I was lucky to be recruited into this effort as a salt by the organizing committee because of my organizing experience with the Young Communist League. What I’m describing wasn’t my plan, but the efforts of Amazon workers who got fed up with their mistreatment. It’s working as a collective, learning together, and teaching each other. Not just media games, but solidarity, daily analysis, and adjusting as needed. It’s the hard work, every day: workers talking to workers. Use every tool in your toolbox file those unfair labor practice charges, every chance you get. Do not be afraid to agitate and to antagonize the bosses, as a union should. Do not be afraid to fight, to get as dirty as the bosses will, to match or beat the energy they’re bringing.

Really, you just follow the classic playbook.

You bring in sympathetic comrades from other unions, in a supporting role. You get the Communists involved, you get some socialists and anarcho-syndicalists, you bring together a broad progressive coalition. You get some salts with some organizing experience, but make sure they’re prepared to put in the work and to follow the lead of workers who have been around the shop longer. Foster’s Organizing Methods in the Steel Industry (a must-read, seriously).īut here’s the basic thing: you have an actual worker-led project-a Black- and Brown-led, multi-racial, multi-national, multi-gender, multi-ability organizing team. We learned from the Industrial Workers of the World, and even more from the building of the Congress of Industrial Organizations. We studied the history of how the first major unions were built. We just did the thing you’re supposed to do: we had a worker-led movement. My quick-and-dirty analysis of the Amazon Labor Union’s successes so far is pretty simple.

Amazon a to z