Against the Grain

Worker Organizing in the Time of Trump

The union movement is suffering from a conundrum. While the U.S public overwhelmingly supports unions, labor lacks the capacity to help workers organize and unionize. Labor scholar and organizer Eric Blanc argues that there is a new and promising way of organizing from the bottom up, which emerged during Trump’s first term and flourished through Covid. He believes that with worker to worker organizing, unions could see explosive growth, even during Trump’s second term.

Resources:

Eric Blanc, We Are the Union: How Worker-to-Worker Organizing Is Revitalizing Labor and Winning Big UC Press, 2025

Eric Blanc’s Labor Politics on Substack

Photo credit: dblackadder