Labor Notes
Summary
Union-organizing media project publishing workplace-organizing handouts, training and a magazine — its flagship “Secrets of a Successful Organizer” is core reading for building a workplace committee, and the underlying method transfers cleanly to non-labor organizing.
Body
Labor Notes is a media and organizing project describing itself as “the voice of union activists who want to put the movement back in the labor movement” since 1979, run by the Labor Education and Research Project. [source: labor-notes] It publishes a magazine, archives, a podcast, and workplace-organizing trainings under the “Troublemakers” brand (Troublemakers Handbook, Troublemakers School). [source: labor-notes]
Its flagship practical resource is “Secrets of a Successful Organizer,” a workbook distilling workplace-organizing know-how into 47 accessible “secrets” — identifying workplace issues, building a campaign around them, anticipating management’s countermoves, and moving coworkers from complaint to collective action. [source: labor-notes] It ships with group exercises, a companion trainer’s guide, free sample chapters, and downloadable handouts, and is translated into Spanish, Chinese, Danish, German, Japanese and Swedish. [source: labor-notes]
No Creative Commons license or reuse policy was found; the footer states copyright is held by the Labor Education and Research Project (2005–2023) — treat as link-only. [source: labor-notes]
Use it for
The step-by-step method for building a workplace committee from scratch: mapping who has influence, running one-to-ones, and sequencing small wins into a real structure test. [source: labor-notes] Anticipating and countering management’s standard playbook (captive-audience meetings, one-on-one pressure, delay) before a campaign runs into it blind. [source: labor-notes] Workplace-specific escalation sequencing that complements the wiki’s general escalation and structure-test material with labor-movement specifics. [source: labor-notes]
Related
- affinity-groups
- coalition-building
- constructive-programme
- distributed-organizing
- framing-and-narrative
- leadership-development
- one-to-ones
- public-narrative
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