Scott Elliott, Workerorganizing.org || Many successful workplace organizing campaigns happen in small shops: a coffee shop or bookstore where the workers know each other and can organize together directly. However, workers often have dozens or even hundreds or thousands of co-workers, work for employers who operate multiple facilities or departments, and know only a few co-workers. For workers like these in larger workplaces, the thought of organizing at scale may feel overwhelming and frightening.
These feelings of powerlessness among workers are not an accident but a result of the intentional and ever-expanding disparities in power in the American workplace. Those feelings are the fuel, as Jane McAlevey suggests in her book “No Shortcuts: Organizing for Power in the New Gilded Age.”
“The very idea of who holds power is itself contestable,” she says, challenging the common perception that concerns about wages and benefits are the predominant issue among workers looking to organize. “Workplace fights are most importantly about one of the deepest of human emotional needs: dignity. The day-in, day-out degradation of people’s self-worth is what can drive workers to form the solidarity needed to face today’s union busters.”
We as workers can start to realize our power in the workplace by identifying the power that exists there, but power can exist in many forms.
Defining power
A crucial step in organizing your workplace is called “mapping and charting.” This step involves listing everyone who works at your workplace, regardless of their position or department, and assessing their level of interest in organizing and connecting with other co-workers. Part of this analysis includes the power they have: Are they a manager? Do they have organic connections with their co-workers? Can they bring others into the struggle?
McAlevey wrote extensively about how to map and chart your workplace and which strategies to employ in the process. Her view of power is also supported by an unlikely source: an author named Starhawk in their book, “Truth or Dare: Encounters with Power, Authority, and Mystery”.” In it, they identify three distinct types of power.
Domination (“power over”)
Most of us know what domination in the workplace looks and feels like. Bosses change schedules on short notice, mandate overtime, limit hours to prevent workers from qualifying for benefits, and dismiss or simply don’t respond to worker health and safety concerns. From a legal perspective, the National Labor Relations Act outlines this as some with the power to, among other things, hire, fire, discipline, or promote others. This is power over you at work, and to win demands, it must be confronted collectively.
Collaboration (“power with”)
This collective action must first mean building relationships, planning and organizing together, and engaging every voice. It may feel different, but it serves as an antidote to the stress and anger of working under a dominating boss. “There is no salvation beyond [workers’] own power,” says McAlevey.
Inspiration (“power within”)
Good organizing means convincing your co-workers that your struggle is shared and can only be won together. However, the only person you can really control is yourself. To share this message, you must each find inner strengths that contribute to the collective, reciprocating through each member in solidarity, while emanating from the belief that each worker contributes unique values and skills to the whole. This power feeds the collaborative effort (“power with”) and grows feelings of confidence, efficacy, and self-worth.
Sources of workplace power
Asking a few key strategic questions will turn your shared feelings into a plan to build power. Who holds what power? Who among the rank and file have connections with them? What are the sources of power among the rank and file? Who are our allies in the community?
A power structure analysis can provide us with that information. It’s “the mechanism that enables ordinary people to understand their potential power and participate meaningfully in making strategy,” according to McAlevey. What are the sources of the power that bosses leverage in the domination of workers? Who needs to be defeated or convinced? And where is the worker’s power? Who has influence in the workplace? Who are the organic leaders and what connections do workers have in the community?
As we build power with co-workers to create the workplace we deserve, we learn that, as Starhawk writes, “systems of domination are not prepared to cope with fearlessness because acts of courage and resistance break the expected patterns.”
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