Vendor
	Mohrbooks Literary Agency Annelie Geissler
Categories
Self-help, personal development & practical advice

GET ON THE JOB AND ORGANIZE

Jaz Brisack

Standing Up for a Better Workplace and a Better World

For fans of Fight Like Hell and A History of America in Ten Strikes, the leader of the Starbucks and Tesla union movements shares stories from the front lines to help us organize our own workplaces.

Get on the Job and Organize is a compelling, inspirational narrative of the Starbucks and Tesla unionization efforts, telling the broader story of the new, nationwide labor movement unfolding in our era of political and social unrest. As one of the exciting new faces of the American Labor Movement, Jaz Brisack argues that while workers often organize when their place of work is toxic, it's equally important to organize when you love your job. With an accessible voice and profound insight, Brisack puts everything into the context of America's long tradition of labor organizing and shows us how we too can organize our workplaces, from how to educate yourself and your colleagues, to what backlash can be expected and how to fight it, to what victory looks like even if the union doesn't necessarily "win." Jaz Brisack is a union organizer and cofounder of the Inside Organizer School, which trains workers to unionize. After spending one year at Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar, they got a job as a barista at the Elmwood Starbucks in Buffalo, New York, becoming a founding member of Starbucks Workers United and helping organize the first unionized Starbucks in the United States. As the organizing director for Workers United Upstate New York & Vermont, they also worked with organizing committees at companies ranging from Ben & Jerry's to Tesla.

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Book Published 2025-06-18 by One Signal

Comments

In the last few years, especially after the pandemic, one of the most inspiring things we've witnessed is the rise of the labor movement in America. All across the country, workers have been standing up and fighting back against the unprecedented levels of corporate greed that have been taking place. I appreciate Jaz's contributions in this book, which help us all better understand the aims and goals for a resurgent trade union movement and how workers all over the country can join in solidarity with it.

Jaz has too much hometraining to rename this book, but this is not only a how-to change the world book, it is a percussive, necessary 'why we must change the world' book written by an activist who can write their ass off. Mandatory reading for humans in need of a literary elixir.

In this fascinating insider account, Brisack, a founding member of Starbucks Workers United, shares their experiences as a workers' rights advocate, with a focus on their pivotal role in the campaign to unionize Starbucks. Brisack, who has since sought to organize Tesla, remains refreshingly optimistic, convinced that unionization can "pave the way for future liberation beyond our current comprehension of what is possible." Readers will be inspired by this David-vs.-Goliath tale.

Jaz Brisack has given us an account of the movement to organize Starbucks workers that is an education in the critical role that unions have to play in our current crisis of civilization. Part memoir and part altar call, Get on the Job and Organize is an invitation for all of us to be part of reconstructing an unequal economy.

This book is a love letter to labor organizing, at once earnest and hard-nosed. Brisack takes us inside Starbucks Workers United, offering an in-depth look at what a worker-led campaign can look like--the ups and downs, headaches and heartbreaks. Their devotion shows on every page, as do practical calculations of power and strategy. The labor movement could use 1000 more just like them.

Jaz Brizack's Get on the Job and Organize shows is a generous offering of exactly the kind of storytelling that fuels our resistance movements. This book grounds an account of organizing by committed workers in todays service economy in the long history of militant worker resistance in the US, including strikes and uprisings of enslaved people before and during the Civil War. Brisack shows what intersectional, multi-issue labor organizing looks like, pulls no punches about how difficult the current conditions are for resistance, and conveys how the solidarity that arises in everyday relationships can be cultivated to buttress urgent, fierce, effective coordinated attack on corporate power.

Here's the light to illuminate these dark times -- an account of how workers take on corporate power and win. Even more inspiring, it's led by Gen Z. Starbucks Workers United has given new life to the American labor movement, and Jaz Brisack helped make it happen. Essential reading for anyone who cares about tackling economic inequality and saving democracy.