We Are the Union

A riveting account of labour's bottom-up resurgence, providing a roadmap for workers, unions, and social movements to win widely.

After decades of union decline and rising inequality, an inspiring wave of workplace organising—from Starbucks stores to Amazon warehouses to southern auto factories—has thrust unionisation into the national spotlight. By analysing this surge and telling the stories of the courageous workers driving it forward, We Are the Union makes a case for how to overcome business as usual in both corporate America and organised labour.

Eric Blanc shows that recent struggles have developed a new organising model, worker-to-worker unionism, which builds scalable power by giving rank-and-filers an unprecedented degree of leadership. Through digital tools and ambitious campaigns, young worker leaders are turning the labour movement back into a movement—and they're winning. Rigorously researched and compellingly written, We Are the Union illustrates how this new grassroots approach can exponentially grow the power of working people to overcome economic exploitation, racial injustice, and authoritarianism at work and beyond.