Get on the Job and Organize: Standing Up for a Better Workplace and a Better World

Get on the Job and Organize: Standing Up for a Better Workplace and a Better World, by Jaz Brisack, (New York, NY: Atria/One Signal Publishers, 2025)

Jaz Brisack, a young, intensely passionate advocate of aggressive and effective union organizing, provides a fascinating study of the steps needed in undertaking such a campaign. 

The author is a Rhodes Scholar and co-founder of the Insider Organizer School who trains workers in unionizing efforts. The author was part of the organizing effort at a Buffalo, NY Starbucks which, following a NLRB election, became the first unionized Starbucks location in the U.S.

The book outlines strategic steps in educating workers regarding the benefits of unionization, engaging workers in organizing their workplace including the use of “salts” – job applicants obtaining employment for the specific purpose of organizing the shop. 

Brisack developed deep personal connections with Starbucks co-workers and employees in other shops who sought to unionize. The author utilized innovative social media campaigns, developed merchandise for the effort and helped them by taking their shifts when necessary. The theme was “joining a network, a support system, a friend group, connected by a shared desire to improve our jobs, hold the company to its stated values and build genuine and authentic community with one another.”

The author’s determined effort to maintain co-workers’ solidarity and interest in unionizing was relentlessly challenged by employers’ use of “captive audience” speeches, discharges and abuse. Brisack noted that such interference with concerted activity was accompanied by warnings that workers did not need a “third party,” and promises that working conditions would improve. 

In addition to employers’ resistance to a union effort, the author describes conflicts between the United Starbucks Union and a large, international union. When the Starbucks Union needed more resources its leaders invited the mammoth Service Employees International Union to join its effort. Their approaches differed substantially. The Starbucks Union pursued a store-by-store campaign culminating with a NLRB election. The SEIU believed that such an approach was too difficult, opting for “sectoral bargaining” and a “Fight for $15” campaign, with the “actual union … an afterthought.” There were also disputes over communications and messaging. 

Brisack highlights the courage of workers’ fight for unionization in the face of employer retaliation and provides a compelling account of the challenges faced by workers today in their struggle to ensure that statutorily protected rights to organize are realized. 

Reviewed by Steven Davis, a member of the Executive Board of the New York Labor History Association and a retired Administrative Law Judge with the National Labor Relations Board.