BOOK REVIEW: Keep Going: A Guide to Organizing When It’s Hard
Written by SP Editor
“Keep Going” sets its goal as helping organizers get started, hang in there and get unstuck, a laudable aim and a helpful resource for organizers trying to move forward in the difficult day-to-day work of organizing workers in the USA. “Keep Going” succeeds as a practical guide to relationship-based workplace organizing, especially for rank-and-file activists, but its limited treatment of power, management structures, and large-scale strategy leaves gaps for experienced organizers.
Its modular structure makes it easy for organizers to return to specific problems—outreach, leadership identification, or overcoming workplace apathy—without reading cover to cover. Friedman’s focus is largely on helping rank-and-file organizers, though it also offers some helpful advice for union staff. The book is peppered with useful stories of organizing efforts, both successful and failed, with valuable lessons. These stories were the book’s greatest strength. The stories are detailed enough to be useful without drowning the reader in organizing minutiae.
“Keep Going” also offers excellent advice for developing a democratic union, with as much focus on that process as on actual fights with an employer. The basics of treating workers with respect, listening, and engaging are described in helpful detail, along with strategies for moving past division and understanding apathy in ways that can encourage collective action.
The book is most helpful in more stable workplaces, meaning places where worker turnover is relatively low, as it’s focused on long-term relationship building and worker committee formation. She does reference options for higher-turnover workplaces at one point, but the book is not focused on that situation, which in many ways would require alternative strategies and tactics.
The book has much less focus on tactics and strategies for fighting a boss. It often conflates bosses with employers in ways that are not, in my experience, accurate in many workplaces. At one point the book says, “The boss is just doing their job, which is to hoard power and control workers.” Friedman is trying to make the point that organizers need to get beyond being obsessed with the boss’ personality and take power as workers. It’s an excellent point for organizers, but it also reflects a rather simplified view of the “boss.” There is a short chapter on understanding how power works in the workplace, but nowhere does it really distinguish where power resides in an employer’s hierarchy to inform targeting and strategy. This is a vital step in making effective plans for large campaigns. There are immediate bosses who are the right target for fixing worksite issues, but there are also immediate bosses who can be allies and are more closely tied to the conditions of workers than any company, public employer or corporation. There are also real limits to immediate bosses’ power and knowing those is important in organizing.
There is no meaningful distinction between public or non-profit employers and for-profit employers. These can be very similar, as the book points out, but the options for where and how workers might exercise power are different. There is also no discussion about assessing or scaling power against a large multinational corporation.
A single book cannot contain all the challenges faced by workplace organizers. This book would be helped by more clarity on broader strategic issues and power dynamics, but that is not meant to imply the book is not useful for what it does cover. By concentrating on the everyday work of relationship-building and leadership development, “Keep Going” fills a gap left by more abstract writing about the challenges facing the labor movement. Its strategic blind spots are real, but they do not diminish its value as a practical guide for organizers learning how to build durable workplace organization and worker power.
A union member, organizer and leader for 30 years, Jill Hurst organized both private and public sector workers and served as an elected union officer of a Justice for Janitors local in Boston. She currently works with an indigenous women's organization in Burma.