4 days ago
The Power Of Workplace Organizing: Why Every Worker Should Consider It
Workplace satisfaction remains stubbornly low globally, and has steadily declined in the United States since 2020, even among employee segments that report enjoying their work.
In an era of worker dissatisfaction that spans industries and generations, Jaz Brisack, Rhodes Scholar turned barista who helped organize the first unionized Starbucks in the United States, argues in their groundbreaking book Get on the Job and Organize: Standing Up for a Better Workplace and a Better World that workers should organize not just when they hate their jobs—but especially when they love them.
This counterintuitive insight points to the heart of organizing workplaces - it's not solely about fixing problems, but claiming fundamental rights to dignity and meaningful participation in the places where we spend most of our waking hours.
Organizing Is Not a Dirty Word
For those wary of workplace organizing, it's worth nothing that employee-led collective action has shaped many benefits we take for granted.
Over the years, Employee Resource Groups (ERGs), diversity committees, and other worker-led initiatives have secured accommodations that are now considered standard practice: designated parking spaces for expecting parents, private nursing rooms for new mothers, quiet spaces for neurodivergent employees and those who speak English as a second language to focus on work, and flexible hybrid arrangements that allow caregivers to balance their professional and family responsibilities.
Even the hybrid work arrangements that became widespread during the pandemic were often the result of employee groups that had been advocating for flexibility long before COVID-19 made remote work an emergency necessity.
These practices have emerged from employees identifying shared needs and advocating for change.
Beyond Crisis: Organizing When You Love Your Job
We tend to think of unions as something you turn to when working conditions or pay are beyond tolerance. Brisack, cofounder of the Inside Organizer School and organizing director for Workers United, challenges this reactive approach with a proactive vision.
They make a case for organizing at work, focused on five key principles:
Securing Employee Voice: Even in companies with engaged leadership and progressive values, most workers remain fundamentally powerless over decisions that affect their daily lives. In the past month, formerly progressive companies such as Starbucks have instituted sweeping return-to-office (RTO) mandates, a move that's deeply antithetical to worker demands.
Organizing enables workers to move from being consulted to being true partners in workplace governance. As Brisack notes, it's about gaining "a true voice in the company" and shifting "the power dynamic" to achieve equality with corporate management.
Workplace Democracy as a Right: If we want to see democratic norms and values in society, we must push for it at work. Most workers spend upwards of 40-hours each week under what Brisack calls "a dictatorship of the bosses." Organizing represents the only proven mechanism for bringing genuine democracy to the workplace, transforming it from a hierarchy into a collaborative partnership.
Human Dignity, Not Vanity Metrics: It is a well established fact that the most productive and innovative employees are ones that are allowed to bring their full humanity to work. This is increasingly important as automation and efficiency pressures reduce workers to data points rather than recognizing them as whole people with needs, aspirations, and rights.
Long-term Stability Through Collective Action: While well-intentioned companies may offer benefits and improvements to retain talent, these gestures remain fundamentally paternalistic—subject to withdrawal when priorities or leadership change as we've seen with RTO mandates, reduction in paid family and medical leave and other benefits over the past year. Organizing also creates stability during management transitions, economic downturns, and shifting corporate strategies.
Accountability to Stated Values: Most organizations market themselves as progressive employers committed to social responsibility, diversity, and worker wellbeing. Organizing holds these companies accountable to their public commitments, ensuring that public-facing messaging translates into binding workplace policies.
Beyond Unions: The Spectrum of Workplace Organizing
While Brisack's book focuses primarily on formal unionization, the principles of workplace organizing extend far beyond traditional labor unions. Workers can build collective power through various approaches:
Any form of collective action, be it formal or informal, recognized or underground, offers the ability to shift power dynamics and create opportunities for meaningful workplace democracy.
And the ripple effects of workplace organizing extends to communities as well.
Research highlights that areas with large percentages of organized workers show improved outcomes across indicators of community wellbeing - from greater income and economic equity, to greater rates of civic engagement and social cohesion, as well as progressive policies on healthcare, education, and worker protections that benefit all residents.
These community benefits underscore that workplace organizing is not a zero-sum conflict between workers and employers, but rather a mechanism for building more equitable and prosperous communities.
Getting Started with Workplace Organizing
For workers inspired to begin organizing their own workplaces, Brisack offers practical guidance grounded in real campaign experience:
Organizing Is The Future of Workplace Democracy
A new generation of workers is leading the charge, rejecting the false choice between loving one's job and organizing for better conditions.
These workers are no longer in traditionally blue collar industries. Organizing efforts have expanded to companies like Apple, Amazon, and various tech startups responding to fundamental change in the nature of work.
As job security decreases from the ascendance of AI, benefits erode, and economic inequality widens, workers across all industries recognize the need for collective action to secure basic economic security and workplace dignity.
Jaz Brisack's Get on the Job and Organize arrives at a critical moment offering a key insight—that workers should organize their beloved workplaces, not just their toxic ones—challenges us to think more expansively about what work could be.
The ultimate goal, as Brisack frames it, is not just better wages or working conditions, but enabling workers to become "more fully free, more fully realized, more fully human." In a society increasingly dominated by corporate power, workplace organizing represents one of the most promising pathways toward genuine democracy and shared prosperity.
Whether through formal unionization or alternative collective action strategies, workers who organize together are not just improving their own lives—they're participating in the long American tradition of expanding democracy and opportunity for all. In that sense, workplace organizing is not just a labor issue, but a fundamental question of what kind of society we want to build together.
Jaz Brisack is touring the US – with stops at independent and campus bookstores across the country. Join her for engaging discussions about her book and discover why readers and critics alike are calling it a must-read. Check local listings for tour dates and bookstore locations near you.
