What is Organise Now?

Built by workers for workers, Organise Now! is a peer to peer organising network responding to the crises in work, pay and living standards. Skilled and experienced workers from across sectors are available now to help you and your co-workers organise to defend and improve your working lives and build power.

Click "get support" and we will be in contact within 72 hours.

Organise Now is a collective of experienced workers from across the Trade Union and social justice movements, dedicated to, and with track records of, helping workers defend their pay and conditions -  and to secure better work lives through collaborating with others.

You can read more about Organise Now! in the press here.

How does it work?

We have a support form for workers who want support and advice. After submitting the form, you will receive a call within 72 hours. We will put you in touch with an experienced organiser. They will listen to you and assist you in forming a plan on how to build change.

What can I do for Organise Now?

Spread the word! Both on social media and out in the real world, talk about Organise Now! with your friends, colleagues and families. Encourage people to move from just talking about how dreadful problems are but that there are ways to change things and people who will help.

Support others. Have you experience in organising or working together with others inorder to change your workplaces, maybe as a trade union representative? Perhaps you’ve been helped by someone else through Organise Now! Complete this form to join us as a part of a group of experienced organisers and we’ll do the rest. Training, resources and support are all provided.

Organise Now! is inspired by EWOC (the Emergency Workplace Organising Committee) in the US, which has been supporting new worker organising at Starbucks, Amazon, and more. Workers and reps across the US are connecting through EWOC. They have used the model to scale up during the pandemic and shown how effective it can be.

We will also be adding resources and materials from across the workers' movement to the website.

Who is involved?

Organise Now is a collaboration between unions and campaigns, working together to help as many workers as possible get organising. This includes support from BFAWU, Strike Map, Notes from Below, and ASLEF.

We want to grow this collaboration to scale up the project. We are open to others joining us to provide the skills, experience and support needed to get the UK organised.

We are not supportive of any political party or one single union or worker organisation. If we recommend joining any union as part of the advice, it will be recommending that workers join the union most suitable for their situation.

Why now?

One of the major challenges facing the workers movement is the long term decline in union membership. This means that most workers today are not, and have never been, members of a trade union. There are many sectors with no active unions, while in other sectors union membership has become less active or effective. It also means workplaces where unions may be a new idea for much of the workplace. Many employers are hostile to the idea of a union even being started.

What we lack are the institutions and capacity to help workers take the first steps to organising. All workplaces have their specific challenges and barriers to getting organised. There are very few places where workers can get advice and support at an early stage.

In an environment that is hostile to unions, it can be hard for new campaigns to get going. There are few routes to supporting new workers getting involved. Through inactivity, the structures and strategies of unions can become rusty too.

However, over the past few years, there has been a growing interest in left wing politics, with many people becoming active in campaigns and joining the Labour Party during Corbyn's leadership. Part of this has involved a growing interest in organising at work, or at least that joining a union is important.

We are now going into an exciting moment with national strikes back on the agenda and renewed militancy in unions. These combine to offer a rare opportunity to start organising in new parts of the economy.

That is why Organise Now matters in the current moment: we want to take that energy into new workplaces, but also connect to the wider union movement. This is about giving workers the confidence and resources to fight, but also for existing organisers to learn from and be inspired by these new struggles.