[This post is part of a series on relationship-based organizing.]

Everyone can organize, and everyone’s organizing will be stronger if they drop the popular image of organizing they have in their head. This image often singles one person out as separate from the community they belong to, which already is a mistake. The prototypical organizer in the activist imagination is a charismatic personality, a forceful public speaker, overflowing with confidence, capable of acts of bravery and intensity, spends all of their time glued to pursuing their political vision, and who we all look at with awe. If you have some of these traits, maybe they’ll be helpful for you. At the same time, I think the polar opposite traits are equally effective at organizing if we properly understand what organizing is about.

Union organizing is often portrayed, in popular media as well as union training materials, as really flashy. It occasionally is, but when it’s not flashy newer organizers often feel confused or get stuck trying to figure out what they’re supposed to be doing.

I hope to show that the things that make a workplace organizer good are things that everyone already has inside them, which is the ability to relate to others. It is something everyone can get better at and do with intention, but the most fundamental and important skill of organizing is just building relationships with those around you.

In my own development as an organizer and in talking with others, I’ve come to realize that the role relationships play in organizing is often different than how that role is talked about. In the intro post on relationship-based organizing, I criticized how relationships are so often instrumentalized in organizing, with the organizer using others for political goals. In this post I want to discuss more broadly the many ways that building relationships is the foundation of strong organizing. 

A War for the Normal

The effectiveness of strategies and tactics varies widely depending on local conditions and institutional structures. On the left, often what gets the most air-time are those strategies and tactics that are the most intense and extreme, and in some situations those intense and extreme methods are the most appropriate. If an oil pipeline was approved by politicians using anti-democratic procedures and the only hope of stopping it is through disruption that increases the cost of building and operating the pipeline above what politicians and investors can bear, then extreme tactics like lockdowns or sabotage by relatively few individuals can sometimes get the job done.

By contrast, in most workplace organizing the system is not weak to a few individuals committing extreme acts. Any few individuals who perform acts of extreme disruption are easily fired and the system continues as if it rolled over the smallest bump. Or if a few individuals are successful in disrupting or gaining control over key workplace structures, capital is often easily re-routed into adjacent outlets or industry competitors in a way that undercuts the effectiveness of such extreme actions.

In workplace organizing, control over the shop floor is crucial and is usually only possible when some majority of the workers get on the same page about an issue and a plan of action. It’s not that all workers have to have the same beliefs, or join the same union or political org, or subscribe to the same newsletter or newspaper. But a majority of workers in a particular office, department, building, or company have to agree that X is a problem and Y is the solution. The logic of workplace power is bound by the fact that the bosses are dependent on their workers doing work, and that the bosses can’t dispose of a majority of workers without sacrificing their own purpose of economic production and profit. In short, they can’t fire everybody.

Rather than trying to convince the majority of workers in a workplace that they have to each as individuals adopt stances and endorse actions that are considered extreme in relation to the norm, it’s usually much more effective to shift what is considered normal itself. Going on strike might seem like an extreme action when the established norm is that workers are obedient to their boss’s authority, but going on strike can also be redefined as an entirely normal action when norms are redefined.

The most powerful ways that norms are defined is through all the 1-to-1 relationships that together make up the community structure of the workplace. Relationships determine the social texture of a workplace, its softness or thorniness, as well as the political valence, the direction of its pressures and tensions. Bosses and worker organizers compete for influence over these relationships.

Bosses Aim to Depoliticize Work

Bosses try to shape the political and social dimensions of our workplace relationships in their favor and to maintain control. A primary way the boss does this is by depoliticizing the workplace. Every aspect of work is presented by the boss as a kind of economic necessity or logical imperative instead of a political decision. If one group of workers makes less money or has to do double-duty after someone quits while another group of workers makes more money and gets all sorts of perks and privileges, the boss will defend these decisions as necessary and that try to mask all of the inequalities and unfairness that permeates the capitalist workplace. Rarely will the boss try to justify the inequality and unfairness openly and explicitly by saying poor workers deserve to make less money or that favoritism is used to pit workers against each other. More technical reasons are invoked, such as budgetary requirements, and appeals to supposedly politically neutral ideas like meritocracy, such as so-and-so gets special perks because they work so hard.

While bosses universally relate to the politics of the workplace in this way, there’s a wider variety of ways that bosses relate socially to the workplace. Some bosses try to ingratiate themselves and be friendly with everyone, some use intimidation and veiled threats to get what they want, some maintain a more detached demeanor. But whatever social strategy the boss uses, it is wielded in the context of the political structure of the workplace.

How Organizers Relate to the Political and Social

The key to changing the balance of power in the workplace is to re-politicize it. At an abstract level, this comes down to making clear the class divisions at work, between those who give orders and those who take orders, between those who do the work that produces profit and those who capture that profit, between those who have it good at work and those who have it bad.

Most often, though, articulating abstract principles to coworkers will not have the intended effect because there’s a gulf between abstract principles and workers’ concrete experiences. In politicizing the workplace, we’ll be most effective if we find ways to talk about what’s happening specifically at work and the concrete effect that’s having on you and your coworkers.

Traditional agitation in organizing conversations is one way to resurface politics at work, but there’s also numerous other ways to do this. One organizer friend of mine takes the approach of making offhand comments in a matter-of-fact way that make workplace politicization feel totally normal. If he and his coworkers are told to do some perfunctory or meaningless task, he’ll say to his coworkers, “I’m not doing that.” His tone of voice isn’t defiant or indignant, but uses an intonation more associated with phrases like “pass the salt.” Or if the boss says something manipulative or minimizing, he’ll later say, “that was trash” in the same way you say “nice weather today.” 

He’s not telling someone how to feel, he’s not using a tone of voice that makes you feel pressure to agree with him, he’s not reciting his life story.  He’s not making a big deal out of it in a way that would expose him more easily to being snitched on. In the most concise and unassuming way possible he’s redefining politics as normal in the workplace in a way that undermines the boss’s ability to depoliticize the job.

This organizer friend isn’t a lone-wolf type but is a social leader, someone respected in the workplace for the work he does and for the support he gives his coworkers. So when he makes these little comments about workplace politics, they don’t fall on deaf ears, but others start to accept this politicization of the normal themselves and replicate it in their speech and behavior. A culture is built up of questioning the boss.

Each Relationship Is Different

Some coworkers will, once they realize it’s an acceptable and normal thing to do, want to talk about workplace dynamics and organizing all of the time. Some coworkers will barely want to talk about it at all. The objective isn’t to turn all of your coworkers into raging union agitators, but neither is it to disengage from politics altogether the first time a coworker changes the topic away from workplace politics. Building relationships is a constant navigation and negotiation as each person brings different parts of themselves and reveals different sides of themselves in different moments, together exploring what kinds of connection meets their mutual needs. Moreover, organizing at its best has a transformative power, where one or both sides of a relationship come to find and create new parts of themselves as they explore new ways to relate to their working conditions and the people around them.

Some of my coworker relationships are naturally more political, some are less so. To put some crude numbers on it, some might skew as far as 70% political/30% social, while others skew 5% political/95% social. As long as the relationship is grounded in what you both bring to it and finding the organic balance, then you’re being a good organizer (and are probably making healthy connections in general). Over time, as you shift the broader culture at work and normalize its politicization, you’ll see the relationships you have can naturally become more political as people start to feel free to discuss these things.

Oftentimes your organizing will gear more towards those who like to explore more deeply the political side of workplace relationships. That’s normal, but your strength as workers able to take collective action relies on the connections all the coworkers have with each other. Even the least political coworker, when the workplace gets polarized around an issue that no one can ignore, will find themselves wanting to relate to workplace politics in some way. Being in relationship with even your most apolitical coworkers will help them feel comfortable navigating workplace politics in those decisive moments when they become unavoidable. Whether the otherwise apolitical people at work get on board with seeing an issue a certain way and supporting its change can often mean the difference between a successful action and a failed action.

If you find yourself having to force the politics into a workplace relationship, you’re probably better off just backing off and finding other ways to connect. Organizing is rarely about forcing anything on your coworkers, and rather, it’s most often capitalism that will do the forcing. When capitalism makes things real bad, even the most apolitical coworkers will start to seek ways of relating to the things around them that affect them.

One way to sum this all up is to re-state the phrase, “Just be yourself.” Against the boss’s notion that politics don’t belong in the workplace, as an organizer it’s often our job to insist that they do, but not because we have to force them on people. Rather as organizers it’s our job to create space for everyone to be themselves, which naturally includes expressing how they feel about work, what they think work should be like, and how to make work like that.

Don’t Play into the Boss’s Blame Game

Work under capitalism is full of inconveniences, stressors, and irrationality. Many of these things directly or indirectly benefit the boss’s control of the workplace. In depoliticizing the workplace, the boss will find ways to rationalize problems and deflect blame or responsibility.

The most toxic way this happens is in turning workers’ ire and frustration against each other. One veteran organizer friend of mine is insistent on putting the frustration back on the boss and refusing to dump it onto coworkers. This isn’t to say that coworkers are perfect, but just to recognize that the structure of the workplace with formal authority monopolized in the position of the boss is the deeper cause of the vast majority of workplace problems, especially those that appear on the surface to be problems between coworkers.

Rather than blame a coworker for being bad at her job, my organizing friend will always ask if that person got the proper training, equipment, or staffing support to do her job well. Isn’t it the boss’s job to make sure workers can do their job like they are supposed to? Rather than blame customers or clients or the weather for continually messing things up at work, why didn’t the boss actually fix the issue after the first time?

While this might seem rather simple, when I listen to this friend talk about her organizing and hear her apply this frame to countless situations in ways that I had not considered before, it totally re-colors how I see the workplace.

Workplace gossip can be particularly dangerous when it descends into factional tensions between workers. As an organizer, you’ll be much more able to build relationships and foster community with a majority of coworkers if you’re able to re-direct negative attention away from coworkers whispering and bickering against each other and instead find ways to focus that negative attention upwards. Always put responsibility for problems back on the boss.

Relationship-Building in Practice

In those workplaces where bosses have firmly established the norms of casual workplace conversation in their favor, it can be hard to “be yourself” and be open about your more political side. Maybe coworkers will get anxious when talking about working conditions because they know they might get judged as weak or even snitched on. Maybe some coworkers rationalize bad working conditions as a form of mental survival and introducing criticisms of those working conditions will force them to confront uncomfortable truths and emotions about how they are treated and what they do all day at work.

It sucks to not be able to be yourself and be open about what you think and feel at work. This is the reality of capitalism for literally billions of people on the planet. So in workplaces where expressing yourself can be dangerous, you’ll often have to balance your need for safety with your need for self-expression. As an organizer, you’ll have to find creative ways and seek out little opportunities to pry open space for political self-expression for yourself and others. 

There’s a million ways this can play out. For people who are new to workplace organizing, where and how to start is often the most confusing and difficult part of organizing, especially when your workplace looks apolitical and your coworkers seemingly never want to talk about issues that affect their job. New organizers I talk with often then get stuck trying to apply their image of what union organizing is supposed to look like to a workplace that doesn’t look like that at all.

Try not to be surprised or disappointed if some people respond at first in ways that defend or justify the status quo. That’s how people naturally respond after spending years in a workplace where this stuff is normalized. Rather than criticize them or tell them they’re wrong, you can find respectful and low-key ways to introduce alternative ways of looking at workplace issues. “Are you sure it has to be like that? My friend at another company said they do it this other way.” “Well all I know is that that part of the job stresses me out.” Over time, these things can start to sink in for people.

Organizing, Fast and Slow

In organizing gradually in this fashion, maybe you finally get to the step of taking action after many starts and stops, after more than a couple detours, after staff turnover forces you to go back and repeat some steps. Contrary to the oversimplified narratives about organizing taught in books and trainings, this is a totally normal way that organizing develops. This is what my first couple years of organizing looked like at a workplace initially characterized by rigid hierarchies among staff, high staff turnover, an anti-social work atmosphere, and no willingness to openly question working conditions or supervisors. One phrase that’s helped me understand different paces of organizing is the idea that “organizing happens at the speed of relationships,” which can vary widely depending on the culture of each workplace. 

Sometimes workplace grievances, coworker dynamics, and boss incompetence leads workers to go from a standstill, moving through all of these steps in quick succession, to pulling off an effective action in a relatively small time window, and that’s totally normal too. The only thing I would warn against with such victories is that sometimes organizers falsely come to the conclusion that since action was easy and quick the first time, it will be easy and quick the next times too. Sometimes actions come together so smoothly that the role of relationships in organizing is obscured, and then organizers mistakenly focus on the more technical parts of organizing, like getting enough signatures on a petition or hitting their target of 90% of their coworkers wearing their union button. While such activities can be a useful aspect of organizing, sometimes they are emphasized at the expense of actually building genuine relationships. 

Sooner or later, organizing goes through some really hard patches because capital doesn’t intend to just let workers waltz in and take the means of production without a fight. Sooner or later, the bosses perk up their ears, wipe the smirk off their face, and start plotting to take back every crumb that the workers have won and every inch of control they have previously lost. 

When the trenches are dug, the sandbags piled high, and the machine guns mounted, then organizers discover that it’s the relationships coworkers have with each other that are the source of all their power. In response to organizing the boss might start threatening to discipline or fire people, the company might make abrupt changes in policy that seem punitive or retaliatory, some of your former coworker allies might be picked off through transfers and promotions. When the boss tries to instill fear, isolation, and hopelessness, it will quickly become apparent if the workers have strong enough relationships to weather the storm or if they will get swallowed by the waves. Only workplace relationships provide the potential power to make things better but also the potential power to not be stepped on like bugs.

Does a worker talk with others about their plans over holiday break and how their kids are doing? If a worker isn’t getting their breaks, is it something other coworkers have ever thought to ask them about? If a worker is being bullied by the boss, do they feel like they can tell a coworker and be listened to and supported? When a worker is invited to a union meeting, are they going to be engaged and listened to or just talked at and expected to sit through boring procedures? When a worker is stressed out, is it something their coworkers notice and ask them about? If a worker is angry about being pressured to take an extra shift, is there someone they can vent to? If a coworker is scared of the risks involved in a direct action, is there someone they can confide in? If a coworker has an idea for an action to take against lack of safety equipment, is there someone they can scheme with? When a worker gets their job back after an unfair firing, are there others they can celebrate with?

For any of these questions to be answered with a “yes” depends on the degree that coworkers feel trust, care, and solidarity towards each other. It’s relationships all the way down. Relationships and relationships some more. Nothing else matters. Or rather, everything else in organizing matters insofar as it strengthens the trust, care, and solidarity of relationships between coworkers.

To make the workplace better is to carve out a shared sense of community, dignity, and empowerment in an often hostile environment thrown on us by capitalism. The mark of a good organizer is not whether their coworkers look at them as particularly brave, radical, brilliant, or electrifying. Rather, the organizer is hitting their mark when coworkers feel like an organizer will listen to their concerns and ideas, support them in tough moments, encourage them to express themselves, and invite them to participate collectively in solving workplace problems. This is a model of organizing that everyone can draw from and contribute to.