Good piece and it's true a lot of unions would be better off going for slimmer and shorter first contracts, focused on winning union security. Caveat is if a company sees you walk in with this modest goal, they'll fight it just as hard as any first contract. We must conceal our modesty with threats.
This is a thoughtful piece by @chactivist.bsky.social that merits your attention if you're a labor person. I'll have more to say about it later today or tomorrow, but this is good thinking and I hope folks talk about this within their unions.
Each @chactivist.bsky.social labor-strategy piece is a jewel, and this one's no exception.
Here, Chris argues that new unions should consider seeking first contracts that don't turn into all-or-nothing fights but rather help—
• Sustain their existence and
• Improve their power to scale.
My latest for @jacobinmagazin.bsky.social explains how labor’s approach to 1st contracts is contributing to labor’s terminal decline & asks: how can unions structure 1st contracts to expand the power needed to win more over time? Are shorter 1st CBAs sometimes better? jacobin.com/2026/03/chip...
Reuters: A record 129 journalists were killed in 2025. Two-thirds were killed by Israel.
Hats off to those workers and to the Teamsters for backing them. But we can’t sugarcoat the real lesson here. If workers can’t credibly disrupt the company at scale, the company has little incentive to settle. Density across the employer isn’t optional — it’s the precondition for winning.
First contracts are often a second bite at the union-busting apple. Without strategic leverage and deeper organizing density, employers can and will stall indefinitely. Recognition alone doesn’t force a deal. Labor law won’t compel it to happen. Only worker power can get it done
Interesting read. After 3 years of bargaining, only union Chipotle store in the US has called it quits on push for a first contract. That’s not a moral failing, it’s a structural one. 1st contracts require leverage & a single shop of 12ish workers simply didn’t have it jacobin.com/2026/02/chip...
It is done
"Learning From the UAW’s National Organizing Push," by Chris Brooks (Feb 16, 2026).
bsky.app/profile/chac...
Union density, the most important measure of worker power in America, was stagnant for another year. We can start turning this around whenever the labor movement is ready to put on its ass-kicking shoes.
www.hamiltonnolan.com/p/labor-move...
Five great, action-oriented questions by Hamilton Nolan. The entire piece is excellent, highly recommended—especially when read in conjunction with the two most recent pieces in Jacobin by @chactivist.bsky.social (linked below).
Which form of organizing is more effective: one based more on momentum or on structure?
As @chactivist.bsky.social shows in this carefully crafted piece on UAW's Stand Up 2.0, it depends.
Click through for a summary of outcomes; read through for an analysis that organizers will truly appreciate.
This is amazing. Solidarity with the Twin Cities Tenants!
The core lesson: If we hope to scale organizing, we can’t rely on momentum or structure alone. We need strategic fluency: the ability to read the terrain, anticipate resistance, & adapt our approach. Dogma won’t save us. Discipline, experimentation, and the courage to fail might
Momentum got us closer than ever before at Mercedes, but against extreme employer opposition, it wasn’t enough. We needed deeper structure: stronger leadership identification, escalating public actions, real supermajority demonstrations, more organizers, more pressure.
Mercedes management ran a ruthless anti-union campaign — daily captive audience meetings, supervisor pressure, firings, anti-union consultants, even a public CEO swap in the final stretch. When the vote came, we lost by nearly six hundred votes.
Mercedes in Alabama was different. We knew the terrain would be hostile but wagered that speed and momentum could carry us. Two major problems emerged: we filed without a clean list and overestimated support, and we lacked the external leverage that had helped at VW.
On April 19, 2024, Volkswagen workers won 73 percent to 27 percent — the first foreign-owned, nonunion auto assembly plant in the South to unionize. Momentum plus worker leadership, combined with real leverage, carried the day.
At VW , we used that lean, worker-driven approach. A skeleton staff helped build a massive activist organizing committee that signed up coworkers & assessed support directly. We also leveraged our alliance w/ IG Metall & the Global Works Council to restrain mgmt’s union busting
In higher ed, that model was incredibly effective. Between 2022 and 2024, UAW organizers ran 24 campaigns, organized more than 30,000 workers, and won with an average 92 percent yes vote — often with extremely low staff-to-worker ratios.
We experimented with momentum-based and worker-to-worker organizing — treating mass unionizing more like a social movement than building a guerrilla army. Momentum-based organizing scales quickly through mass sign-ups, rapid mobilization, and decentralized leadership.
With thousands wanting to organize right now, we launched Stand Up 2.0. The strategy drew from 2 sources: our recent strike, which got tens of thousands strike-ready at breakneck speed, & UAW’s higher ed campaigns, where workers were winning big with lean, worker-driven models
So we asked hard questions. Could this mass interest become a mass movement? Could raw momentum and worker-to-worker organizing outpace employer opposition? Could we bend some rules of traditional structure-based organizing and still win?
Many staff had never been trained in core structure-based skills: structured organizing conversations, IDing natural leaders, running real organizing committees, escalating toward supermajority public support. We had thousands ready to move — and not enough structure to meet them
Shawn Fain and other reformers were elected to fight and grow the union, and the strike delivered on that promise. But decades of business unionism, low expectations around organizing, and a patronage-driven staff culture left us unprepared to meet the scale of interest.
A movement moment is rare. It’s when momentum spreads faster than fear and collective action becomes contagious. Workers weren’t waiting for staff-driven campaigns — they were moving on their own.
Near the end of the Stand Up Strike, our IT Department told us thousands of nonunion auto workers were signing authorization cards using links from old defunct campaigns — some of them years old. That’s when we realized we might be in a real movement moment.
For decades, launching a union drive at a Southern auto plant meant months — sometimes years — of deep groundwork. But after the Stand Up Strike, workers across the auto sector began self-organizing at a scale we hadn’t seen in generations.
If the labor movement hopes to survive, we have to organize the private sector at scale. I was one of the central architects of the UAW’s Stand Up Strike and our national auto organizing push. I shared some of what I learned in this new @jacobinmagazin.bsky.social piece 🧵
jacobin.com/2026/02/uaw-...
