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We Are the Union: How Worker-to-Worker Organizing Is Revitalizing Labor and Winning Big
A riveting account of labor's bottom-up resurgence, providing a roadmap for workers, unions, and social movements to win widely.
After decades of union decline and rising inequality, an inspiring wave of workplace organizing—from Starbucks stores to Amazon warehouses to southern auto factories—has thrust unionization into the national spotlight. By analyzing this surge and telling the stories of the courageous workers driving it forward, We Are the Union makes a case for how to overcome business as usual in both corporate America and organized labor.
Eric Blanc shows that recent struggles have developed a new organizing model, worker-to-worker unionism, which builds scalable power by giving rank-and-filers an unprecedented degree of leadership. Through digital tools and ambitious campaigns, young worker leaders are turning the labor movement back into a movement—and they're winning. Rigorously researched and compellingly written, We Are the Union illustrates how this new grassroots approach can exponentially grow the power of working people to overcome economic exploitation, racial injustice, and authoritarianism at work and beyond.
After decades of union decline and rising inequality, an inspiring wave of workplace organizing—from Starbucks stores to Amazon warehouses to southern auto factories—has thrust unionization into the national spotlight. By analyzing this surge and telling the stories of the courageous workers driving it forward, We Are the Union makes a case for how to overcome business as usual in both corporate America and organized labor.
Eric Blanc shows that recent struggles have developed a new organizing model, worker-to-worker unionism, which builds scalable power by giving rank-and-filers an unprecedented degree of leadership. Through digital tools and ambitious campaigns, young worker leaders are turning the labor movement back into a movement—and they're winning. Rigorously researched and compellingly written, We Are the Union illustrates how this new grassroots approach can exponentially grow the power of working people to overcome economic exploitation, racial injustice, and authoritarianism at work and beyond.
- GenresLaborNonfictionPolitics
336 pages, Hardcover
Published February 18, 2025
34 people are currently reading
510 people want to read
About the author
Eric Blanc
13 books37 followersEric Blanc is a former high school teacher and currently a doctoral student at NYU Sociology. He has appeared on Democracy Now and writes for The Nation and The Guardian. During the Los Angeles, West Virginia, Oklahoma, Arizona, Denver, and Oakland public education strikes, Blanc has been Jacobin magazine’s on-the-ground correspondent.
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April 3, 2025We Are the Union: How Worker-to-Worker Organizing Is Revitalizing Labor and Winning Big, Eric Blanc, 2025
Author interview: https://www.currentaffairs.org/news/h...
Workers have recently scored wins against Amazon, the auto industry, and Starbucks, among others. 200,000 workers joined unions in 2023-2024.
The author interviewed hundreds of them.
They won not only concessions and better pay from their employers, but also community with their fellow workers. And learned how to assert themselves and stand up for themselves in all areas of their lives.
1. It starts with worker-to-worker organizing--not waiting until a big union offers an organizing campaign.
For help getting started, reach out to the Emergency Workplace Organizing Committee, https://workerorganizing.org/ , a project of the Democratic Socialists of America and the United Electrical Workers Union. Fill out a form on the website: an experienced organizer will get back to you within 72 hours.
2. Once you start organizing, you do need the resources of an established union to help you maintain the fight.
3. You have to be prepared for a long struggle to get a union contract, even after the union is recognized. Against the biggest corporations, this can take decades.
4. Even without a union contract, you can win concessions and better pay from your employer.
5. If your employer thinks you're weak, you'll win nothing. If your employer is scared, you can win.
6. Even losing a union-organizing drive at one employer may spark drives at other locations that may succeed.
Current Affairs article about Starbucks: https://www.currentaffairs.org/news/s...
See also the books by Jane McAlevey (1964-2024) https://www.goodreads.com/author/list...
Author interview: https://www.currentaffairs.org/news/h...
Workers have recently scored wins against Amazon, the auto industry, and Starbucks, among others. 200,000 workers joined unions in 2023-2024.
The author interviewed hundreds of them.
They won not only concessions and better pay from their employers, but also community with their fellow workers. And learned how to assert themselves and stand up for themselves in all areas of their lives.
1. It starts with worker-to-worker organizing--not waiting until a big union offers an organizing campaign.
For help getting started, reach out to the Emergency Workplace Organizing Committee, https://workerorganizing.org/ , a project of the Democratic Socialists of America and the United Electrical Workers Union. Fill out a form on the website: an experienced organizer will get back to you within 72 hours.
2. Once you start organizing, you do need the resources of an established union to help you maintain the fight.
3. You have to be prepared for a long struggle to get a union contract, even after the union is recognized. Against the biggest corporations, this can take decades.
4. Even without a union contract, you can win concessions and better pay from your employer.
5. If your employer thinks you're weak, you'll win nothing. If your employer is scared, you can win.
6. Even losing a union-organizing drive at one employer may spark drives at other locations that may succeed.
Current Affairs article about Starbucks: https://www.currentaffairs.org/news/s...
See also the books by Jane McAlevey (1964-2024) https://www.goodreads.com/author/list...
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July 21, 2025Totally persuasive imo. Incredible how easily organizing/solidarity stories/testimonies can bring me immediately to tears.
March 20, 2025
Must read for any worker. Genius, insightful, energizing!
June 4, 2025
A valuable book for those who are trying to organize unions or develop capacity if you have one already. I fundamentally agree with the idea that we need to engage in new ways to engage workers beyond simply functionalist ones that only focus on potential members or already existing members. The book makes a strong point about coalition building between unions and other communities. The last chapter on youth organizing shows strong connections between union efforts and those involved in #BLM and Bernie Sanders' campaigns. Furthermore, Blanc makes a great point, which many who have studied media activism before have also made, that workplaces are more dispersed than ever and fragmented. In order to reach out to the community and potential members, we need to create the structures that interest them whether it be by holding pizza parties, trivia nights, or film screenings, like we do here in Florida. People want events where they are not being pitched something but simply gathering together for the community and fun.
My only quip is the chapter on digital organizing, which is Blanc's weak point. He mischaracterizes much of the research on digital media activism by incorrectly citing Zeynep Tufecki as suggesting digital tools can only promote ephemeral protests. The real concern is if digital tools can be used to create strong bonds among strangers who have never met in-person or only meet in-person during a protest? The literature is fairly consistent that they cannot without on-the-ground organizing and community building. Many researchers and activists, including myself, have been incessantly suggesting that digital media activism needs to intersect with grassroots efforts, which Blanc does a fairly decent job illustrating through his examples. But the point that needs emphasis, which he implies but does not stress enough, is that digital tools are only useful when you have a strong grassroots movement building offline to mobilize upon them if you want to build a sustained movement. Even the cross-union solidarity that the book demonstrates that happens online is able to take place because the locals have more than the digital at their service; they have a workplace or a group of core organizers/supporters assisting.
Nonetheless, the book is a must read for every organizer or anyone interested in forming a union.
My only quip is the chapter on digital organizing, which is Blanc's weak point. He mischaracterizes much of the research on digital media activism by incorrectly citing Zeynep Tufecki as suggesting digital tools can only promote ephemeral protests. The real concern is if digital tools can be used to create strong bonds among strangers who have never met in-person or only meet in-person during a protest? The literature is fairly consistent that they cannot without on-the-ground organizing and community building. Many researchers and activists, including myself, have been incessantly suggesting that digital media activism needs to intersect with grassroots efforts, which Blanc does a fairly decent job illustrating through his examples. But the point that needs emphasis, which he implies but does not stress enough, is that digital tools are only useful when you have a strong grassroots movement building offline to mobilize upon them if you want to build a sustained movement. Even the cross-union solidarity that the book demonstrates that happens online is able to take place because the locals have more than the digital at their service; they have a workplace or a group of core organizers/supporters assisting.
Nonetheless, the book is a must read for every organizer or anyone interested in forming a union.
June 30, 2025
A book that shares some amazing stories and anecdotes about labor/labour organizing. There’s some excellent content about where to begin.
However, the book claims to be a guide for the first steps to organize your workplace. Although, I find it gets bogged down in the drawn out story telling, milieu of the different perspectives, and the vernacular within the union movement. Therefore, I think it may turn off people who want to read this as the author intends it.
As someone who’s been involved in the labour movement for awhile though. This is a good book, adds some good insights and makes for a good read.
However, the book claims to be a guide for the first steps to organize your workplace. Although, I find it gets bogged down in the drawn out story telling, milieu of the different perspectives, and the vernacular within the union movement. Therefore, I think it may turn off people who want to read this as the author intends it.
As someone who’s been involved in the labour movement for awhile though. This is a good book, adds some good insights and makes for a good read.
October 9, 2025
An excellent primer on worker-to-worker organizing. The author, who spoke to the MSEA Summer Leadership Conference this year, makes a convincing argument for the empowerment of workers to continue building momentum for unionization. Seeing today's decentralized environment as cost prohibitive for staff heavy efforts, he brings forth the successes, and failures, of worker-based movements.
He does wander into national politics more deeply in the last chapter, which I thought would have been better dedicated to more gritty details into how to organize. While the story is told in writing throughout, as a teacher I would have found a graphic organizer, action plan, project template and samples with timelines and actions helpful to bring it all together and coalesce into a true manual of organizing.
He does wander into national politics more deeply in the last chapter, which I thought would have been better dedicated to more gritty details into how to organize. While the story is told in writing throughout, as a teacher I would have found a graphic organizer, action plan, project template and samples with timelines and actions helpful to bring it all together and coalesce into a true manual of organizing.
April 8, 2025
A really great look at how workers are building union power themselves by organizing their coworkers (rather than build power from traditional, staff-heavy union campaigns). Includes great case-study examples with Starbucks Workers United, Amazon, Colectivo Coffee, and others. A must-read for the labor movement today.
May 30, 2025
Food for thought. Interesting case studies and an insight into the American organising context.
July 14, 2025
Blanc is novel, convincing, optimistic, and inspiring. His model of “worker-to-worker” organizing is well thought out and easily actionable. However, Blanc’s opinions on electoral politics are less radical than I hoped for but nuanced enough for an open dialogue. We Are The Union is necessary and we need more.
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