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.
Brisack will be in conversation with Sara Nelson. Nelson has served as the International President of the Association of Flight Attendants-CWA, AFL-CIO since 2014, representing 55,000 of aviation’s first responders at 20 airlines. She first became a union member in 1996 when she was hired as a Flight Attendant at United Airlines and today she represents 55,000 of aviation’s first responders at 20 airlines. The New York Times called her "America's most powerful flight attendant" for her role in helping to end the 35-day Government Shutdown and InStyle Magazine placed her on their Top 50 Badass Women list. The New Yorker profiled AFA and Sara's career in May 2022.
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