I've been trying to organize the grocery store I work at for months now. People are happy to complain about work, pay, management, etc. I barely even have to agitate. Some of them are even open to the idea of unionizing. When I ask them if they'd be able to help it all fucking falls apart though. I can't even get people to do basic shit like help me make a list of the people in their department or to ask people they know what they think of unions.
There are 200ish people in the store. I can't befriend every single one of them. How do I get people to put something towards the effort? The only thing I can think of is to start being mean about it, because I'm trying not to be pushy, but at this point I don't see another option. Like telling people I don't really care about their issues if they don't care enough to help me fix them. I don't have high hopes for it though.
Do any of you have experience with this sort of thing? Am I missing something? How do you get people to actually contribute to improving their situation?
hmm, this is mostly a summary of a lecture I attended by an accomplished union organizer filtered through my personal experiences. in order to share more I'd necessarily need to tell stories that can be used to help identify me, which makes it hard. I'm also very much still learning and evolving my understanding as I reconcile my successes and failures where practice meets theory.