Sarah Jaffe

labor law to organize and talk with and advocate for better conditions on the job with your coworkers, whether or not you're in a union.

This is something that I jokingly call the Newsies rule from, you know, the Disney movie musical where he goes, if we strike, then we're a union.

American labor law basically says that's true.

So also keep that in mind.

And then, yeah, think about what your demands are and then what leverage you have to meet those demands.

Right.

Because sometimes, you know, the thing that's true in a lot of these labors of love jobs, right, is that the boss will say to you, there are 20 other people just outside the door who would love to have your job.

And that might even be true.

Might be less true than they think, but we are in a somewhat tight labor market, but mostly still, you know, the good jobs are still hard to find.

Most of the jobs in the economy still are those, you know, waitressing jobs that I was doing.

So, you know, what leverage do you have?

Where is it that you can do a little something that makes your boss's life a little bit more difficult and convinces them to give you what you want?

I talked to a young woman who, she worked for the parks department doing sort of construction on historic buildings that the park service maintains.

She thought this was a great job.

This is, you know, she's out working on roofs and, you know, 20 degree weather, which doesn't sound great to me, but she loves it.

And also think it's important.

These questions of leverage are actually really important and interesting right now.

It's not so simple as just like, get all your buddies and walk off the job.

Sometimes it's easier to stay on the job and you can sit down on the job.

You can do a work to rule action, which is where you do your job exactly to every possible last little rule in your job description, which turns out the boss never actually wants because they want you to be doing so much more.