The Art of Organizing
18 Tips from UAW Organizer Brian O. Shepherd
Organizing isn’t just a science, it’s also an art. Normally the latter is passed on through phone calls, debriefs, meetings, and late-night shit talk. This is an attempt to share with the next generation of union organizers some of those lessons learned along the way, some in victory, some in defeat. None of this is new. None of this is mine.
I certainly don’t have the answers, I just know it’s something that I’ve given my life to over the past quarter of a century. The art requires staying close to the ground where people are—and that’s messy. It requires us to relate to others, take chances, innovate, all while asking the hard questions of others and ourselves.
All of it is simple. None of it is easy.
— Brian O. Shepherd, United Auto Workers organizing director and lead organizer supporting Mercedes workers in Vance, Alabama. June 3, 2025.
The Art of Organizing
1) Be Quiet
After you have asked a question, be quiet and just listen.
2) Stop Being Weird
It’s not what you are saying, it’s how you are doing it. Stop being weird.
Organizers can easily get lost thinking about what’s the right question to ask or what is the right combination of words that will push this worker to make a decision. Not that it doesn’t matter, but most of the time it’s the non-verbal cues or delivery that people are reacting to more than what you’re actually saying.
If you’re talking really fast, and trying to bombard people with information, you’ve already set yourself up for the other person to put up some unnecessary barriers. Slow things down, be confident and speak calmly and you will notice that people will respond differently.
3) Trust Workers
Sounds simple, right? But how often do we go into conversations, meetings or campaigns with a predetermined plan and outcome?
There are three characteristics that organizers need to keep front and center when helping workers build organization:
1. Workers have the power to decide WHAT the problem is.
2. Workers must have the power to decide HOW to solve those problems.
3. Workers have the power to ACT on implementing the solutions to those problems.
There are systemic structures that prevent working people from acting on any of those three things. A large part of our role as organizers is to help people identify and break through the barriers our system has set up. When we get workers to “buy in” to a plan, it sets us up as yet another way to take agency away from people.
4) Workers Want Recognition
Workers need bread, but they need roses too. Labor unions generally focus on negotiating wages, benefits, fair work rules, and safety. That’s all very essential. But one thing we often fail to do is acknowledge workers’ need for recognition. People have dreams and values, along with a desire to be respected and to connect to others. This is why technical organizing will only get you so far—building something sustainable requires deep relationships.
5) Organizers Are Scouts
In any workplace, there are going to be a small number of people that support the union no matter what. Getting those people on board is not organizing, that’s mobilizing.
The fundamental responsibility of an organizer is to identify, recruit, and develop leaders—people who can bring along and persuade others. That’s who you need to win hard fights and to sustain shop-floor power.
An organizer does not provide services. Effective organizers wake up each morning and go to sleep each night thinking about finding, engaging, training, supporting, and agitating leaders. All that really means is that you’re challenging a person to act on behalf of themselves and their coworkers.
6) Get Over Your Ego
Recognizing the dilemma you are facing is one of the most important mental aspects of improving at union organizing. Most people’s egos won’t allow them to be humble enough to recognize the problem in front of them. If you think you always have all the answers you tend to stick with formulas that worked before but might not work today.
7) Be Curious and Listen
As organizers we lead with empathy and curiosity to learn as much information as possible about what the other person’s experience has been. It sounds really easy to do but is also the place where organizers stumble the most.
If we lead with the solution—that if they organize they will have more power and more rights—we lose people because we are going outside of their experience. Organizers listen, then propose that to fix the raised issues, they have a choice to act or not.
8) Organizing is Relationships
Relationships lead to organizing. Issues alone lead to tasks.
9) Look For Opportunities
Seeing opportunities while most people are simply not paying attention to details, or are just plain unaware, is what separates a good union organizer from everyone else.
10) Fear is the Obstacle
A big part of what organizers do is help teach worker leaders to overcome the fear of standing up to the boss. And even more than that, most fear actually comes from the fear of rejection—doing a leaflet at shift change, talking to a coworker about signing a card, facilitating a meeting of coworkers, etc. So we have to get people more angry than afraid.
11) Don’t Talk From a Script
A good organizing conversation isn’t you being a little robot reading a script. The following framework, developed from the United Farm Workers, is more helpful:
A: Anger, turn fear into courage
H: Hope, turn despair into possibility
U: Urgency, it’s waited long enough
Y: You, can make a difference
At the same time, organizing conversations are intentional and not just a complaint session or therapy. They have to be about specific goals:
⁃ Identify what issue this person cares about
⁃ Identify if they have leadership potential
⁃ Connect them with a plan of action
⁃ Get them to commit
12) Cards Are Unreliable
Union authorization cards are a very unreliable indicator of where your support is at during an organizing drive. They are one measure of support at a particular moment in time. What matters significantly more is the deep relational organizing that comes through identifying recruiting and training leaders—and then being public about that support in the face of opposition from the employer.
13) Don’t Be Afraid to Lose
The labor movement has lost our organizing muscle; failing is a part of the process to get it back. Most unions aren’t even trying because they are so afraid of losing.
14) Take A Breath
Organizers tend to run from one task to another. Take a second to stop and take a breath. Make a plan to have a few extra moments to just be. Take that call and do a lap in the parking lot. Look for opportunities to meet with your teammates outside and take in the local scene.
Twenty years ago a veteran organizer told me “if you are constantly working yourself without taking even a moment to reflect and refresh, you aren’t able to be truly present in the work.” It’s not a new age or selfish self-care thing. It’s about giving yourself a chance to recover so that you can be more present and effective at your work.
15) Learn From the Past
Examine the past and learn from it. “The only right way of learning the science of war is to read and reread the campaigns of the great captains.” — Napoleon
16) Don’t Fear Making Mistakes
Organizers often freeze because they are more worried about making a mistake than taking action. Organizers can only be forged through experience on the ground and intense self-reflection. Yes, you will not be good when you start, you will constantly make mistakes. Instead of letting insecurities take over, you learn from doing and reflection.
It’s easy to celebrate wins, good organizers never forget their losses. The key is to ask yourself the difficult questions, analyze what went wrong, then start looking for solutions so that you don’t find yourself stuck in the same situation the next time. This is true for a single phone call, a meeting with workers or an election campaign overall. It’s important to not get stuck in the analysis phase—learn your lesson and move to improved action as quickly as possible.
17) Keep Showing Up
No one ever really masters organizing, but that’s not necessary. As an organizer you must constantly be developing your skills, increasing your abilities to be able to face the situation in front of you. It requires that you show up daily.
And there are going to be days (maybe weeks) where you’re not going to want to. Show up anyway.
18) Don’t Lose Hope
Organizers must recognize that hope can emerge out of difficult situations. Oftentimes it’s not even the opposition that gets to us. It’s that nagging internal voice where we put pressure on ourselves to do more or feel that we aren’t good enough or that we’re not making a difference. It can stop an organizer dead in their tracks, because it all seems so overwhelming. No matter what disappointments we might have, we must refuse to lose hope.
Please share your own “art of organizing” tips in the comment section below!
Well said. Thoughtful, practical and necessary rules if you want to give workers power
Don't be afraid to take risks.
Do more important things, and fewer urgent things.
Spend time thinking about what is important with the people you are organizing, and organizing with.