Ep 301 - Worker to Worker Unionism with Eric Blanc
Author and labor studies professor Eric Blanc talks about worker-led union organizing and why it is superior to the dominant model of staff-intensive unionism.
“You just can't get the type of mass movement we need by relying on staff. Even the best staff.”
Eric lays out some features of worker-to-worker organizing:
Workers are training other workers in the skills they need for a successful union drive.
Workers are self-organizing before they affiliate with a union. As a result, the relationship between worker and union is more of a partnership; not a relationship of deference.
Workers have decision-making power for the drive. They decide on strategy, tactics, even, perhaps, a political stance.
“One of the crucial turning points... that forced Starbucks to come to the bargaining table earlier this year, was the union came out for very strong stance around Palestine and solidarity with Gaza.
“And it created this knockoff effect that ended up leading to a mass boycott that hurt Starbucks to the tune of 11 billion dollars. And there's just no way that if workers hadn't been in the driving seat of this campaign, that they would have done such a risky thing very early on.”
Political activists will take away a lot from this conversation.
Eric Blanc is director of the Worker-to-Worker Collaborative and co-founder of the Emergency Workplace Organizing Committee. He is professor of labor studies at Rutgers University. He is also author of the substack Labor Politics, and author of the forthcoming monograph, "We Are the Union: How Worker-to-Worker Organizing is Revitalizing Labor and Winning Big" (UC Press, 2025)
Transcript
Have faith.
Eric Blanc:Have faith.
Steve Grumbine:Believe in your source.
Steve Grumbine:Have faith.
Eric Blanc:I refer often to Martin Luther King in the context of the civil rights movement.
Eric Blanc:He said, he said, I have no claim for the tranquilizing drugs or the.
Steve Grumbine:Tranquilizing drugs of gradualism and incrementalism.
Eric Blanc:Here's another episode of Macro and Cheese.
Steve Grumbine:With your host, Steve Grumbine.
Steve Grumbine:All right, folks, this is Steve with Macro and Cheese.
Steve Grumbine:We're back into the unions, folks, because let's, let's be fair.
Steve Grumbine:You've watched students at encampments around the country showing up to fight back against a genocide and the politics didn't listen.
Steve Grumbine:You've watched kids, you've watched people, you've watched pals, you've watched everyone go in the streets try to get attention.
Steve Grumbine:They haven't done it.
Steve Grumbine:They have not made changes.
Steve Grumbine:They're still going steady, strong with a full funding of the genocide in Gaza right now.
Steve Grumbine:And I'm like, okay, so where do we look?
Steve Grumbine:Where do we turn?
Steve Grumbine:How do we make change in a system that doesn't want to be changed, the system that doesn't have in system mechanisms that allow us to have agency to make the kind of changes, worker led, people led kind of changes.
Steve Grumbine:And so I have long since been putting my hope and my faith, if you will, into the labor movement which is trying to come back, trying to revitalize itself.
Steve Grumbine:We've seen blips and spurts across the country.
Steve Grumbine:We've seen Amazon workers, we've seen John Deere, we've seen teachers, we've seen all kinds of different movements of labor to show that there is a movement right now.
Steve Grumbine:UAW with Sean Fain, you've seen that movement.
Steve Grumbine:You've seen labor saying, hey, don't forget about us, we're still here.
Steve Grumbine:But the tactics of the past have been business unions, labor unions that are really about the business floor, really, not class struggle, not worker led.
Steve Grumbine:They tend to have that top down strategy.
Steve Grumbine:And folks, if you've ever been a part of a top down strategy type union, you've probably not been terribly thrilled by it.
Steve Grumbine:You haven't seen the kind of results over the years.
Steve Grumbine:And so this is why my guest today is so exciting.
Steve Grumbine:Eric Blanc, who is an author, we'll talk about his book here in a moment.
Steve Grumbine:But he's also director of the Worker to Worker Collaborative, co founder of the Emergency Workplace Organizing Committee, professor of Labor Studies at Rutgers University, author of the substack Labor Politics, and author of the forthcoming monograph We Are the Union How Worker to Worker Organizing.
Steve Grumbine:It is revitalizing labor and winning big.
Steve Grumbine: UC Press: Steve Grumbine:Without further ado, I want to just say hello to my guest, Eric Blanc.
Steve Grumbine:Welcome to the show, sir.
Eric Blanc:Yeah, thanks so much for having me on.
Steve Grumbine:Absolutely.
Steve Grumbine:You know, you are like the guy that I'm looking to for some hope here, man.
Steve Grumbine:I've read some of your work out there on Jacobin and some of the other interesting things you've written regarding worker to worker organizing.
Steve Grumbine:And I think that, you know, when I hear people talk about, hey, it's gotta be grassroots, hey, it's gotta be the people, hey, the union can't be beyond the people, the laborers, you gotta stay in step with them.
Steve Grumbine:And to see you talking about worker to worker, kind of grassroots organizing is conspiring.
Steve Grumbine:And I was wondering maybe you could talk a little bit about that.
Eric Blanc:Yeah.
Eric Blanc:The reality is that we are in really bleak times.
Eric Blanc:And I agree with you that labor movement is for me the major source of hope and potential for turning things around.
Eric Blanc:And the good news, it's not just sort of pie in the sky, but the labor movement actually does have momentum.
Eric Blanc: d it to, but we can see since: Eric Blanc:But it's calibrated for our new reality.
Eric Blanc:So it uses a lot of digital tools.
Eric Blanc:It's not just hard industry.
Eric Blanc:You know, we've seen auto workers and Amazon workers, but we've also seen graduate students, we've seen Starbucks workers and journalists, we've seen doctors organizing.
Eric Blanc:So it's really across the board, across the economy.
Eric Blanc:And the thing driving it forward is workers taking the initiative to organize their coworkers without having to wait for an established union to come in and sort of give them resources off the bat.
Eric Blanc:Oftentimes these drives start from below.
Eric Blanc:And then many times they'll connect with a union down the road because they want legal support and things like this.
Eric Blanc:But it's really workers driving it forward and it's workers training other workers across the country.
Eric Blanc:So in Starbucks, you know, you might remember they won one shop in Buffalo and then it set off a chain reaction and explosion and they didn't have enough staff to train like you would do in a standard model workers across the country.
Eric Blanc:So they had to let workers training over zoom other workers all across the US how to win and Organize.
Eric Blanc:And so you see this real effervescence of unionism.
Eric Blanc:We've seen it revitalizing unions like United Auto Workers.
Eric Blanc:And this, I think poses a way forward.
Eric Blanc:Unfortunately, most unions are not invested in this model yet.
Eric Blanc:Most unions aren't trying to put real resources into new organizing.
Eric Blanc:What happens to this movement really remains to be seen.
Eric Blanc:It's an open question whether the labor movement will seize this movement and kind of get pressured into seizing this movement from below before it's too late.
Steve Grumbine:You know, I talked to folks from the AFL CIO in Vermont and these guys are straight up ready to fight, man.
Steve Grumbine:They're, they're renegades and they've got a, a real can do spirit.
Steve Grumbine:And I've spoken to several members and it, and it gave me a lot of hope.
Steve Grumbine:And I've also talked to Joe Burns, who's the author of Class Struggle Unionism.
Steve Grumbine:And it seems like in order for unions to really have the kind of impact they need, they need to be beyond their own workplace.
Steve Grumbine:It needs to be larger than that one small spot.
Steve Grumbine:And yet we jump up too far ahead.
Steve Grumbine:It's like, it sounds good in theory, that's how we'd like it to be, but it's got to start somewhere.
Steve Grumbine:And that's what I think is interesting about the stuff that you've written.
Steve Grumbine:I don't really think I understand fully what it means when you say worker to worker.
Steve Grumbine:Because I know amongst, you know, activists, we talk to each other, we use various pieces of social media, chat programs, et cetera, to communicate.
Steve Grumbine:And maybe we go out and we do an action or maybe we go out and do a protest or a march or you know, something else.
Steve Grumbine:What does it mean to do worker to worker unions?
Steve Grumbine:Because let's be fair, the difference between a worker in a job and an activist is that a worker can get fired.
Steve Grumbine:A worker without a union just trying to start one up, doing it person to person runs a great risk because we're much stronger as a fist than we are as a finger.
Steve Grumbine:And we've dealt with a lot of people in this world that are soloists that are, you know, just sort of, I don't want to say self aggrandizing, but they can't imagine working in solidarity.
Steve Grumbine:How does a worker to worker organizing tactic work?
Eric Blanc:Sure.
Eric Blanc:So yeah, let's get into it.
Eric Blanc:The first thing maybe to help clarify is to compare it to what the dominant model is right now, which I call staff intensive unionism and staff intensive unionism.
Eric Blanc:It's sort of a catch all term.
Eric Blanc:But what it has in common in all the different iterations is that it requires a lot of paid staff to help a union drive move forward.
Eric Blanc:The norm for unions these days is to pay for one staffer for every 100 workers that you want to unionize.
Eric Blanc:And so it's a really, really expensive and staff heavy model.
Eric Blanc:So worker to worker unionism at its core is moving away from that model and finding ways for workers to do a lot of the tasks that normally and still prevalently are done by staff.
Eric Blanc:So for instance, instead of having a staff full time organizer training a drive, which is the norm, as I mentioned before, the Starbucks drive.
Eric Blanc:But then also we've seen this across the us not just Starbucks, but we've seen it a lot of these different workers worker drives.
Eric Blanc:We'll have workers training other workers because one of the crucial things in organizing, there's skills involved.
Eric Blanc:It's a high risk situation, as you mentioned.
Eric Blanc:Now people can get fired.
Eric Blanc:And it's not obvious, it's not just intuitive.
Eric Blanc:How do you get a majority of your coworkers on board?
Eric Blanc:So there's a lot of accumulated experience over the last decades and more about the tactics needed to win an effective union fight.
Eric Blanc:You know, things like mapping out your workplace, identifying leaders, how to have one on one conversations, how to prepare your coworkers for what the boss is going to do, how you have an escalating campaign, how do you test your level of support?
Eric Blanc:And so the question is, how do we pass on those type of skills to enough workers so that we can reverse the decline of the labor movement?
Eric Blanc:So staff intensive unionism does this by hiring staffers and then trying to have staff people train workers.
Eric Blanc:And I think in fairness, at its best that can work.
Eric Blanc:It's not ideal, but a good staff organizer can train workers to then organize their coworkers.
Eric Blanc:The problem is there's just not enough staff and not enough money to do this for millions of workers.
Eric Blanc:That's my main criticism of this model.
Eric Blanc:You just can't get the type of mass movement we need by relying on staff, even the best staff.
Eric Blanc:So what worker worker unionism does is three things in particular.
Eric Blanc:One of them I already mentioned is that workers are training other workers.
Eric Blanc:So you're not relying on staff to train.
Eric Blanc:A new drive that wants to organize.
Eric Blanc:Workers are doing that.
Eric Blanc:Another thing is that workers are self organizing before they affiliate with a union.
Eric Blanc:So what we see all across the economy right now is workers taking the lead to start talking to their coworkers, start moving towards things like petitions, trying to get a majority of co workers on board, and then only after they've cohered themselves, then they reach out to a union rather than vice versa.
Eric Blanc:And so it changes the whole dynamic because the union hasn't had to sort of pay for a bunch of staff to get it off the ground.
Eric Blanc:And then also the relationship between the workers and the union is more of a partnership.
Eric Blanc:It's not a relationship of deference and of just relying on the established union.
Eric Blanc:There's a real partnership that happens when workers take the lead and have more agency.
Eric Blanc:And then the third and final thing is that unlike in a lot of staff intensive campaigns, in worker to worker drives, they have a decision making over the whole course of the effort.
Eric Blanc:And this is something that's often not the case in union drives.
Eric Blanc:Oftentimes it's sort of full time.
Eric Blanc:Organizers are making a lot of crucial decisions about the big questions in the campaign.
Eric Blanc:In worker to worker drives, workers themselves are deciding what do we do?
Eric Blanc:What is the political stances we're going to take?
Eric Blanc:What are the tactical stances we're going to take to win?
Eric Blanc:And just to give one example, ties back to what we were saying before the Starbucks campaign.
Eric Blanc:One of the crucial turning points that helped them make a big breakthrough that forced Starbucks to come to the bargaining table earlier this year was the union came out for very strong stance around Palestine and solidarity with Gaza.
Eric Blanc:And it created this knockoff effect that ended up leading to a mass boycott that hurt Starbucks the tune of $11 billion.
Eric Blanc:And there's just no way that if workers hadn't been in the driving seat of this campaign that they would have done such a risky thing very early on, just very soon after October 7, to take the initiative to stand very clearly in solidarity with Palestine.
Eric Blanc:And so it shows you again, workers, when they have full democracy, full strategic say over the campaign, it leads them to take bigger risks, be more militant.
Eric Blanc:And this is on the whole a very different model from staff intensive unionism.
Eric Blanc:And it's one that I think can scale by the millions.
Steve Grumbine:So let me just ask this question.
Steve Grumbine:So if I'm looking at individuals, like a multilevel marketing kind of thing, you know, I tell two people and so forth, that is shown to be useful outside of this kind of construction.
Steve Grumbine:Is that kind of what you're talking about within the workspace?
Steve Grumbine:And how would that play out?
Steve Grumbine:I mean, obviously you have to be somewhat cautious because boss is listening in and so forth.
Steve Grumbine:How do you, without the protection of a union, do this within a corporate structure?
Eric Blanc:Sure.
Eric Blanc:I mean, all good organizing and I think this is what you're getting at.
Eric Blanc:All good workplace organizing is fundamentally worker to worker, which is to say that the people who are best positioned to win over other workers to understanding the need for collective organization in the union are not folks outside of the company.
Eric Blanc:It's not staff organizers that they can support.
Eric Blanc:It's people who are into the trenches, who are there on the shop floor, who are there at the office, who are there at the factory with you because they're experiencing it.
Eric Blanc:And so, yeah, the role of worker organizers fundamentally is to talk with other co workers about what the problems are at work, to identify what are the things that are making them angry, what are their fears.
Eric Blanc:Because a lot of times people complain about jobs.
Eric Blanc:This is the norm.
Eric Blanc:Anybody who's ever worked complained about the job.
Eric Blanc:That's not really an exception.
Eric Blanc:But most people don't think there's anything you can do about it except for quit.
Eric Blanc:And so what organizers do when they're worker organizers is they talk through these issues with their coworkers and they say, hey, but look, if you tried to go as an individual to the boss and ask for a raise, what happened?
Eric Blanc:Right?
Eric Blanc:Or what do you think would happen?
Eric Blanc:Most people say, yeah, I don't think I would get anything.
Eric Blanc:Or I tried, and they just sort of ignored me.
Eric Blanc:And what an organizer says is, well, what if we all go, you know, what if we all say we need a raise or we need better working conditions or we need a more regular scheduling?
Eric Blanc:Could they ignore us all?
Eric Blanc:That's the fundamental conversation that drives unionization over and over and over again.
Eric Blanc:And workers have to do that with their co workers.
Eric Blanc:There's no one else who can really do that.
Eric Blanc:So that's the heart of unionism.
Eric Blanc:It's always been the heart of unionism.
Eric Blanc:And I think that the recent efforts across the country are kind of showing how effective that remains.
Steve Grumbine:So let me ask you this.
Steve Grumbine:You know, within the space that we see today, obviously there's a.
Steve Grumbine:I think it's more prevalent than ever, the bystander syndrome, the, you know, hey, somebody else is going to take care of it.
Steve Grumbine:I don't have to do this.
Steve Grumbine:And I think we see this in life right outside of the workplace.
Steve Grumbine:But I know I see it in activism.
Steve Grumbine:Lots and lots of activists sitting on the sidelines, watching the few do the stuff that the many need to really be chipping in and helping with.
Steve Grumbine:How do you prevent bystander syndrome within this kind of environment?
Eric Blanc:Yeah, I mean, in some ways that's the fundamental question, right?
Eric Blanc:The fundamental Question is, how do we as organizers help activate a majority of our coworkers or a majority of the working class?
Eric Blanc:Like, that's the $64,000 question.
Eric Blanc:And in some ways, obviously, it's difficult for very real reasons, not least of which is the fact that particularly at work, when you organize, you're taking a real risk.
Eric Blanc:So, look, it's understandable why if your family's depending on you and you got to pay rent, you got to not lose your healthcare and all things like this, that you're going to think twice before signing a union card if you think it's going to lead you to get fired.
Eric Blanc:Right.
Eric Blanc:And that type of risk is real.
Eric Blanc:So I think that the bystander syndrome, particularly when we look at the workplace, let's just leave it to that question for now.
Eric Blanc:It's fundamentally a question of fear.
Eric Blanc:There's very few workers who don't want improvements at their job, and even there's very few workers who wouldn't want to see a union.
Eric Blanc:And all of the polls are sort of off the charts for unions these days.
Eric Blanc:But there's a real fear factor because labor law doesn't protect in a very meaningful way the right to unionize in this country.
Eric Blanc:So what do you do given that circumstance?
Eric Blanc:Well, part of it is you need core organizers, you know, people who maybe are out there listening to take the initiative.
Eric Blanc:You can't just wait for other people.
Eric Blanc:So it does require folks who feel very strongly about the issues and feel very strongly about maybe just the changes that need to happen at work.
Eric Blanc:You need people to take the initiative, but it can't just stop there.
Eric Blanc:Stick with them.
Eric Blanc:By definition, a union is unity of a majority of your coworkers.
Eric Blanc:And so the steps that you take to get your coworkers to stop being spectators and to jump into the fray is first, you have to start talking to them.
Eric Blanc:You meet up for coffee or talk to them after work, or talk to them in your lunch break, and you try to find out what are the issues that at your work are widely felt and are deeply felt because different people might have different concerns.
Eric Blanc:Maybe it's like the manager was really mean to you personally, but other people haven't had the experience.
Eric Blanc:What you need to do if you're going to try to get a majority of people to become active participants, is you need to find the issues that are widely felt so that a majority of workers feel strongly about, but that are sort of deeply felt that they would be willing potentially to take a risk on.
Eric Blanc:Right.
Eric Blanc:And so that might be Something like, yeah, we need better healthcare, we need them to provide better or cheaper healthcare at work because my family right now is struggling to survive and we need to stop paying these insane co pays.
Eric Blanc:Maybe that's a widely felt issue.
Eric Blanc:And so then the question becomes, okay, we know what the issues are, we know what we need to see change.
Eric Blanc:And then you have to talk through with your coworkers what could be done collectively.
Eric Blanc:And the problem, this is the catch 22 of organizing is workers don't necessarily feel their own power.
Eric Blanc:People feel atomized.
Eric Blanc:People feel nothing can change.
Eric Blanc:And so the way you start to shift that perception is by baby steps.
Eric Blanc:You don't start all at once.
Eric Blanc:We're going to try to go on strike.
Eric Blanc:You do something.
Eric Blanc:Can we at our workplace, what if we all wore a sticker the same day saying we deserve a raise?
Eric Blanc:If maybe you're, if you're working at a public facing coffee shop or something like that.
Eric Blanc:Or what if we just all collectively signed a letter to management asking for these changes.
Eric Blanc:You don't have to talk about union, but let's see if we can get all of our co workers or a majority of our coworkers to sign a letter, sign a petition to management, to the corporate, asking for these changes.
Eric Blanc:So you can take these baby steps that get people to see that they're not alone and that their coworkers will go with them if they take that step.
Eric Blanc:And by doing this sort of escalating campaign where you go from the little less ask to middle ass to eventually something as ambitious as going on strike, that's the process in which people who even are hesitant at first can have the confidence that if they take an action that they're not going to be sort of left hanging, that actually it's going to be part of something bigger.
Eric Blanc:And so we've seen that happen over and over and over again.
Eric Blanc:That's basically what the process of unionization looks and feels like and takes a lot of work.
Eric Blanc:I think part of the difficulty is the process of this type of deep organizing is very labor intensive.
Eric Blanc:It's not like you just post something online and then bam, people come out.
Eric Blanc:It requires a lot of work.
Eric Blanc:And I think the tradition of activists in the US frankly is a lot of people like putting hot takes online and don't necessarily have the patience for this sort of deeper organizing.
Eric Blanc:But ultimately it's this deeper form of organizing that builds real power.
Steve Grumbine:That's really incredibly well said.
Steve Grumbine:I want to take you to an article that you wrote right after the UAW's defeat at the Mercedes plant at Alabama.
Steve Grumbine:I don't know if it's controversial, but it may sound controversial that they got crushed.
Steve Grumbine:But if labor wants to win big, it can't be afraid to lose big.
Steve Grumbine:So it's kind of like the whole scared money, don't make money approach that the capitalists say.
Steve Grumbine:But from a labor perspective, you got to kind of fight fire with fire is what I'm hearing you say there.
Steve Grumbine:Can you elaborate on that?
Eric Blanc:Sure.
Eric Blanc:So as I mentioned before, labor law in this country is broken.
Eric Blanc:And that's part of the reason why most unions are very hesitant towards taking the initiative around new organizing.
Eric Blanc:And so the norm for unions today, sort of established unions, is to be very, very, very risk averse.
Eric Blanc:And part of what that means is they will generally only take on campaigns and union drives that they know from the get go or that they assess from very early on will have a very high likelihood of succeeding.
Eric Blanc:And so, you know, we have good data on this because the government tracks union win rates.
Eric Blanc: If you go back Even just to: Eric Blanc:You know, you have to run an election and they lost about half the elections, ironically, sounds maybe counterintuitive, but as the number of union elections has declined, so since the 80s, just support for new organizing and support from established unions to try to grow, really, bottom line, just tanked.
Eric Blanc:As unions are investing less and less in organizing, their win rates are actually going up.
Eric Blanc: fifth of the campaigns of the: Eric Blanc:So the win rate of unions these days is like 70, 80%.
Eric Blanc:And so you might ask, well, that seems, that doesn't make sense, you know, why are they running fewer elections but they're winning more of them?
Eric Blanc:Well, the reason is that they're choosing easier targets and that they're only sort of going forward with campaigns once they've met a whole series of benchmarks that makes it very likely that they will win.
Eric Blanc:The problem is that there's all sorts of workers who don't fit into these sort of narrow frameworks for what the union believes is necessary.
Eric Blanc:So just to give a concrete example, so many of the recent drives we've seen that have captured the imagination of other workers across the country.
Eric Blanc:Starbucks, Amazon, taking on these big corporations.
Eric Blanc:Most unions up until the last year or two were extremely scared to even try to organize these big corporations because they're so powerful.
Eric Blanc:But nevertheless, there's a higher risk Factor, you're not guaranteed success when you go after the biggest companies, but workers from below are taking these risks and sometimes they're going to lose.
Eric Blanc:So they lost in Alabama, as you mentioned in the UAW at Mercedes, because they went up against the entire ruling class of Alabama.
Eric Blanc:And so there's no guarantee that when you fight, you win.
Eric Blanc:But the only way that you're going to win for millions of workers is if you're willing to take on more fights.
Eric Blanc:And that's the spirit that the movements always have.
Eric Blanc:Movements take risks, movements sort of jump into battle without being guaranteed success ahead of time.
Eric Blanc:And the reality is, even if unions were to start losing more frequently than they did in the past, let's say they go back to losing half of the drives if they ran, if they initiated 10 times the number of union elections, even if they lost half of them, that would constitute a massive increase in union organizing.
Eric Blanc:So that's essentially the way forward is, you know, we need to be prepared to lose more frequently, but we need to simultaneously organize way more.
Eric Blanc:We need to be organizing about 10 times the amount that labor unions are currently organizing.
Eric Blanc:And that combination is how you're going to get millions and millions of workers to unionize.
Steve Grumbine:Very well said.
Steve Grumbine:Again, you are listening to Macro and Cheese, a podcast by Real Progressives.
Steve Grumbine:We are a 501c3 nonprofit organization.
Steve Grumbine:All donations are tax deductible.
Steve Grumbine:Please consider becoming a monthly donor on Patreon substack or our website realprogressives.org now back to the podcast.
Steve Grumbine:So, you know, I want to go back to the deeper organizing concept.
Steve Grumbine:I believe very strongly that agitprop has a place.
Steve Grumbine:I think it's a very important part of shifting the way class based propaganda.
Steve Grumbine:How do you see this playing out?
Steve Grumbine:I see some value in shocking people to make them pay attention to something that previously maybe they scrolled right past.
Steve Grumbine:That said, I do hear you and I want to understand more when you say because I understand the patience required, although I don't always have it, I am very curious, what does that mean, the deeper organizing?
Steve Grumbine:Because obviously what you're talking about is less hot, takes more person to person.
Steve Grumbine:The real struggle of why aren't you into this?
Steve Grumbine:I would like to hear you talk much more about that.
Eric Blanc:Sure.
Eric Blanc:You know, and I agree with you.
Eric Blanc:I don't actually mean to counter, pose kind of public agitation.
Eric Blanc:And I actually think, and I have a lot of interesting data on this in the book I just wrote that social media today because it's in the absence of sort of other spheres.
Eric Blanc:For like, there's no public square in most cities.
Eric Blanc:Right.
Eric Blanc:We live in a situation in which, unfortunately, social media is one of the few avenues we have for spreading the word.
Eric Blanc:So I actually think that is crucial.
Eric Blanc:And part of the reason the labor movement uptick is going on is that the stories of unions and workers fighting back have kind of gone viral online, and that's created more enthusiasm.
Eric Blanc:The question though is, is not like whether you should do one or the other, but how do we combine this type of sort of agitation and the overall excitement we have around labor or other issues and that kind of agit prep with how do we channel that energy into power?
Eric Blanc:To me, that's the question, because as you indicated earlier, there can be all sorts of issues in which people agree with us, but we're not able to force those in power to meet our demands.
Eric Blanc:And so there's a gap there.
Eric Blanc:Right.
Eric Blanc:It's not enough just to have people agree with you.
Eric Blanc:And so how do you channel people's desire for change into power?
Eric Blanc:Well, historically until today, that's through organization.
Eric Blanc:And so you can't do that individually.
Eric Blanc:It's just almost by definition just your power as an individual under the system is very limited.
Eric Blanc:But workers collectively do have power.
Eric Blanc:And so the obvious example of that are strikes.
Eric Blanc:So we saw Boeing workers right now are on strike.
Eric Blanc:They actually just rejected a contract yesterday, even though it gave them pretty significant wage increases.
Eric Blanc:But because they've seen their power on strike, they want even more and they deserve even more.
Eric Blanc:And so the reality is, because every institution depends on our labor, whether it's a public sector, private sector that gives workers this tremendous amount of potential power, you can't tap that power unless you have an organization.
Eric Blanc:An organization is not just sort of like an abstract term.
Eric Blanc:It's something really concrete.
Eric Blanc:It's structures in which a majority of people can make decisions collectively.
Eric Blanc:So workers can go on strike, they can make demands on their bosses.
Eric Blanc:And to get to that type of structure, it's not enough just to have people agree.
Eric Blanc:You need to do deep organizing.
Eric Blanc:And so deep organizing is fundamentally based off of one on one conversations.
Eric Blanc:It's about building relationships of trust.
Eric Blanc:It's about sort of building solidarity.
Eric Blanc:And so it's not just conversations, but it's sort of rebuilding a fabric of solidarity and community.
Eric Blanc:So that the difference between a unionized workplace and an ununionized one is that at an unionized workplace, people are atomized.
Eric Blanc:People keep your head down, you just work and then you go home.
Eric Blanc:And at a unionized Workplace, you know, your coworkers, you know, if one of them has an issue, you're going to be ready to fight back from them.
Eric Blanc:And you know that collectively you're part of something bigger.
Eric Blanc:It's not just you against the world.
Eric Blanc:It's you and your coworkers and the broader class that you're part of against the billionaires.
Eric Blanc:And so deep organizing is the mechanism through which that sort of latent power of working people becomes real.
Eric Blanc:And you can't do that just through a social media post.
Eric Blanc:Social media posts and ads can help people think they might need a union, but then you actually need to go out and build it.
Steve Grumbine:That, you know, it's very well said.
Steve Grumbine:Again, I keep feeling like I'm repeating that, but you are stating exactly what I'm looking for.
Steve Grumbine:I'm curious.
Steve Grumbine:You said, hey, maybe we just put a sticker on as an act of solidarity and try and organize people to do that simple task.
Steve Grumbine:You know, when it comes to some of the nonprofit work and the organizing work to spread messages, something as simple as hitting like and retweet is something that I see the establishment do very well.
Steve Grumbine:Like, it's almost amazing to see how orchestrated they are and being able to simultaneously snap their fingers.
Steve Grumbine:And all of a sudden, I imagine it's all these paid consultants and stuff like that that are being paid to do this.
Steve Grumbine:So they do it and it's no problem.
Steve Grumbine:But I am curious, how do you get people to take that first step?
Steve Grumbine:Because I mean, like literally waking the dead, it's like bringing Lazarus out of the tomb to try to get people to, to do basic solidarity shares or solidarity work out there.
Steve Grumbine:How do you make that first step?
Steve Grumbine:Is it all about building trust?
Steve Grumbine:I mean, if you're an organization, you'd like to believe you have it, but what are your thoughts there?
Eric Blanc:Yeah, you know, good organizing is context specific.
Eric Blanc:So what I will say here is that it does depend on where you're at.
Eric Blanc:So you're going to have to use different tactics.
Eric Blanc:So depending on the state of how angry your coworkers are, how scared they are, there's not like a magic bullet that's going to activate people everywhere.
Eric Blanc:But there is sort of a toolbox that we know of, that we have for how you activate folks.
Eric Blanc:I mentioned some of them.
Eric Blanc:Some of it is one on one conversations.
Eric Blanc:You know, you'd be surprised about how far that would go.
Eric Blanc:Something could be as simple as setting up a spreadsheet amongst your coworkers to find out how much each person is getting paid and then you can compare, right?
Eric Blanc:And you'd be surprised at how often there's disparities and how often people are getting underpaid.
Eric Blanc:And that's a way of seeing yourself as part of a collective.
Eric Blanc:And then when you see these disparities, then you can say, oh, wow, why don't we do something about this together?
Eric Blanc:Another common tactic to kind of get things moving is not even explicitly political or organizing focus.
Eric Blanc:It's just, can you organize a social event?
Eric Blanc:Could you get your co workers to all come to picnic or go to the bar after work, or even get on a zoom call, play some game?
Eric Blanc:Right.
Eric Blanc:That stuff might seem sort of like a side part.
Eric Blanc:Maybe, you know, not urgent, but actually the socializing piece, what we call socialize before you organize, is really crucial because if workers don't even know each other sort of in a deep way personally and don't have some sort of basic level of familiarity, then it's actually very difficult to convince people to take some sort of collective political action.
Eric Blanc:So you need to get people to feel part of a collective oftentimes before you can get that collective to do anything politically relevant.
Eric Blanc:And then the other tactic, you know, that I mentioned that's just worth reiterating is I always recommend when I talk to workers who are trying to unionize, you know, can you get a petition at your workplace?
Eric Blanc:You know, you don't have to use the word union, which can be scary for some people, but find out what the issues are amongst your co workers and see if you can get a majority of them to sign a petition.
Eric Blanc:You know, even something as modest as, like, we want the break room to be better stocked, or we want to have more flexibility on XYZ thing.
Eric Blanc:If you can get workers to do something as simple as that, then everything else becomes possible.
Eric Blanc:And so I do think part of it is when you come into deep organizing in places where there's a lot of fear.
Eric Blanc:You know, it's a little bit different if you're organizing outside the workplace, but particularly at the workplace where fear is a real issue, then you have to start where people are at.
Eric Blanc:I think that's a big part of it.
Eric Blanc:You have to really not jump ahead of yourself.
Eric Blanc:You have to understand where people are at and figure out what is the very first thing, the most modest but real step that individuals and groups can take.
Eric Blanc:And when you identify that that gets the ball rolling for bigger and better things.
Steve Grumbine:I appreciate that immensely.
Steve Grumbine:I mean, it puts the bullseye on.
Steve Grumbine:It can't do big things unless you can do small things.
Steve Grumbine:Let's give them a taste test.
Steve Grumbine:Let them flex their muscle.
Steve Grumbine:Let them see what it looks like to be in solidarity and to do something together.
Steve Grumbine:And that will be get other opportunities.
Steve Grumbine:You wrote another article that I thought was really powerful, and I'd like you to kind of go through this.
Steve Grumbine:I mean, you've written a lot.
Steve Grumbine:You're prolific, man.
Steve Grumbine:I just was shocked at how many things you've written out there.
Steve Grumbine:But in particular, this is a recent one here in September.
Steve Grumbine:It kind of piggybacks on all this stuff.
Steve Grumbine:And you talked about the new labor organizing model of ewoc.
Steve Grumbine:I've never even heard of ewic, and I probably should have, as much as I talk about union stuff.
Steve Grumbine:But this Emergency Workplace Organizing Committee.
Steve Grumbine:Let's talk about this a little bit, because I think this is interesting.
Steve Grumbine:Just the first sentence.
Steve Grumbine:Interest in union and workplace organizing is high, but proactive workers have few opportunities to launch their own organizing drives.
Steve Grumbine:Start from there, man.
Eric Blanc:Sure.
Eric Blanc:The Emergency Workplace Organizing Committee are.
Eric Blanc:We call it EWOK for short, is a project that emerged to fill a gap.
Eric Blanc:And that gap is that there's millions and millions of workers who want to unionize.
Eric Blanc:Most unions aren't being proactive about giving them the tools necessary for them to start organizing and oftentimes say no to them when workers reach out.
Eric Blanc:This is just very, very pervasive problem, that workers reach out to a union and the union, for all the reasons I explained before, systematically and frequently will say no to workers for a variety of reasons.
Eric Blanc:And so EWOK emerged at a moment of crisis.
Eric Blanc: It emerged literally in March: Eric Blanc:Keep in mind, just put yourself back in that moment, right?
Eric Blanc:People were terrified about going into work, that companies were forcing people to go in without ppe, without sick time.
Eric Blanc:And so you have all of these workers who all of a sudden started reaching out to the BERNIE Campaign to ask for help.
Eric Blanc:And so I was a labor organizer for the BERNIE Campaign, and people just started reaching out from all these different industries, saying literally, our company is forcing us to go in.
Eric Blanc:What do we do?
Eric Blanc:What can we do to fight back?
Eric Blanc:And so EWOK emerged out of that moment where people from labor organizations from the BERNIE Campaign joined together with the Democratic Socialists of America, which is the biggest socialist organization in the US together with the United Electrical Union, which is maybe the most longstanding left UN union in the country, joined forces to found Ewok.
Eric Blanc:At first, it was just a Google form where workers could reach out to say, Hey, I need help.
Eric Blanc:And then we'd connect people.
Eric Blanc:We knew the experienced organizers, we knew the workers reaching out for help to give them support.
Eric Blanc:And ever since then, it's now mushroomed into something far bigger.
Eric Blanc:We've had thousands and thousands of workers reach out, trained over 5,000 workers in the regular bimonthly trainings we do.
Eric Blanc:The basic process of Ewok right now is to support any worker in any industry who wants to organize.
Eric Blanc:That most of the time means unionizing, but it also can mean something as simple as just fighting back for better wages or conditions.
Eric Blanc:And so all you have to do, if you're listening out there and you're saying, oh, maybe this sounds good, you know, I've been thinking about organizing or even just considering it.
Eric Blanc:You just go to the website, which is organizeworkers.org and you fill out a form in which you just say where you work and we'll get back to you within 72 hours.
Eric Blanc:And so you fill out a short form and then what Ewok does is it'll connect you to a volunteer, an experienced worker organizer who will then help you start organizing your co workers.
Eric Blanc:So that's what EWOK does.
Eric Blanc:It's all of the things we've been talking about.
Eric Blanc:It's going to give you a personalized support system so that you can start doing it.
Eric Blanc:You don't have to wait for an established union.
Eric Blanc:We'll help you connect to a union down the road because we do think we encourage workers to get the resources they need.
Eric Blanc:Sometimes workers decide to go independent.
Eric Blanc:Most workers decide to affiliate.
Eric Blanc:We'll, you know, we, that's up to workers, but we, we want workers to have power.
Eric Blanc:And so what we'll do is we will help you take the first steps towards unionization.
Eric Blanc:We say that unionizing takes a hundred steps.
Eric Blanc:Ewok will help you take the first 50 of those steps.
Steve Grumbine:One of the things you mentioned in the article though is putting a heavy emphasis on lean on volunteers as much as possible.
Steve Grumbine:And you know, volunteers are great, you love them, but volunteers are volunteers.
Steve Grumbine:And after a while, the urgency of said issue, you know, I think of it like you're on the beach and if you ever watch that movie Moana, there's scene where they're trying to break out into the open sea, but they can't get past the coral reef.
Steve Grumbine:The waves just keep crashing and pushing the boat back and breaking up the boat.
Steve Grumbine:But once you get past the waves, once you get past the coral reef, you're out to the open sea.
Steve Grumbine:You can Go.
Steve Grumbine:It just seems like getting past the coral reef is a real challenge with volunteers in particular, because it requires persistence to get over the reef.
Steve Grumbine:And with something as difficult as relying on unpaid staff, you've really got to have people that really believe in the situation to make that happen.
Steve Grumbine:I'm interested in hearing a little bit more explanation on that, if you wouldn't mind.
Eric Blanc:Sure.
Eric Blanc:I mean, the challenge you pose is real.
Eric Blanc:But to be honest, we haven't lacked for capacity for volunteers in Ewok for a couple reasons.
Eric Blanc:First of all, as I mentioned before, we've been able to lean on volunteers from Democratic Socialists of America and United Electrical.
Eric Blanc:And there is something about, I think, having radical politics and feeling sort of a deep solidarity commitment to making the world a better place that leads people to put in an inordinate amount of time to make the world better.
Eric Blanc: about the Bernie campaign in: Eric Blanc:We really come out of that moment and there were so much effervescence of volunteering.
Eric Blanc:Think about all the people canvassing, door knocking and all that.
Eric Blanc:And so that same energy has gotten channeled into Ewok and some of the same structures to onboard people and things like that.
Eric Blanc:So the reality is there's a generational dynamic in which so many young people, Gen Z millennials, are just very conscious of how evil this system is and just how much unnecessary human suffering it causes that they're willing to and eager to put in the work to turn things around.
Eric Blanc:And in particular, they're eager to do that around labor organizing, because as you mentioned before, given how hard it is to make change, people understand that the labor movement is really our best hope, that if we can't turn the labor movement around, then we're not going to be able to win on any of the issues that we need, whether it's stopping the genocide in Gaza, whether it's climate change, whether it's just reversing economic and racial inequality.
Eric Blanc:And so I think that there's a large number of people who understand this to be the task in front of us and are willing to volunteer.
Eric Blanc:And what's exciting about Ewok is we're not just throwing people in who have no labor experience, putting you in touch with people who've been organizing their own workplaces or helping organize other workplaces for years.
Eric Blanc:And that is really what a movement is.
Eric Blanc:So in Ewok, for instance, workers who have unionized their workers at Barbicino, the first pizza place to unionize in New York City, we helped them win.
Eric Blanc:And then they were so excited about unionizing that they went out and organized and unionized and helped support a union effort at the Nighthawk movie theater in New York.
Eric Blanc:And so you can see how volunteers, the more organizing you have creates more volunteers.
Eric Blanc:People win a union drive, and it's a snowball effect.
Eric Blanc:And so Ewok is really built off of the snowball model in which everyone who gets involved with Ewok, we're training up new people who are in turn training up new people.
Eric Blanc:And it does have this exponential factor.
Eric Blanc:And to me, that's why it feels like a movement.
Eric Blanc:And it's very exciting.
Steve Grumbine:That is very exciting.
Steve Grumbine:I want to pivot now to your as to be released yet to be released book, We Are the Union How Worker to Worker Organizing is Revitalizing labor and Winning Big.
Steve Grumbine: out apparently in February of: Steve Grumbine:So it's a little bit out there.
Steve Grumbine:What can you tell us about the book?
Eric Blanc:The major argument of it is that the potential exists at this moment and over the coming years to organize tens of millions of workers.
Eric Blanc:There's literally tens of millions of workers who every poll have indicated that they would vote for a union tomorrow.
Eric Blanc:And so the question is, how do we make that potential a reality?
Eric Blanc:And we need to make that potential reality, because otherwise we're screwed.
Eric Blanc:And the argument is, as I mentioned before, is basically that the existing model of union organizing of most established unions can't make that potential reality because it's too staff intensive, it relies too much on staff, and there's just not enough staff and not enough money to organize tens of millions of workers that way.
Eric Blanc:So we need a new model.
Eric Blanc:And my argument is that the new worker to work model, which I sort of described earlier, that's come out of the Starbucks campaign, that's come out of the United Auto Workers and things like this.
Steve Grumbine:I guess the question is, you know, given that we're coming up on time, what would you want people to really take out of this?
Steve Grumbine:Maybe what we didn't cover, High Points, is something that you feel would really, really make an impact.
Eric Blanc:Getting a copy of the book would be to organize their workplace and to take that seriously as a possibility.
Eric Blanc:A lot of people feel like the labor movement is something out there.
Eric Blanc:You know, they support it, they want to see it grow, but they haven't really, in a deeply felt way, realized that they can and that you should take the initiative at your own workplace to unionize.
Eric Blanc:Any job can be a union job.
Eric Blanc:It's not just for blue collar workers.
Eric Blanc:It's not just in this or that part of the country.
Eric Blanc:Any job can be a union job.
Eric Blanc:And the responsibilities of people like folks listening to this interview and to all the work you do is to take that initiative.
Eric Blanc:If you realize that there's so many problems in the world and if you feel sort of heartbroken about what you see every day, then I just feel on a moral level, it's our responsibility to be strategic about building the power necessary to defeat the billionaires that are destroying this world and so many people across it.
Eric Blanc:And the labor movement is our best hope to do that.
Eric Blanc:Because the labor movement has power.
Eric Blanc:The labor movement is how we win.
Eric Blanc:And the labor movement is you.
Eric Blanc:The labor movement is all of us.
Eric Blanc:So if you're thinking about it, do it.
Eric Blanc:We can support you through Ewok.
Eric Blanc:So again, just go to organizeworkers.org fill out the forum and we'll support you taking those steps towards organizing.
Eric Blanc:And it's going to be like people through you.
Eric Blanc:That's how we're going to change the world.
Eric Blanc:And I'm optimistic despite everything, that the labor movement is going to turn around its fate and that we're going to transform this country in the process.
Steve Grumbine:Fantastic.
Steve Grumbine:I really, really appreciate your time, folks.
Steve Grumbine:Aside from purchasing the book which we'll put links and everything in the show notes, where can we find more of your work?
Steve Grumbine:And by the way, a lot of his work is on Jacobin.
Steve Grumbine:But where can we find more of your work, Eric?
Eric Blanc:Sure.
Eric Blanc:I think the best place to follow my work is subscribe to my free sub stacks is just called labor.
Eric Blanc:If you go to labor politics.org yeah, the sub stacks Labor Politics there I put up my writings and I'm on Twitter.
Eric Blanc:You can just look me up.
Eric Blanc:Eric Blanc and then yeah, in the book We Are the Union was out in February but pre order is up.
Eric Blanc:Those are all good places to see what I'm up to and to get connected to the causes I'm trying to support.
Steve Grumbine:Fantastic.
Steve Grumbine:All right folks.
Steve Grumbine:I want to just thank you Eric for joining me today.
Steve Grumbine:I appreciate you making time.
Steve Grumbine:I know you're very, very busy.
Steve Grumbine:Really do appreciate you making time for us here.
Steve Grumbine:On behalf of myself and my guest Eric, this is Macro and Cheese podcast.
Steve Grumbine:We are part of Real Progressives which is a nonprofit organization, 501C3.
Steve Grumbine:We survive on your donations.
Steve Grumbine:Please consider coming to patreon.com real progressives.
Steve Grumbine:You can come to our website realprogressives.org, you can go to our substack which is realprogressives.substack.com and you can also find us online.
Steve Grumbine:So with that, Eric, thank you so much for your time folks.
Steve Grumbine:On behalf of Macro and Cheese, we are out of here.
Eric Blanc:Production transcripts, graphics, sound engineering, extras and show notes for Macro enchis are done.
Steve Grumbine: with the working class since: Eric Blanc:To become a donor, please go to patreon.com real progressives, realprogressives.substack.com or realprogressives.org.
