These important steps will help bring your workplace organizing campaign added visibility and put additional pressure on the boss.
- Identify issues around which to organize: Focus primarily on issues that come up repeatedly in conversations with many co-workers across different job areas and titles and that have practical and measurable solutions.
- Identify potential targets for action: Also known as “power mapping,” determine these targets based on their ability to address the issues your group has identified. For instance, if the group wants raises, then it needs to identify who has the ultimate authority to make decisions on wage increases. Your actions should create problems those targets need to address.
- Identify secondary targets: These are people who can influence decision-makers. For example, if seeking raises in retail, customers might be a secondary target that can influence management’s decisions. Workers might pass out flyers to customers that urge them to contact management and express their support for raises.
- Identify escalating actions: Next, the group should plan a series of escalating actions intended to create increasing pressure on the primary targets. Moving from actions of smaller impact to larger impact demonstrates to the targets that the workers are serious and committed. Ideally, targets come to worry about what is coming next and move enough on the issues that the workers don’t have to take the ultimate action. However, in the event that workers do have to take the ultimate action, escalation is intended to build both their confidence and capacity.
- Determine priorities: It’s important that workers choose actions and put them in an order suited to their working conditions. For example, in a factory, a petition is a high-level action, whereas, in higher ed, it is typically a low-level action because academic workers are frequently circulating and signing political petitions. Workers know their working conditions best. They are in the best position to plan their own actions and campaign with input as necessary from those supporting them.
