Unions of Our Own

Daniel Gross has been doing worker-led organizing and union-building for more than two decades, accompanying thousands of workers creating unions in their workplaces. Together with his co-workers, Gross helped found the groundbreaking IWW Starbucks Workers Union, which held power for over a decade at the coffee giant and helped revitalize a more inclusive labor movement.Gross has practiced labor law from a rank & file perspective and served on the board of the National Lawyers Guild and the Food Chain Workers Alliance. He is also the founding director of Brandworkers, the first worker center of immigrant workers in the metro New York local food manufacturing industry.With Staughton Lynd, he is the co-author of the classic Labor Law for the Rank & Filer: Building Solidarity While Staying Clear of the Law as well as the graphic pamphlet, Solidarity Unionism at Starbucks, with illustrator Tom Keough. He is based in New York City.

• IntroductionEstablishing a connection with the reader, via the miseries of work - lays out the general framework. Includes some of Daniel’s experience at Starbucks and BordersPart 1 | Considering the Union JourneyWork Problems, Work SolutionsWork is daunting, don’t be daunted by organizing. It can be done!Organizing and Operating a Union at Your JobGeneral overview of what’s involved with a union & contrasting to mainstream union modelsPart 2 | The Foundational Building Blocks to a Union of Your OwnBuilding Block 1: Constituency | Choose Your PeoplePretty self-explanatory: who is it that you’re organizing? Building Block 2: Problem | What’s Most Painful?Grievances, shared and particular: race, gender, sexualities, status, etc. and how to build on them.Building Block 3: Solution | Solve Problems with Solidarity The importance of “an injury to one is an injury to all” how to tackle those questions among co-workers, minority organizing strategiesBuilding Block 4: Strategy | Power to WinBecoming coworkers with a sense of collective self; what are our goals, what does winning mean, and identifying strategiesPart 3 | The Sustainability and Growth Building BlocksBuilding Block 5: Mechanism | Hold Your Gains, Define Your CharacterHow to understand collective bargaining, cease-fire agreements, and issue-by-issue agreements, among others. Contrasting the cost / benefits of those for workers’ interestsBuilding Block 6:  Structure | A Union You ControlWhat a democratic union is, why it's important, and how to conceive of a structure that reflects the interests of the workers.Building Block 7: Funding | Resources to WinHow to conceive of the finances for your new unionBuilding Block 8: Metrics | Measure Your Model, Focus Your Work

Praise for Labor Law for the Rank & Filer“Workers’ rights are under attack on every front. Bosses break the law every day. For decades Labor Law for the Rank and Filer has been arming workers with an introduction to their legal rights (and the limited means to enforce them) while reminding everyone that real power comes from workers’ solidarity.”—Alexis Buss, former general secretary-treasurer of the IWW“As valuable to working persons as any hammer, drill, stapler, or copy machine, Labor Law for the Rank and Filer is a damn fine tool empowering workers who struggle to realize their basic dignity in the workplace while living through an era of unchecked corporate greed. Smart, tough, and optimistic, Staughton Lynd and Daniel Gross provide nuts and bolts information to realize on-the-job rights while showing us that another world is not only possible but inevitable.”—John Philo, legal director, Maurice and Jane Sugar Law Center for Economic and Social Justice“Some things are too important to leave to so called “experts”: our livelihoods, our dignity and our rights. In this book, Staughton Lynd and Daniel Gross have provided us with a very necessary, empowering, and accessible tool for protecting our own rights as workers.”—Nicole Schulman, coeditor of Wobblies! A Graphic History and World War 3 Illustrated“Lynd and Gross are to be commended for developing a useful resource not just for shop stewards, but for every wage-earner engaged in the struggle to improve the condition of working people.”—Gordon Simmons, UE Local 170“For those readers who want to strengthen workers rights and improve our overall quality of life, or for those who may see labor organizing as also a strategy to achieve not only the vision of a participatory economy but a participatory society as well then this book should definitely be in your arsenal.”—Michael McGehee, Z Magazine