This is the first installment in a LaborWise series examining worker organizing models that function outside the traditional NLRB framework. For information on these alternatives, read “Beyond the NLRB: What Workers Built While Federal Labor Law Collapsed.”
Most unions will not return your call, but don’t chalk it up to indifference. Organizers are candid about the unforgiving economics behind their constraints. Traditional campaigns require roughly one paid staffer for every 100 workers targeted, meaning a warehouse with 40 employees, a coffee shop with 12, or a retail chain scattered across three locations simply doesn’t justify the investment. Workers who call looking for help often hear some version of “we can’t take this on right now.”
The Emergency Workplace Organizing Committee exists so there’s always someone to answer those calls. Since its founding in March 2020, EWOC has fielded thousands of inquiries from workers at restaurants, warehouses, hospitals, retail chains, and fulfillment centers, assisting with hundreds of campaigns before connecting workers with unions for formal representation. Its organizers are trained volunteers rather than paid staff, which frees them to work with whoever reaches out. And because they view their expertise as something to transfer rather than hoard, their explicit goal is to render themselves unnecessary.
From its inception, the EWOC model was devised to function independently from the National Labor Relations Board. That distinction, which once seemed like a workaround, is now its key advantage. Gershom B., an EWOC volunteer who handles intake, case management, and direct organizing, noted that even under the most labor-friendly NLRB in decades, enforcement fell short of its promise. “Unfair labor practices were investigated slowly, often with disappointing outcomes, and even when successful with minimal penalties for employers. Under a diminished or hostile NLRB, we find ourselves leaning even further into such approaches. As a creative and experimental wing of the labor movement, we see EWOC campaigns as a vital proving ground for new tactics to meet this new moment. We hope the most successful of these tactics will be picked up by others and carried far beyond our own campaigns.”
“And because they view their expertise as something to transfer rather than hoard, their explicit goal is to render themselves unnecessary.”
Rather than steering workers toward a specific outcome, EWOC intentionally leaves the path forward up to them, whether that means filing for an NLRB election, seeking voluntary recognition, or simply organizing around immediate demands without a formalized agreement. When a worker fills out an intake form on the EWOC website, a volunteer organizer calls them back within 72 hours. From there, workers are shepherded through an initial brainstorming process to identify sympathetic coworkers, plan early conversations, and start building an organizing committee. Every decision about what to demand, when to act, and how far to push belongs to the workers.
In this model, an EWOC organizer functions as a mentor rather than a commander or strategist calling the shots from a distance. Daphna Thier, an EWOC trainer and educator who has guided dozens of campaigns through their initial stages, described the relationship as an anchor. “It’s not easy to organize your workplace, and having a buddy from EWOC can make a lonely road less lonely. And this buddy can be very helpful at reminding you why you are doing this in the first place, and what you stand to gain if you stick with it.”
According to Gershom, the campaigns that gain traction are those rooted in “a firm foundation of community and solidarity, and a feeling on the part of every worker that they are participants in, and exercise ownership of and control over the effort.” Building that shared commitment among colleagues takes time, so EWOC’s volunteer organizers are trained to stay present through the inevitable stretches when momentum stalls.
But many of the drives EWOC supports never result in a formal union, which the organization considers entirely acceptable. “Sometimes… groups will take action before they have a majority or before they are ready to decide on unionization,” Thier explained. “They win one demand, and move on to another. Often we just help folks who want to win demands and not unionize.”
Organizers refer to this as pre-majority unionism, a strategy in which workers organize and act collectively even when winning a contract feels distant or impossible. For public-sector employees in states like Texas and Tennessee, where collective bargaining is banned outright, this kind of organizing may be the only viable path. The same holds true for workers at massive corporations where the sheer size of the employer makes a single-site election feel futile, or for those who have already lost an NLRB election and been left demoralized and exposed. The underlying premise asserts that workers don’t need to win an election, or even hold one, to begin standing up to employers and winning demands.
Even when a campaign never reaches an election, the focus on building an organizing committee ensures workers walk away understanding how to organize. So the capacity still endures, regardless of whether the employer comes to the table.
“The underlying premise asserts that workers don’t need to win an election, or even hold one, to begin standing up to employers and winning demands.”
Labor scholar Eric Blanc has argued that EWOC’s outcome-agnostic approach is markedly distinct from both hot-shop organizing, in which unions wait for frustrated workers to come to them, and strategic targeting, which concentrates resources only in areas where unions already have institutional footing. The alternative is what’s known as “planting seeds,” the practice of spreading tools and training as widely as possible and supporting whatever campaigns take root. Despite being an entirely volunteer-run operation, EWOC has impacted thousands of workers and supported dozens of campaigns that feed into the labor movement. More than 8,000 workers have reached out since its founding.
A small chain of board game cafes like Manhattan-based Hex and Co. wouldn’t typically register on a major union’s radar, but the workers’ effort flourished through EWOC’s peer-driven model. By the fall of 2023, a small group of Hex employees had grown frustrated with low wages, unpredictable scheduling, and the company’s rapid expansion. After one learned about EWOC from his roommate, who’d been part of their REI campaign, he decided to reach out, and the group was paired with two volunteer organizers. From there, the drive unfolded through slow, deliberate groundwork. Joseph Valle Hoag, one of the lead Hex organizers, made a habit of pulling aside coworkers after their shifts to discuss union activities and the case for organizing. The movement grew outward from the shop floor, fueled by a handful of workers galvanizing their colleagues one conversation at a time. By the time the NLRB election was held, 77 of 94 employees voted in favor, and the workers went on to ratify the first tabletop retail contract in New York City history.
But this still doesn’t resolve the central tension of how labor advocates can disseminate these techniques to the masses, most of whom aren’t actively seeking out workplace supports. Many workers have been conditioned to accept workplace conditions as fixed, and few are fully aware of the legal protections they already possess. “For this model to scale up from hundreds to thousands,” Gershom said, “it requires the major unions to take it up as their own.” That, and workers trusting in this form of collective action.
