How We Organized Amazon: ‘We studied the history of how the first major unions were built. We learned from the Industrial Workers of the World, and even more from the building of the Congress of Industrial Organizations. We read William Z. Foster’s Organizing Methods in the Steel Industry (a must-read, seriously).’ Justine Medina, member of the ALU organizing committee and a packer at the JFK8 Amazon warehouse.

A practical manual for union activists still potent today, William Z. Fosters’ ‘how to’ guide for organizing workers in steel from the comrade who led the Great 1919 Steel Strike. Online text of the pamphlet here.

Organizing Methods in the Steel Industry by William Z. Foster. Workers Library Publishers, New York. October, 1936.

Contents: Introduction, I) General, II) Organization Forms and Functions, Structure of Organizing Forces, Structure of the Union, Functions and Tasks, III) Mass Agitation, Slogans, Publicity and Printed Matter, Radio, Mass Meetings Demonstrations etc, IV) Mass Organization, Individual Recruitment, Open Recruiting, Recruitment in Struggle, V) Special Group Work, American Whites, Negroes, Foreign-Born, Youth, Women, VI) Company Unions, VII) Special Organizational Work, Unemployed – W.P.A., Fraternal Organizations, Churches, Other Organizations. 24 pages.

Workers Library Publishers replaced Daily Workers Publishers as the main pamphlet printing house of the Communist Party in 1927. International Publishers was originally meant to translate works into English, but became the CP’s main book publisher.

PDF of original pamphlet: https://archive.org/download/OrganizingMethodsInTheSteelIndustry/OMSI_text.pdf