Unions of Our Own: Eight Building Blocks to Change Work and the World

An actionable, inviting, and confidence-boosting philosophy on how to tackle problems in your workplace and win.

Our workplaces urgently need to get better, but change can feel murky, daunting, or even impossible. We imagine a different world, too, but billionaires are doing their best to make things worse.

In Unions of Our Own, veteran labor organizer and cofounder of the IWW Starbucks Workers Union Daniel Gross provides a radically new, step-by-step framework for workers who want to dramatically improve their jobs--and dream of bigger changes too. It reveals and puts into your hands the eight fundamental building blocks of a union that meets your needs and values.

Through proven tools, Gross's personal stories from campaigns, vivid history, and real-world examples, Unions of Our Own offers a practical, accessible, and empowering philosophy on how to design your own union and win.

Daniel Gross has been doing worker-led organizing and union-building for more than two decades, accompanying thousands of workers creating unions in their workplaces. Together with his co-workers, Gross helped found the groundbreaking IWW Starbucks Workers Union, which held power for over a decade at the coffee giant and helped revitalize a more inclusive labor movement.

Gross has practiced labor law from a rank & file perspective and served on the board of the National Lawyers Guild and the Food Chain Workers Alliance. He is also the founding director of Brandworkers, the first worker center of immigrant workers in the metro New York local food manufacturing industry.

With Staughton Lynd, he is the co-author of the classic Labor Law for the Rank & Filer: Building Solidarity While Staying Clear of the Law as well as the graphic pamphlet, Solidarity Unionism at Starbucks, with illustrator Tom Keough. He is based in New York City.