want? (see Part 7: Workplace Tactics) What is the most effective for the least energy/resources?

Participants: Organized coworkers who are actively taking part in the action, possibly outside organizers or community members.

Witnesses: Other coworkers who aren’t involved in the union campaign, community bystanders/customers, anyone else who may be present but isn’t directly involved.

Results: What happened? Did you win or receive an acceptable/good faith counter-offer?

Follow-up: After the action has taken place, follow up with participants and witnesses to see how the action impacted them. Also, following up with the target to ensure that they keep any promises they made in response to your action. Also think about what you would do better next time. One of the greatest experiences of any unionist is "following up on a successful action" by going around the workplace, handing out the bonus checks you all just won.

Escalation: If the demand is not met, what steps will you take to increase pressure on the target? Different tactic? Same tactic with more participants or a different target?

Part 7: Workplace Tactics

These are arranged roughly from higher intensity to lower intensity. But when adapting them to your workplace/specific situation, think about things like: would your boss be more upset by a loss in profits or being publicly embarrassed? Would talking shit in yelp/glassdoor reviews have an effect, or just annoy them? Would they be more uncomfortable with people flyering outside the business for a long time, or completely stopping work for a short time? Filing an Unfair Labor Practice with the National Labor Relations Board, or having all of your coworkers call in sick on the same day?

Be cautious. Be smart. Don't get caught.

Slowdown: A lot of tactics are a variation on this. Do your job, but slower.

Work-to-rule or Good work strike: Follow every single workplace rule and policy that exists. Even the ones that don't make sense, or contradict the other ones, and slow everything down (especially those ones).

Sitdown Strike: This is when you stop working but, like, only for half an hour or so, just to give your boss a good scare. Like imagine if everyone took an unplanned lunch break all at once to protest some new, stupid rule.

Information Denial: "Damn dude, we just cannot find those crucially important files and it's delaying everything." "Damn dude, looks like the security cameras were off that whole time." "Damn dude, I have no idea where Sarah is right now."

Salts: Find an unemployed friend who is sympathetic to the union campaign. Help them get them a job at your workplace.

Good Organizer, Bad Organizer: One unionist is a bit obvious about their support of the union campaign (only after you’ve already gone public) — the “bad” organizer. Another pretends to dislike the union, and suck up to management — the “good” organizer. The role of the bad organizer is to attract attention away from anyone else organizing in the workplace, including the good organizer. The role of the good organizer is to be a double agent — getting info from management by pretending to be loyal, while feeding them bad info, misdirecting them by pretending to take actions against the union, etc.

Public shaming: Leave a bunch of shitty reviews on google/yelp etc and encourage friends/community members to do so as well. Post all over social media, reach out to other local businesses & media, anything you can think of.

Phone zap: Similar to above, organize community members to call in to your business (or your boss's phone directly) at the same time and complain about your issue.

Sick-out: Everyone calls in sick on the same day.

Information Acquisition: I don't know if you know about this, but it's really easy to pretend to be someone you're not on the internet. You could pretend to be a potential client, or an angry customer, or a union busting firm (after the union has gone public, of course) and get in touch with your boss, or a manager. Your boss might say all kinds of interesting shit that they wouldn't say to one of their employees. Think laterally. When you clean offices and have all the keys, you can take pictures of some important documents.

March on the Boss: Everyone stops working for a minute, interrupts whatever your boss is doing, and presents them with a list of demands signed by as many coworkers as you can get. Be dramatic!

Boycott: Call for community members to stop supporting the business until your demands are met.

Souvenirs: What if someone accidentally took some important keys, or parts, or tools and lost them? And then no one could get anything done the next day? Shit, whoops.

Strike: Long term strikes are obviously the most intense tactic, which means they require the most preparation, effort, and sustained energy. One of the main purposes of unions, traditionally, has been to save up money for strike funds.

Picket line: This typically goes along with a strike and involves you and your coworkers forming a line outside your workplace, including protest banners/flags, union songs, and pamphlets about what you're doing to hand out to people. Getting people trained up on marshaling a protest (keeping an eye out for nonsense, being ready to talk down pigs/hired goons [but I repeat myself] and angry managers) is very important but beyond the scope of this zine.

Selective Strike: Only going on strike every other day, or every few days, to prevent your bosses from hiring scabs.

Workplace occupation: For those who don't want to ask, and would rather just take. Ultimately, as solidarity unionists our final goal is simple: strike, occupy, takeover. In a liberated workplace without bosses, we can do whatever we want, keep all the money, and split it up between us. The workplace already belongs to the workers — take it back!

Do whatever you and your co-workers think is necessary in order to achieve your union's demands. Make up new tactics, outsmart the bosses, inspire the rest of us!

Part 8: Stories

Besides asking questions, the next most important tool we have is telling stories. Stories are how we connect what’s happening in our lives to the larger struggle, and how we learn from what others have achieved. Stories are much, much more important than economic theories, because they’re grounded in real life.

Here’s a story. A few years back some folks who worked at a burger place decided they deserved more. Traditional unions had always said that unionizing the fast food industry was impossible, so they weren’t any help. It took years of struggle, several successful strikes, and long contract negotiations. The picket lines were threatened by neo-nazis and the burger restaurant’s hired goons. But finally, the Burgerville Workers’ Union (BVWU) got what they wanted: regular raises for all employees + tip jars, a guaranteed schedule three months out, and their employer stopped collaborating with the immigration secret police, among many other things.

Here’s a story. Back in the 20’s and 30’s, unions built huge apartment buildings for their members to live in for free. Unions ran entire mill towns as collective enterprises. Everyone hired in particular industries had to be hired through specific union halls. Many workers today don’t know how much we’ve lost — even simple pleasures, like the ability to talk shit about the companies we work for without worrying about getting fired.

Here's a story. During the Spanish Civil War, the transit workers' union assumed direct control of all of the streetcars and buses in the city. They improved pay, instituted democratic worker control of the shops & stations, & significantly expanded service — even in the context of wartime shortages of tools & materials.

Here’s another story. A hot shop is what we call a workplace where people are real upset already. Maybe a lot of the workers already want to quit. Lots of union nerds like to say that we should avoid organizing hot shops because these campaigns often fail. And they do often fail. But isn’t it true that the first unions were founded in shops hotter than we can possibly imagine? Where people worked 16 hour days and regularly died in blast furnaces, or suffocated in textile mills? We shouldn’t underestimate ourselves. And if a union campaign fails, what happens? Weren’t most people going to quit anyway?

If we organize workers, rather than jobs, then those workers can go on to start campaigns at every future job they have. We are a light, fast, hard-hitting resistance to the employers’ slow-moving authoritarian bureaucracy. We are black cats who thrive on fucking shit up from the shadows. Every day there are more of us. And we are winning.

Part 9: Labor Law

I AM NOT A LAWYER. THIS IS NOT LEGAL ADVICE. THIS IS PURELY INFORMATIONAL AND SHAKY AT BEST. DO YOUR OWN RESEARCH!

ALWAYS REMEMBER THAT LABOR LAW IS DESIGNED TO KEEP WORKERS WORKING!

Know your federal, state, county, and city labor laws. Some are better than you might think (many are worse than you might think...). It’s a mess out there, and most bosses rely on the overly complex system, and their workers’ inability to engage with it, to keep exploiting people. Essentially everyone I've ever talked to, and every workplace I've ever seen, had several labor law violations going on at any given time. Most workers are either ignorant of some of their labor rights, or don't have a workable plan of action to enforce them. Be part of that workable plan of action.

You have the right to form a union. If you register your union campaign with the NLRB (National Labor Relations Board), they will hold an election at your workplace. If 50%+ of the employees vote to form a union, then your union will be federally recognized and good stuff will happen. Maybe. Always remember that the NLRB is not on your side. They exist to give us the bare minimum labor rights so we don’t revolt. Sometimes we can take advantage of these laws but they are not the source of our power and we shouldn’t rely on them. Just like the rest of the legal system okay sorry for being an anarchist weirdo

Even if you haven’t filed paperwork with the NLRB, if you are fired for activity relating to unionizing and you can prove it (see 2: Record Everything) then you can file for a wrongful termination suit with the NLRB. This is a long and drawn out process that could take 1-2+ years. However, if the NLRB decides to take on your case, they will be your lawyer and sue your boss for you. They only take on a case if they know they can win. So if you get to this point, they always win, but it still takes a long time.

There are other things the NLRB can help with but that’s outside the scope of this zine. This stuff takes forever and you can accomplish a lot more, a lot faster, through direct action with your coworkers. Direct action is the sword, labor law is the shield.

But the most important thing is that the NLRB does not create unions. The government didn’t create your rights, and it can’t take them away. Workers create unions. Sometimes, the government recognizes them and legally enforces your rights. But the most effective and important “union organizing” is always done informally, by coworkers venting to each other and figuring out proactive solutions together.

Part 10: Marxist Economics for People With Jobs

Back in the day a guy named Karl Marx wrote a lot of interesting shit. Later a guy named Bill Haywood shortened it to: “If one person has a dollar they didn’t work for, someone else worked for a dollar they didn’t get.” That’s most of what most people need to know about Marxist Theory. Workers don’t need jargon to know our bosses are assholes, we don’t need theory to know what our families need to live better, and we know how to do our jobs better than theorists who don’t have our jobs. The problem is already that we’re being told what to do, and our society develops fucked up situations because the people who are telling us what to do don’t understand our jobs. I have no time for a new system which keeps telling people what to do.

I’m not against theory, but most people on “the left” massively overemphasize it. Putting things into practice is more important. Oppose book worship! If you must study theory, you should at least study it in groups. We need more strong social groups capable of autonomous group self-education, and we need fewer highly educated individuals accomplishing nothing alone.

If you trade the hours of your life for money — and you’re not a pig, and you can't fire anyone — you’re a worker. We, the working class, built all this shit — all the houses, apartments, schools, roads, factories, cafes, shops. Without us showing up, none of it would work. But almost all of us have someone barking useless orders over us, taking the bulk of our paychecks in exchange for the privilege of yelling at us to do our jobs quickly, sloppily, and dangerously. I think we can take control of our lives and make everything better. We can work less, for more money, if we stop letting these dudes steal from us.

We built all this shit, but we didn’t build it to be broke next to billionaires. We didn’t build all this shit to live under bridges and in vans. We didn’t build all this shit so the military could blow up kids in Southwest Asia with flying robots. And we definitely didn’t build all this shit to die in a climate-change-induced superstorm while driving to some fucked up warehouse job that we had to pee in a jar to get in the first place.

Instead of an equitable profit sharing model, business owners take a high portion of the profits simply because they are owners and already had enough money to buy a business. This is a backward situation wherein 1. people who don’t work 2. steal money they don’t need 3. from people who do all the work. Capitalism is essentially the belief that, since it could be difficult to address this kind of theft, we should just give up and let bribery rule our entire society, and the least corrupt people will somehow rise to the top through some method which is never explained. I think that's bullshit. I think all of our lives would be better if we didn't live in a system that glorified greed. I think all of us know, in our hearts, not just that we deserve better, but that we can do better.

What do we have to show for all of the years we’ve worked? How long is this going to go on?

Was it right that your ancestors worked hard all their lives, just to die broke?

Do you wanna work like this for the rest of your life, just to be broke?

Do you want the next generation to work like this for all of their lives, just to still be fucking broke?

Capitalism tries to make us feel foolish and small — for not having a better "attitude," for being in debt, for not being a self-starter, for not not going to college, or if we did, for not studying the right degree — in short, for not working harder to build up other people's shit instead of our own — and that as a result we deserve the treatment we get.

But no one deserves to be treated like this. No one deserves to be poor. No one deserves to live without access to basic necessities. No one deserves to face bigotry at work. No one deserves to be arbitrarily ordered around and humiliated. No one deserves to be exposed to workplace racism, or disease, or unsafe temperatures, or toxic chemicals, or dangerous machinery, or managers who grab asses. No one deserves to live in this fucked up society. So we have to change it.

We aren't weak people being held down by the strong. We're strong people being held back by the weak.

Part 11: What Next?

Our ultimate goal is total liberation and social revolution through economic democracy — mass worker control of all workplaces, building a participatory planned economy capable of meaningfully responding to climate change by decolonizing so-called North America. This means workers firing all of the bosses and managers and pigs and landlords. Closing the banks and stock markets, disallowing people to price gouge food, water, clothing, & housing. Because if the majority controls the way these things are produced, then we can end the market-enforced scarcity which keeps 1 in 5 children in the USA from going to bed without enough food on the table, where at this very moment 1.5-2 million children are houseless. We can & must leave this world of precarity behind.

We want to see workers directly voting to determine their workplace’s budget, operations, salaries, schedules, policies, hiring, firing, & discipline — in short, for the first time ever, give the people the right to control their own destinies. There is no reason to let these assholes control our lives. We have the power. All we have to do is love and respect ourselves enough to take back what already belongs to us.

I came to organizing because I spent my whole life bailing on things and running away when they didn’t suit me — jobs, relationships, scenes, cities. Embarrassingly late, I realized I could never run far enough. If I wanted to live to see the stronger, kinder world which stands tall in my dreams, I had to turn around and fight.

Beyond the information in this booklet, I don’t know what needs to happen next. That’s partially for you, the person reading this right now, to figure out. I don’t know your life, your community, or your workplace, and there are so many things about all three which are totally unique. I don’t know what you need to get free. But I have absolutely no doubt that we will get free together. I promise you that in our lifetimes, we are going to build a world without fear. The fastest way to get to that world is doing things which have never been done before.

Please fight the system. There are other rebels out there. Ⓐ

— PA

An enormous thank you to all the people who helped me proofread this and/or otherwise contributed words and ideas, and an even bigger thank you to the people who did some of my dishes and/or cooked some of my food while I wrote it.

Further reading if you’re into that kind of thing:

iww.org.uk/resource/mapping-the-basics/

depts.washington.edu/labhist/

wsm.ie/c/howto-organise-meeting

techresources.shoestringcollective.com/collaborate/taking-stack/

https://chicagoiww.wordpress.com/rustys-rules-of-order-understanding-meeting-procedure-and-putting-ideas-into-action/

“Troublemaker's Handbook,” Edited by Jane Slaughter

“Labor Law for the Rank & Filer,” by Staughton Lynd

“Hammer and Hoe,” by Robin D.G. Kelley

“Democratic Confederalism,” by Abdullah Öcalan

"Combahee River Collective Statement," by the Combahee River Collective

"Blood In My Eye" by George Jackson