Building a union at work means making connections with your co-workers, building trust, and creating democratic structures at work. This might sound daunting for those of us who are more introverted, who are quieter and reluctant to speak up or speak out, or who tend to focus on the details rather than the big picture.
A lot of organizing materials focus on the natural leaders, the one-on-ones, and confronting your boss. It’s true that you make the most impact in your organizing campaign by talking with your co-workers, so how can introverts organize?
Behind-the-Scenes Work
Introverts can help in many ways. An easy place to get started is with administrative work, like writing, designing, and planning. It takes a lot of effort to keep track of where your co-workers stand and what the campaign is communicating to them. This means someone will need to make the spreadsheets, fliers, and other documents. Work like this is often invisible or lower profile, but it’s critical to the success of any organizing campaign.
Keeping your support to smaller things, like attending general meetings, posting fliers, making graphics, and helping people pick up supplies, are helpful in addition to freeing up organizers to do other things.
You can also take advantage of how your co-workers perceive you. By publicly agreeing with more outgoing organizers, you can help other people see the campaign as applying to every kind of worker.
If your fellow organizers say it’s appropriate, you can be public about your support for your union. Put up some stickers or buttons on your desk or put a pile of buttons and flyers by the coffee machine for people to take. If there’s a general meeting or action coming up, offer a carpool to it. Tell people you signed your union card. There’s strength and safety in numbers, and these conversations are a great step toward having one-on-one conversations.
Taking Small Steps
Many people get nervous about having organizing conversations — but the good news is that you can ease into them! You can start building a rapport with your colleagues by being a person they can talk to, whether it’s complaining about the boss or talking about weekend plans. By lending an ear, you can start to build the trust that is so vital to a union campaign.
This might seem daunting if you don’t talk with many people or don’t know anyone very well. Start small, talking with just one person, once a week, maybe someone you already know. You will learn so much about the goodwill, bravery, and dreams inside all of us, including yourself, that only really come out when you organize your co-workers around an issue.
Talking with just one co-worker means you can be the reliable, go-to organizer for that one person. An even more introverted person than yourself, who maybe struggles to socialize in-person, can really connect with a fellow introvert, especially if other organizers have trouble reaching them.
Having Deeper Conversations
With enough conversations, you’ll find your style of conversation and understand what to ask. An underrated organizing skill is listening and asking questions, which is a skill introverts tend to excel at. A good organizing conversation means you only have to speak about 20 percent of the time.
It might seem counterintuitive, but saying relatively little in response means you can actually get through to people. These conversations are an opportunity to better understand and listen to a person and why they support a union or not. Even if you don’t win over a co-worker in that one conversation, you can still try to understand why they’re reluctant or not supportive, which is also really important information.
Ultimately, an organizing conversation isn’t about winning a debate or talking the most. It’s about learning what makes the other person tick, listening to what they’re saying, and responding to what you hear. This is an opportunity to share why you believe a union will make things better or to clear up any misinformation they’ve heard.
The best way to help your union is to be the point person for your co-workers, even if it’s just for one or two of your co-workers because organizers can count on you to reliably turn out those one or two people to an action. With enough conversations, if you can become the point person for 10 people, you’re functionally a full organizer!
Being Yourself
It might even be helpful to map out and rehearse conversations ahead of time. What will you ask? How will you ask it? What will you do if they respond this way or that?
In any organizing situation, just be natural. Outwardly pre-empting your ask, like, “Uh, so, like, it’s totally okay if you don’t, but like, if you could, that’d be great. You can sign a union card if you want, I know it’s a lot, but, it’d be great if you did,” the other person won’t feel the importance of the request and will be less likely to engage.
On the other hand, if you’re asking or just talking about the union, and if you’re relaxed about it, the other person will be too. For example:
“Hey, have you heard of the union drive? No? We want a legally recognized union so that we can bargain with the boss about [your co-workers’ issues]. I have a flier here. Do you want one? Cool, which demand are you most excited about? Awesome, me too! We’re trying to get a majority of workers to sign union cards to show the boss that a lot of us want this. Will you sign a union card?”
Now it’s chill and fun, and you have a template with questions for the next person to answer.
If someone tells you no, you can just say, “No problem, would you be OK with telling me why?” and ask some questions. Most people will be happy you even asked, and those responses are useful for future conversations.
You’ll rarely ever encounter a rude co-worker who yells at you just because you asked them to sign a union card. What do you do in that case? Kill ’em with kindness! Just smile and gently say, “No problem. Have a good day!” and walk away. They can make a fool of themselves; you’re trying to help them get a raise.
Any organizing effort takes many hands, and everyone will play to their strengths, but it’s also an opportunity to build new ones. There are many tasks you can contribute to the union effort that don’t involve a ton of interaction, but the life-changing experience isn’t getting or even having the union — it’s talking to your co-workers. The best thing you can do is be brave with the same courage as your co-workers to stand up to the boss and try to make a new friend in the workplace! That’s where the beauty is.
