/edu/ - Education

I am a union organizer. Try crossposting on /leftypol/ for more responses.

For directions and strategies I would not look deep into strike history at the expense of reading organizing manuals, unless you are already organized into a union. Read at least one organizing manual cover-to-cover before you try to organize a strike or a union.

Good, easy to read union organizing material is found in the IWW organizing manual, and the EWOC organizing guide attached. If you have a local IWW branch please contact them as they will likely give you a comprehensive training for free if you join.

William Z Foster, the best chairman in the history of the CPUSA and the organizer of the 1919 steel strike and the trade union education league, wrote an organizing manual that was resurrected by new york communists to successfully organize an amazon warehouse: https://www.marxists.org/archive/foster/1936/10/organizing-methods-steel-industry/index.htm

The best modern organizing guide is Labor Notes' "Secrets of a Successful Organizer" and is $15. https://labornotes.org/secrets - This is a guide on how to organize your coworkers and is overlaps rank-and-file movement organizing in existing union workplaces with new union organizing.

The attached "labor law for the rank-and-filer" will inform you about how to use the National Labor Relations Act (USA) to shield yourself and your coworkers from getting fired for union and strike activity (Feds can order reinstatement with backpay). If you plan a direct action including a strike, you should read the corresponding section from this book.

For strikes - study the failure of the 1919 steel strike and 1919 Seattle general strike, success of sit-in strikes in Detroit auto and retail sectors two decades later. Rely on your coworkers to run the strike, not union bureaucrats. Do not do for your coworkers what they can do themselves.
Strike overview:
https://labornotes.org/2019/10/ways-strike
https://www.ueunion.org/strikes
Theory:
https://labornotes.org/2019/10/democracy-who-owns-strike
History:
https://labornotes.org/blogs/2013/12/retail-sit-down-1937-detroit-lessons-todays-low-wage-strikers

here's this