[{"data":1,"prerenderedAt":-1},["ShallowReactive",2],{"doc-detail-40636-en":3,"doc-seo-40636-105":30,"detail-sidebar-cat-0-en-105":91},{"code":4,"msg":5,"data":6},0,"success",{"doc_id":7,"user_id":8,"nickname":9,"user_avatar":10,"doc_module":4,"category_id":11,"category_name":12,"doc_title":13,"doc_description":14,"doc_content":15,"file_id":16,"file_url":17,"file_type":18,"file_size":19,"view_count":20,"is_deleted":4,"is_public":21,"is_downloadable":21,"audit_status":21,"page_count":22,"language":23,"language_code":24,"site_id":25,"html_lang":24,"table_of_contents":26,"faqs":27,"seo_title":13,"seo_description":14,"update_tm":28,"read_time":29},40636,1099514067415,"Rowan","https://ap-avatar.wpscdn.com/avatar/100002539d78ffe74a7?x-image-process=image/resize,m_fixed,w_180,h_180&k=1779092875211072502",8,"Research & Report","Organizing: A Secret History","“Organizing: A Secret History” examines union organizing as a durable practice grounded in one-on-one encounters between an organizer and a worker, helping workers analyze work life and take collective steps. While core elements and the organizing equation (anger and hope and vision, minus fear of the boss, yielding victory or defeat) remain stable, the article argues that context has shifted dramatically. Globalization, atomization, labor-saving technology, and the move toward service work have made organizing harder. The text also notes limited historical research on tactics and the secrecy enforced by employers, highlighting urgency as U.S. unionization declines.","Labor History, Vol. 44, No. 4, 2003   \nContemporary Affairs  \nOrganizing: A Secret History  \nSAM LUEBKE and JENNIFER LUFF  \nWHY STUDY THE HISTORY OF ORGANIZING?  \nStudying union organizing is not merely an exercise in nostalgia. It is easy, looking at photos of the great labor struggles of the past—Ludlow, Lawrence, Flint, Paterson—to focus on how exotic and foreign the scenes seem and miss the fact that basic components of union organizing have changed precious little in the past hundred years. A union organizer from the 1930s dropped into the center of an organizing campaign today would feel familiar with more than just the day-old coffee and the pervading stench of cigarettes.  \nThe basic building block of organizing is the one-on-one encounter between an organizer and a worker. This intimate engagement, in which an organizer helps a worker analyze her work life and then encourages and motivates her to take speci􀀞c steps to unite with fellow co-workers, has not changed. These encounters, stacked up one after the other, constitute the skeleton of an organizing drive. Our hypothetical time-traveling organizer would 􀀞nd that the essential equation of an organizing campaign [(worker anger􀀁 worker hope and vision)– fear of the boss􀀁 victory or defeat] remains the same.  \nThough the fundamental elements of union organizing have not changed, organizing still has a history. The equation’s variables are constant, but its context has shifted. There have been enormous changes in the terrain of union organizing over the last 200 years. The globalization of the economy, the increasing atomization of American society, the introduction of “labor-saving” machinery, and the shift from an industrial to a service-based economy among other changes have made the world a more complicated place for union organizers. Given the obstacles to organizing and the inability of contemporary unions to increase or even maintain their membership, understanding the history of organizing seems more important than ever.  \nYet labor history offers surprisingly few studies of union organizing tactics, methods, and theories, and labor historians often slip into passive voice when discussing the origins of workers’ organizations—unions were formed, workers came together, but just how that happened remains somewhat of a mystery.1 How did unions hire and train  \n1 Making the same argument about Australian labor history, Rae Cooper and Greg Patmore comment,“For labour historians, organising has been a marginal issue in most studies of union behaviour. There has been no comprehensive analysis of the methods unions utilised in relation to organising, of the factors that have shaped and constrained their choice of organising strategies or of the forces that have led to success, or otherwise, in organising campaigns. This is not to say that the membership building strategies of unions have never been addressed in the historical literature. However it is fair to argue that when union organising strategies are discussed this is usually as an aside to examinations of other union strategies or historical events.” Rae Cooper and Greg Patmore,“Trade Union Organising and Labour History,”Labour History 83 (4) (November 2002) 􀀂 http://www.historycooperative.org/journals/lab/83/cooper. html 􀀃 (April 27, 2003), par. 14.  \nISSN 0023-656X print/ISSN 1469-9702 online/03/040421-12 􀀁 2003 Taylor & Francis Ltd  \nDOI: 10.1080/0023656032000170041  \n422 Sam Luebke and Jennifer Luff  \norganizers? How did unions pay for campaigns? Perhaps most importantly, how did organizers “organize?” Did they stand on a workbench, a` la Norma Rae, and exhort fellow workers to rise up? Did they quietly visit workers in small groups or individually? What did the word “organizing” connote in 1890? 1920? 1950? Presumably the organizer of the past did more than pass out a lea et and then sit back and prepare 􀀞ery oratory for the inevitable torchlight parade and mass meeting.  \nUnfortunately, a welter of confoun","cbCaie2zSbBUZUXX","https://ap.wps.com/l/cbCaie2zSbBUZUXX","pdf",83737,3,1,14,"English","en",105,"# Why Study the History of Organizing?\n## Core Building Blocks of Organizing\n## Why Organizing Has a History\n## Limits of Existing Historical Research\n## Contemporary Challenges to Union Growth","[{\"question\":\"What does the article identify as the basic building block of union organizing?\",\"answer\":\"It identifies the one-on-one encounter between an organizer and a worker, where the organizer helps the worker analyze work life and motivates specific steps toward uniting with co-workers.\"},{\"question\":\"Why is studying the history of organizing considered important according to the text?\",\"answer\":\"Because core organizing elements have not changed while the context has, and modern union organizing faces increased obstacles alongside declining membership and structural barriers.\"},{\"question\":\"What makes the history of organizing difficult to research?\",\"answer\":\"Secretive, clannish unions often did not preserve detailed strategies, and employers forced organizers to operate under secrecy and stealth, limiting documentation of campaign decisions and methods.\"}]",1783313581,35,{"code":4,"msg":31,"data":32},"ok",{"site_id":25,"language":24,"slug":33,"title":13,"keywords":34,"description":14,"schema_data":35,"social_meta":86,"head_meta":88,"extra_data":90,"updated_unix":28},"organizing-a-secret-history","",{"@graph":36,"@context":85},[37,53,68],{"@type":38,"itemListElement":39},"BreadcrumbList",[40,44,48,50],{"item":41,"name":42,"@type":43,"position":21},"https://docshare.wps.com","Home","ListItem",{"item":45,"name":46,"@type":43,"position":47},"https://docshare.wps.com/document/","Document",2,{"item":49,"name":12,"@type":43,"position":20},"https://docshare.wps.com/document/research-report/",{"item":51,"name":13,"@type":43,"position":52},"https://docshare.wps.com/document/organizing-a-secret-history/40636/",4,{"url":51,"name":13,"@type":54,"author":55,"headline":13,"publisher":57,"fileFormat":60,"inLanguage":24,"description":14,"dateModified":61,"datePublished":62,"encodingFormat":60,"isAccessibleForFree":63,"interactionStatistic":64},"DigitalDocument",{"name":9,"@type":56},"Person",{"url":41,"name":58,"@type":59},"DocShare","Organization","application/pdf","2026-07-13","2026-07-06",true,{"@type":65,"interactionType":66,"userInteractionCount":20},"InteractionCounter",{"@type":67},"ViewAction",{"@type":69,"mainEntity":70},"FAQPage",[71,77,81],{"name":72,"@type":73,"acceptedAnswer":74},"What 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