In a labor landscape where billionaires and corporations have outsized power and resources to stamp out unionizing campaigns, a different kind of organizing is proving that workers can, and are, fighting back. Worker-to-worker organizing is taking hold, from Amazon warehouses to Starbucks stores to America’s newsrooms. And it’s winning, even when faced with rampant and illegal union-busting activities from the bosses.
Eric Blanc, a labor studies professor at Rutgers University and author of We Are the Union, joined NewsGuild President Jon Schleuss and Guild member organizer Taylor Dolven for a conversation about how this bottom-up approach is transforming the labor movement. The discussion, held as part of a book talk, offered a deep dive into the strategies that are empowering workers and forcing some of the biggest employers in the country to the table.
Jon Schleuss: Eric, you’ve written about labor history for years. What makes the worker-to-worker model so different compared to other organizing approaches?
Eric Blanc: Yeah, first of all, thanks for having me, I’m a big fan of The NewsGuild. If you read the book, you’ll see one of its key themes is that The NewsGuild is doing the kind of organizing that other unions should be replicating. Other unions are adopting similar models, but the Guild really stands out, so it’s exciting to be here and talk to you all directly.
So what makes this model different? One key contrast is with what I call staff-intensive unionizing, which has been the norm since at least the ’80s, if not longer. The typical ratio in that model is one staff organizer for every 100 workers. At its best, this can be effective, especially when staff focus on training workers, but it just doesn’t scale. There aren’t enough staffers, funding or time to organize millions of people this way.
The question I try to answer in the book is: What kind of organizing can win at scale in today’s context? In some ways, I argue for a return to the spirit of the 1930s, when workers took ownership of their own organizing drives. That kind of worker-led model is possible again today, but it has to take new forms because organizing is actually harder now. The working class is more atomized, so it requires more effort to build social relationships and spread the movement. The book explores how to do that at scale.
Some key differences in this newer model:
1) It’s not just about requiring fewer staffers, workers themselves are making strategic decisions, not just carrying out tactics.
2) Workers often initiate campaigns on their own, with unions providing tools rather than driving the process. Many organizing committees even vote on which union to affiliate with, which is a major shift from past models.
3) Crucially, and I know this is important to the NewsGuild, workers are training other workers. Instead of staffers always leading training, workers who recently won their union pass on their knowledge and skills. That’s what makes this model scalable.
That shift changes the dynamic. Instead of seeing the established union as the sole authority, workers relate to it as a partner. That leads to a more democratic, collaborative process—rather than one where staff are seen as the experts and workers as passive participants. When there’s real self-organization, it fosters a much stronger and more sustainable union.
Schleuss: Taylor, you’ve been a member organizer in The NewsGuild for a while now — what drew you to the program?
Taylor Dolven: I love hearing Eric break this down because it’s exactly what we experienced when we organized at The Miami Herald. When we were forming our union in 2019, I was on the committee interviewing different unions, including the one we didn’t go with. Journalists are trained to be skeptical, and that skepticism inherent in journalism and journalists is why the worker-to-worker model is so much more effective.
When Stephanie from The NewsGuild reached out to me in 2022 about becoming a member organizer, I knew I wanted to help others go through what we did. We had a journalist helping us when we organized, and that was invaluable. They had been in our shoes, and that experience made all the difference. Now, I get to help other journalists build power in the same way.
Schleuss: Eric, in your book, you spoke with Starbucks workers and auto workers. Can you share how member-to-member organizing is helping them?
Eric Blanc: Starbucks is a great example. For years, no unions were even trying to organize Starbucks. The assumption was that it was impossible. There are too many stores, too spread out and too much turnover. But then, a small group of young workers in Buffalo decided to try. They weren’t following the traditional playbook. They weren’t waiting for union staffers to take the lead. They started organizing their coworkers and built regional networks of workers supporting workers.
Despite facing one of the most aggressive union-busting campaigns in modern history, Starbucks workers won elections in hundreds of stores and forced the company to the bargaining table. While workers haven’t agreed to management’s proposals, the fact that one of the largest companies in the world, the sixth-largest private employer in the U.S., is at the table shows how much power they’ve built. That’s the power of this model. And we’re seeing the same bottom-up strategy play out in the South, where auto workers are taking on historically anti-union employers. The UAW just won its first major victory at Volkswagen in Tennessee. That was a worker-led campaign with only one staff organizer for every 1,700 workers.
Schleuss: Taylor, you touched on this earlier, but can you talk more about the benefits of worker-to-worker organizing? Some people are skeptical of this model, it’s not always the dominant approach. What have you seen firsthand that makes it effective?
Dolven: Yeah, I think a lot of people view a union as more of an insurance policy; you pay dues, you get a contract and that contract is there to protect you. But without a bottom-up organizing campaign and strong worker-to-worker organizing, it’s really difficult to sustain and enforce that contract. That’s where I’ve seen the biggest benefit. After winning a contract, companies violate provisions all the time. If workers haven’t built strong relationships through organizing and aren’t actively holding management accountable, companies can get away with ignoring or even quietly changing parts of the contract.
Long-term union sustainability is much stronger when worker-to-worker organizing continues beyond the election. It reinforces the understanding that we are the union, just like Eric’s book title says. No one is going to protect us but ourselves. I saw this firsthand during the organizing campaign at The Miami Herald, and it made all the difference in enforcing the contract and keeping management in check.
The campaigns I’m working with now, like the Connecticut NewsGuild, are completely worker-led. They run their own meetings, set agendas, come up with actions, and execute those actions—all from the bottom up. They still get encouragement, support, and resources, as Eric mentioned, but the energy and leadership are coming directly from the workers themselves.
At The Miami Herald, we saw this firsthand. After we won our election, our parent company McClatchy went bankrupt and got bought by a hedge fund. It was a huge moment of uncertainty. But because we had built strong worker-to-worker organizing structures, we were able to hold the line. Our managers actually seemed relieved that we had a union. They saw that we were the ones able to defend our newsroom and push back against cuts.
Schleuss: There’s a clear pattern here: when workers take ownership, they win. But what about enforcing contracts? Eric, some people argue that worker-to-worker organizing is great for winning elections but not for securing strong contracts. What’s your take on that?
Blanc: I think that’s a pretty weak argument. It’s true that Starbucks and Amazon haven’t won first contracts yet, but that’s not because they’re using a worker-led model, it’s because they’re taking on some of the biggest corporations in the world. No union has ever cracked Amazon before, period.
The reality is, the best way to enforce a contract is for workers to own it. Too often, unions rely on staff to negotiate contracts, then pull those organizers away once the contract is signed. That leaves workers unprepared to enforce their own agreements. That’s a huge problem because the period after winning a union election is actually when organizing should ramp up, not taper off.
But when workers have built their union from the ground up, they understand how to fight back when management tries to ignore the contract. That’s what makes this model so powerful—it doesn’t just win unions, it sustains them.
Schluess: Eric, in your research, you interviewed so many workers and surveyed countless campaigns. What was one of the most surprising or inspiring moments you uncovered? And Taylor, what was a surprising moment during your experience organizing?
Blanc: Writing this book was an incredible experience because I got to talk to so many workers doing truly inspiring things. One story that stands out is Sawa, a Starbucks worker in Connecticut who organized her store while battling stage four Hodgkin’s lymphoma.
During chemo, she couldn’t be on the floor, so she organized from her car, meeting coworkers masked up during COVID. She even timed her one-on-ones right after receiving steroids for a temporary energy boost. When I asked why she pushed through, she said, When you have cancer, you realize some things are out of your control, so you have to use your time wisely. For her, that meant fighting for her coworkers.
The good news is that Sawa is now fully recovered, and her store won their union election. But the fact that, in the middle of grueling chemotherapy, when she didn’t even know if she would survive, she felt the most meaningful thing she could do was fight for her coworkers—that’s just incredible.
Hearing stories like that gives you a real shot of hope in humanity. And I think we need that right now, because it can be hard to hold onto hope. My hope is that the stories in this book give people a little bit of that sustenance to keep going through the tough times ahead.
Dolven: One of the most surprising things from my unionization experience at The Miami Herald came after we won our election and started bargaining. The company that owned the Herald, McClatchy, went bankrupt and was bought by a hedge fund, which created massive uncertainty about how we’d keep our union together and continue bargaining through such a huge transition.
What really surprised me was how relieved our managers seemed that the union existed. In the midst of all that chaos, we were the ones holding the line and defending our journalism, and our newsroom, from the hedge fund’s takeover.
I had hoped we’d be able to stick together, but seeing it actually happen was incredibly inspiring. Even in such a tumultuous time, we stayed strong and protected what mattered.
Schluess: Eric, There’s a lot of chaos right now among federal workers, and I know you’ve been spending a lot of time volunteering and supporting them. Can you talk about what’s happening and what you’ve been seeing on the ground?
Blanc: After the election, John, you made a point that stuck with me—chaos under Trump pushes people to organize because it gives them control in uncertain times. That’s exactly what we’re seeing with federal workers. In just five weeks, over 15,000 have joined unions, more than in the entire past year, because they see the attack coming from Trump and Musk and know they need to fight back.
The stakes are huge. If they bust federal unions, it gives them unchecked power to impose their agenda, and private employers will follow suit. If Musk can tell workers, take it or leave it, why wouldn’t every boss? The labor movement has to see this as an urgent, winnable fight.
Workers are already leading the charge. The Federal Unionist Network is organizing national actions, like last week’s rallies with thousands of workers, including AOC in NYC. But legal challenges alone won’t stop this. We need mass, sustained pressure.
This isn’t a six-month fight. It’s a six-week fight. Every union should see this as their battle. Social Security, Medicare, the NLRB—everything is at stake. The time to go all in is now.
Schleuss: Final thoughts—where does worker-to-worker organizing go from here?
Blanc: I don’t believe that worsening conditions automatically make people fight back. People fight when they believe they can win. What makes this moment different is that Trump’s attacks on workers aren’t happening in a vacuum, they’re coming right on the heels of a massive labor resurgence. We now have an entire generation of young workers who are not only angry but also know how to organize. That makes this a volatile, unpredictable situation. it’s not like Reagan in 1981 when everything was in retreat.
The labor energy of the last four years hasn’t disappeared, it’s being channeled into new fights. And a lot of workers see organizing as one of the only real mechanisms to change the world, especially when it’s clear no one from above, whether the Democrats or anyone else, is coming to save them.
One example: Whole Foods workers in Philadelphia just won the first-ever union election at an Amazon-owned store. This was a huge victory, and honestly, I thought they might lose because Amazon went all out to crush them. They terrorized workers, fired a leader, gave a pay raise to everyone except the union store (which is illegal, but they did it anyway), and yet, the workers won. And it wasn’t even close.
But if the last few years have proven anything, it’s that worker-to-worker organizing works. It’s winning unions where they weren’t supposed to be possible. It’s holding bosses accountable. And it’s showing that when workers take control of their own fights, they can win—and win big.