A-Infos (en) Spaine, Regeneracion - Organizer: The New Word for the Old-Fashioned CNT Militant? (ca, de, fr, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

In recent years, a word imported from the American labor movement has 
begun to creep into Spanish union circles: "organizer."
Contents
The Problem of Our Time: Unions Without Unionists
What "Organizing" Tries to Solve
The Forgotten Art of Talking to Comrades
The Obsession with Supermajorities
The "Organizer" and Historical Anarcho-Syndicalism
An Old Workers' Tradition
The Debate on Organic Leaders
What We Have Lost
A Lesson for Spanish Unionism
Recovering the Organizing Militant
Recommended Bibliography
It appears in debates about the IWW, in Labor Notes courses and 
conferences, in campaigns to unionize Amazon or Starbucks, and more 
recently in training initiatives like Organizing for Power - O4P. For 
many union members, especially those with an anarcho-syndicalist 
background, the term provokes a certain aversion. It sounds like an 
unnecessary Anglicism. It is associated with the figure of a hired 
professional, a strange methodology, or even a covert way of introducing 
leadership and hierarchies.

However, the more one delves into the literature of "organizing" and the 
history of the Spanish labor movement, the more evident the paradox 
becomes: the "organizer" is not so much an innovation as a recovery.

What Americans today call an "organizer" is much more like the 
historical union activist than we tend to acknowledge. Perhaps its value 
lies not in what is new, but in what it reminds us of what we have left 
behind.

The problem of our time: unions without union members
One of the most surprising phenomena of recent decades is that trade 
unions have survived better than trade union culture.

We still have unions with hundreds of thousands of members. 
Well-established structures. Legal departments, federations, strike 
funds, financial resources, and a presence in companies and throughout 
society. But it's becoming increasingly difficult to find people capable 
of organizing their own colleagues.

This contradiction is not unique to Spain. Jane McAlevey identified it 
years ago in the United States in her book No Shortcuts . Kim Moody has 
been pointing out similar problems for decades. The IWW itself has built 
much of its recent activity around a fundamental question:

How do you create real organization in a workplace?

The question seems simple, but its implications are enormous. Because 
having members is one thing, having organized workers is another. Having 
representation is one thing, but having power, the capacity for 
collective action, and implementation is quite another. And the gap 
between the two is much wider than we are willing to admit.

Too often, the relationship between worker and union adopts the logic of 
customer and supplier. The worker has a problem, goes to the union, 
explains their situation, and expects a solution. They don't expect to 
organize their colleagues, build collective strength, or take 
responsibility. They expect someone else to handle the matter.

From this perspective, the union ceases to be a workers' organization 
and becomes a conflict management tool. The problem isn't legal 
assistance, which every workers' organization needs, but rather that 
assistance replaces organization, that representation displaces 
participation, and that the member goes from being a protagonist to a user.

What the "organizing" tries to solve
The literature on "organizing" arises precisely from this observation. 
Authors such as McAlevey or the publications of Labor Notes note that 
many trade union organizations have developed an enormous capacity to 
manage conflicts, but very little to build workers' power.

That's why "organizing" shifts the focus. It doesn't just ask how we 
solve this problem; it asks how we build the necessary strength to solve 
this problem and those that will come after.

The difference seems subtle, but it isn't. In the first case, conflict 
is the focus of activity. In the second, conflict is an opportunity to 
build organization.

And here the figure of the "organizer" emerges. Far from certain 
stereotypes, this is not a professional agitator, nor a charismatic 
leader, nor an external strategist directing campaigns from above. In 
its most developed formulation, especially in the IWW and Labor Notes, 
the "organizer" is an organization builder.

Its main function is to develop the organizational capacity of other 
people. It doesn't do things for the workers, but rather helps them 
learn how to do them. It doesn't replace collective initiative, it 
amplifies it.

The forgotten art of talking to colleagues
It's striking that one of the fundamental tools of organizing is 
something as simple as one-on-one conversation. A large part of 
organizing training consists of learning how to talk to colleagues. Not 
how to give speeches, write memos, or win ideological debates. It's 
about listening. Asking questions. Identifying shared problems. 
Understanding motivations. Building trust.

It may seem obvious, but many unions have developed a great capacity for 
communicating with those already convinced, while losing the ability to 
speak to those who remain on the sidelines. Labor Notes constantly 
emphasizes this problem: activists talk to activists, militants to 
militants, the convinced to the convinced. Meanwhile, the majority of 
the workforce remains excluded from the conversation.

The organizer tries to break that dynamic. Their task is to continually 
expand the circle of people involved.

The obsession with supermajorities
Perhaps the most distinctive contribution of contemporary organizing is 
its emphasis on so-called supermajorities. In many activist circles, 
there is a tendency to confuse an active minority with an organized 
majority. Five highly committed workers may create the impression of a 
strong organization, but if they work in a company of three hundred 
people, this is probably not the case.

That's why the "organizer" insists on measuring strength in concrete 
terms: How many people are participating? How many support it? How many 
are undecided? How many oppose it? How many would act if necessary? The 
central issue ceases to be ideological purity or the intensity of a 
minority's commitment, and becomes the collective capacity of a majority.

This concern appears constantly in McAlevey, in the IWW manuals, and in 
the Labor Notes materials. Difficult strikes are not usually won by 
small, heroic groups, but rather when a large part of the workforce 
participates. That is why organizing insists so much on building 
supermajorities before undertaking major conflicts. Not because it is a 
moderate strategy, but because it is a strategy of accumulating strength.

The "organizer" and historical anarcho-syndicalism
At this point, it's worth asking an uncomfortable question: to what 
extent is all this really new?

Anna Monjo's work on CNT militancy during the 1930s provides an 
important clue. Studying the CNT of that era reveals what we would now 
call a robust organizational culture. There were activists capable of 
recruiting new workers, solidarity networks, mechanisms for political 
and trade union training, and individuals dedicated to expanding the 
organization to new sectors. Membership was not seen as a consumer 
relationship, but as a form of participation.

The same can be observed in the works of José Peirats or in Chris 
Ealham's studies of the Barcelona labor movement. The strength of the 
CNT did not stem exclusively from its ideas, but from its capacity to 
reproduce its militancy. Each union generated new organizers, each 
conflict generated new workers' cadres, each victory produced new people 
capable of organizing others.

What we would describe today with the word "organizer." Back then, they 
were simply called militants.

An old working-class tradition
The history of the international labor movement reveals similar 
phenomena. In *Labor's Untold Story* , Richard Boyer and Herbert Morais 
describe how American workers built organization long before 
institutionalized unions existed. They did so through informal networks, 
labor agitators, itinerant organizers, and solidarity campaigns. There 
were no sophisticated bureaucratic structures, only individuals capable 
of connecting one struggle to another. There were organizers.

The IWW itself historically developed around similar figures: workers 
who traveled, talked to other workers, spearheaded campaigns, and built 
organization where none existed. They weren't outside specialists; they 
were working-class activists. The contemporary "organizer" inherits much 
of that tradition.

The debate about organic leaders
One of the most debated aspects of organizing is the identification of 
so-called organic or influential leaders. Many libertarian trade 
unionists view this practice with suspicion, and they have good reason 
to: every organization must be vigilant against the concentration of power.

But it's important to understand what this concept means. When 
organizers talk about organic leaders, they aren't necessarily referring 
to formal managers, but rather to people whose opinions influence 
others: people who are respected, listened to, and capable of building 
trust. These figures exist in any workplace or social group. Ignoring 
them doesn't make them disappear.

The question is how to engage with them. "Organizing" proposes 
incorporating them into the collective building of the organization, not 
to replace democratic processes, but to expand them. Yes, there is a 
risk that this could lead to forms of top-down control if we neglect the 
process and collective empowerment. But the opposite risk also exists: 
ignoring the real dynamics of influence can lead organizations and union 
members to be unable to connect with the majority of workers. As with 
any organizational tool, the issue is not its existence, but how it is used.

What we have lost
Perhaps the most interesting aspect of "organizing" is not its specific 
techniques, the maps and template lists, the supporting charts, the 
conversational methodologies, but rather the shift in focus. For 
decades, much of the trade union movement has dedicated enormous efforts 
to representing workers, and far less to producing new union members.

This difference is fundamental. An organization can grow in membership 
while simultaneously decreasing its organizational capacity. It can have 
more resources and fewer members, more structure and less initiative, 
more representation and less power or collective capacity. We have 
observed this trend, more or less prevalent, since the introduction of 
works councils and staff representatives into union activity.

The "organizing" approach attempts to reverse that trend. Its main 
question is not how many members we have, but how many people are 
capable of organizing others.

A lesson for Spanish trade unionism
Trade unionism in Spain doesn't need to mechanically import American 
models. The historical, legal, and cultural differences are too 
significant for that. But it can certainly draw valuable lessons, 
especially in a context marked by labor fragmentation, precarious 
employment, and a weakened working-class culture.

Perhaps the main lesson is this: organizations don't emerge 
spontaneously; they must be built. And building them requires time, 
patience, constant presence, conversations, training, trust, and 
activism. There's no legal shortcut or communication strategy that can 
replace this work. No organizational structure can function indefinitely 
without it.

Recover the organizing militant
Perhaps the greatest value of the concept of "organizer" is precisely 
its ability to remind us of something the labor movement already knew: 
unions are not built only with ideas, structures or resources, but with 
people capable of organizing other people.

Throughout much of the 20th century, the Spanish labor movement produced 
thousands of them. People who visited workshops, distributed newspapers, 
spoke with coworkers, trained new members, built union branches, 
instigated labor disputes, and wove networks of solidarity. They weren't 
professionals, technicians, or managers. They were organizers.

Today, in a very different context, the challenge remains essentially 
the same. It's not about copying the IWW, imitating Labor Notes, or 
importing foreign recipes. It's about recovering a function that was 
central to the growth of all major workers' organizations: the role of 
the organizing activist.

The person who transforms individual problems into collective action. 
The person who transforms members into comrades. The person who develops 
new organizers. The person who leaves an organization stronger than they 
found it.

Perhaps the term "organizer" isn't new. Perhaps it's simply the 
contemporary name for something the Spanish labor movement knew very 
well for decades. And perhaps the most important question isn't what we 
can learn from American "organizing," but rather:

Have we forgotten how to build activists capable of organizing other 
workers?

If the answer is yes, then the debate about the "organizer" isn't really 
about where it comes from or its context. It's about us.

Julio F., a CNT militant and currently a member of the Anarchist 
Communist Group ( United Kingdom )

Recommended bibliography
- Anna Monjo, Militantes. Democracy and worker participation in the CNT 
of the 1930s .

- José Peirats, The CNT in the Spanish Revolution .

- Chris Ealham, The Struggle for Barcelona: Class, Culture and Conflict 
1898-1937.

- Jane McAlevey, No Shortcuts: Organizing for Power in the New Gilded Age .

- Alexandra Bradbury, Mark Brenner and Jane Slaughter, Secrets of a 
Successful Organizer .

- Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), "Weakening the Dam: The 
Principles and Practice of Workplace Organizing."

- Kim Moody, An Injury to All: The Decline of American Unionism .

- Richard O. Boyer and Herbert M. Morais, Labor's Untold Story .

https://regeneracionlibertaria.org/2026/07/09/organizer-la-nueva-palabra-para-el-viejo-militante-cenetista/
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