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.

Eric Blanc is Assistant Professor of Labor Studies at Rutgers University, an organizer trainer in the Emergency Workplace Organizing Committee, the author of Red State Revolt: The Teachers’ Strike Wave and Working-Class Politics, and the director of the Worker to Worker Collaborative.