Product Description

This book is an easy to read guide for non-union workers who are trying to form a union at their workplace. It is filled with personal insights from the author and concrete tips on how to be a successful committee member.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1611313 in Books
• Published on: 2002-08-01
• Binding: Paperback
• 74 pages

About the Author
Richard Bensinger has been organizing workers for more than 25 years. After serving as a union organizing committee member at the non-union company where he worked, he went on to become a staff organizer and founder of the Organizing Institute. He also served as Organizing Director of the national AFL-CIO.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
The first thing you need to understand as an organizing committee member is how important you are. Without a committee (or leadership group by some other name), there is no organizing campaign. Simple as that.

I learned this personally when I helped to organize my own workplace, a sporting goods factory in the West. Although I liked certain aspects of my job, such as the pay, I was concerned that management wasn’t doing what it should to make our jobs safe. It seemed like our voices were not being heard. A member of my family said, "Stop complaining, and call a union." Although I had some skepticism, I did call, and soon an organizer came to visit me.

My request to the organizer was simple: "Form a union at our company."

His response was equally direct: "It’s your union, and you’ll have to organize it. All I can do is give you support and advice."

It was news to me that the union is actually the employees joining together to create their own organization.

Customer Reviews

community organizing at its finest
Thsi book was written by people from the AFL-CIO. It details the way to conduct an organizing campaign with your head held high, speaking to the "angels of our better nature" in Lincoln's words. There is an emphasis on on-the-ground tactics and interpersonal skills and phraseology used by activists and organizers, very nuts-and-bolts description of different phases of a campaign.

I heard that people in the religious right were studying Saul Alinsky with a view toward getting a handle on how to organize a community. They shoudl have also been studying this as well.

Now, unions get a bad rap in some quarters, but the bald fact is, we would not have an American middle class without them, nor would we have minimum wage, child labor laws, social security, and a long list of other things that have improved the lives of all of us. This book presents a way to sell a union from a positive point of view, and a way to use principles of American democracy that apply to everyone, in favor of improving our lives. This book captures an effective counter to the usual fear, divisiveness and mistrust sown by management.

I can't help but think that the recent victory by Barak Obama took so many ideas and principles about how to run a campaign, out of this book and the tradition it represents.

Yes we can!