Get on the Job and Organize

This book is a love letter to labor organizing, at once earnest and hard-nosed. Brisack takes us inside Starbucks Workers United, offering an in-depth look at what a worker-led campaign can look like — the ups and downs, headaches and heartbreaks. Their devotion shows on every page, as do practical calculations of power and strategy. The labor movement could use 1000 more just like them. — Sarah Jaffe, author of Work Won’t Love You Back and From the Ashes

Get on the Job and Organize: Standing up for a Better Workplace and a Better World is a compelling, stirring narrative of the Starbucks and Tesla unionization efforts, telling the broader story of the new, nationwide labor movement unfolding in our era of political and social unrest. As one of the exciting new faces of the U.S. Labor Movement, Jaz Brisack argues that while workers often organize when their place of work is toxic, it’s equally important to organize when you love your job. Here, Brisack delivers practical advice on how workers can and should stand up for their rights, especially when electoral politics seem to have failed us.

With an accessible tone, a deep love of labor history, and profound empathy, Brisack puts recent efforts into the context of the long tradition of organizing in the United States. In the process, they show us that we, too, can improve our workplaces, from how to educate ourselves and our colleagues, to what backlash to expect and how to fight it, to what victory looks like even if the union doesn’t necessarily win. [Adapted from publishers’ description.]

ISBN: 9781668080801 | Atria/One Signal Publishers

Praise

Jaz has too much hometraining to rename this book, but this is not only a how-to change the world book, it is a percussive, necessary ‘why we must change the world’ book written by an activist who can write their ass off. Mandatory reading for humans in need of a literary elixir. — Kiese Laymon, author of Heavy

Here’s the light to illuminate these dark times — an account of how workers take on corporate power and win. Even more inspiring, it’s led by Gen Z. Starbucks Workers United has given new life to the American labor movement, and Jaz Brisack helped make it happen. Essential reading for anyone who cares about tackling economic inequality and saving democracy. — Robert Reich, former U.S. Secretary of Labor and author of Aftershock and Saving Capitalism