The Hammer: Power, Inequality, and the Struggle for the Soul of Labor Highlight

That is part of a large problem. The insight that drove Nicholson to try to organize in the first place was a simple one, which applies to thousands of workplaces across the country: “We are being mistreated, and we need help.” Yet the chain of events that led that commonplace thought to turn into something tangible required a lot of uncommon things to happen. First, and most crucially, it actually occurred to Nicholson to want a union. She knew what a union was, and how it could help her. In a nation where 90 percent of working people aren’t union members, that first and most basic condition is often unmet. Try to imagine how many moments of outrage over various injustices on the job happen everywhere, every day, and then fade away into nothingness. Until it becomes natural for regular people in regular jobs facing regular difficulties to automatically think of a union as the solution to their problems, most of America’s latent opportunities for organizing will not be taken advantage of. Second, Nicholson knew how to contact a union,