A worker at a Best Buy store in Dedham, Massachusetts, became a union organizer with a group of 65 fellow employees. No petition ever got filed. If you stopped reading there, you’d call it a non-story.
Don’t stop there. The account he wrote up, Notes from Organizing a Union at Best Buy, is more useful to you than most union press releases, because nobody’s spinning a win. It’s a guy describing, step by step, how he built credibility, tested support, and kept an effort alive without you ever knowing it was happening.
I don’t care whether every detail in it holds up. What I care about, and what you should care about, is what it tells us about how workers are being coached to organize right now: patiently, quietly, and through people you’d never suspect.
It started with a message you’d never see
He wasn’t hired to organize. The idea came from a Signal message, sent by an editor at the pro-labor outlet Working Mass, asking if he’d connected with the Emergency Workplace Organizing Committee (EWOC), a volunteer network jointly run by the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) and the United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of America (UE) that trains workers to organize their own shops.
One message. That’s all it took to change how he saw his job.
Here’s what that means for you: the employee who starts a campaign in your store doesn’t need to be recruited by a union rep in your parking lot. A friend, an activist, a publication, a volunteer network: any of them can plant the idea over a phone. You’re not looking for an organizer outside the building. You’re looking for a worker with a grievance and someone willing to ask, “Have you thought about organizing?”
Credibility First: How This Union Organizer Built Trust
His strategy wasn’t confrontation. It was becoming one of the most liked people in the building and one of the best sellers, reportedly moving $200,000 in merchandise over Black Friday. That performance did two things: it protected his job, and it bought him standing when he brought up organizing.
Forget the troublemaker stereotype. The employee with real influence in your store is usually the one you’d call dependable, competent, well-liked: the person you’d never flag as a risk. Strong performers and organizers aren’t opposites. Sometimes they’re the same person, and the performance is the cover.
The conversations you’ll never see happen
Most of his organizing happened in two- or three-minute windows: the break room, the warehouse, the parking lot. A question about pay here, a read on who’s frustrated there. He had zero organizing background and taught himself to compress the pitch to fit between customers.
None of that requires a big meeting. It requires repetition. By the time you see a flyer or hear cards are circulating, the message has already been tested, the leaders already identified, the trust already built. Quiet doesn’t mean nothing’s happening. Quiet is often the strategy.
Turnover isn’t the shield you think it is
His momentum died when supportive employees started leaving for other jobs. When he finally asked a union for backing, they passed: too big an employer, too much instability from turnover, too much investment for an uncertain payoff.
Don’t read that as protection. The same pay, scheduling, or workload problems driving your turnover are often exactly what’s fueling the dissatisfaction behind an organizing push. High churn isn’t a defense. It’s a warning light you’re choosing to ignore.
No Petition Filed. He Still Says the Union Organizer Won.
According to the article, after organizing started, the store bumped pay about $1.50 an hour, fixed break room maintenance, and started holding meetings about unionization. None of that is independently verified, and Best Buy isn’t quoted anywhere in the piece.
Doesn’t matter to him. He counts it as proof the pressure worked. And that’s the real lesson: for many workers, success was never about winning an election. It’s a wage bump, a network, a story to hand the next person who’s frustrated somewhere else. The campaign didn’t die when it stalled. It turned into content for the next attempt.
Key Advice for Employers: What to Take From This
- The employee who organizes your workplace may have had zero intention of doing it a month ago. One conversation is all it takes.
- Organizers are being told to build influence through performance and credibility, not confrontation. Don’t focus only on the troublemaker.
- The conversations that matter most are short, informal, and built to stay off your radar.
- Networks like EWOC hand workers a playbook before a union is ever in the picture.
- Turnover can stall a campaign, but the conditions causing your turnover can just as easily be generating the next one.
- No petition doesn’t mean no impact. Pay, conditions, and your next organizing headache can all trace back to a campaign that “failed.” You lose here if you don’t provide legitimate reasons for the changes that are unrelated to any campaign.
Don’t start treating your best people like suspects. That’s a fast way to poison the culture you’re trying to protect. Ask instead why workers go around you in the first place. Usually, it’s because they don’t believe raising something in the open gets them anywhere. Fix that, and you’ve done more than any amount of watching ever will.
What’s In Their Feed is an ongoing LRI Ink series examining the organizing messages, resources, tactics, and workplace narratives employees encounter online, and what they mean for HR and labor relations practitioners.
