Hey all! Does anyone have any good direct action tactic guides on starting unions? I am considering starting one, but I am lost as to where to begin in terms of the actual process. Thanks in advance!
This is a post from a while ago, but it has a bunch of folks giving good advice: https://hexbear.net/post/4936614
I’ve heard good things about secrets of a successful organizer from a few folks
It really depends on where youelive, but I cansgive two pieces of advice:
- Talk to your coworkers! Organizing is a bottom-up approach and organizers need to have the trust of their coworkers and listen like 80% of the time they’re organizing.
- Search for already existing groups in your country that are actively helping folks organize! You’ll not be able to do this without help and a structured approach! A good first step is looking if the IWW (the Wobblies) are active in your country. They give organizing workshops.
Here’s a list of reading recommendations:
- Secrets of a Successful Organizer - hands-on guide on structured organizing.
- Raising Expectations (and Raising Hell) - Another guide. Basis for the “organizing for power” workshops the Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung carries out worldwide.
- Get on the Job and Organize - I think more of a collection of inspiring anecdotes. But I think it might be of value.
Edit: I want to stress how important a structured approach is for this. Doing it by intuition alone is very ineffective and might get you in trouble, once your bosses know what’s up.
https://organizing4power.org/ find 10+ comrades and sign up for a course, that’ll help a ton. Though their courses are more about how to strategize and actually talk to people to get to winning actions.
It can be a good way to bring focus to a group of people (or to have a clear starting point for a group of people that’s “just learning” and not immediately putting themselves at risk). Just walk up to people you trust and offer to take the course together, and tell them to find others who might be interested, and take it from there.
Their “basic” courses are not currently being planned this year, the ones there are building on top of the ones they did last year. Still probably worthwhile.
If you did those courses and want to share, did you feel like they provided skills with an antiauthoritarian outlook? I am asking because from my understanding (never participated but thought about joining last year), the strategies and skill taught there are more compatible with organizing through your typical union (which has election, hierarchies, doesnt necessarily want to abolish capitalism) and not as compatible when wanting to some anarchism.
Fighting against the man is always anti authoritarian, and that’s a big part with them, too, obviously. I honestly think if you set the bar at a union that wants to abolish capitalism (add in the blanks what that means), then you’ll not be pressuring & negotiating with the bosses, but couping. Or something like that. That’s a different game, isn’t it?
Anarchism != not being organized, and strategising, learning how to talk to coworkers to organize and mobilize them, can be applied in any context, be it a more hierarchical or a flat one, I’d say. They mostly focus on closed structures rather than elected groups (i.e. groups people just tend to be a part of, like an apartment building or employees to the same company vs rallying people for an anti-racism protest).
As for that they don’t organize any basic ones soon, just gives you more time to get people together or so, time flies (though that doesn’t help if you really need to get started asap). It’s worldwide & hugely inspirational and think it’s valuable for more & less mature groups alike.
Hope that helps!
It depends on a lot of factors, for example in my country you can’t just start a union - they need government approval and there’s basically one allowed per company/“single-employer” enterprise. It’s basically bullshit designed to stop workers organising and making it illegal to do it without going through the official channels and a lot of those unions are captured by the companies and work against it’s members interests.
But in generalist terms the first step is to start talking to your co-workers, create an atmosphere where they feel comfortable talking about their workplace grievances; Discuss wages, comment on safety concerns, complain about unrealistic demands, etc. Don’t even mention the word union, until you’ve got a lot of people happy to just hang out and talk shit. Once you’ve got a bit of mass, you can work on bringing up some demands to your bosses as a collective.
