For about 20 years, labor organizations in the US are implementing strategies in order to ‘organize’ workers from industries or companies that have for long been deserted by labor unions. Referred to as ‘organizing’, this strategy experienced some success in the public and industrial sectors but proved so far unable to scale-up and sustainably organize the ‘precariat’ from the fast-growing, low-paid and precarious services industries. Our article examines two recent and large-scale ‘organizing’ movements (‘Fight for 15’ and ‘Our Wal-Mart’) which emerged in the USA in sectors deemed unmobilizable – respectively the fast-food and retail industries. Our findings suggest that both campaigns gained significant victories which we attribute in both cases to a shift from an ‘organizing’ to a ‘networking’ paradigm. We argue that these approaches represent two new novel forms of organizing, which we term as ‘intersectional solidarity bridging’ and ‘professional solidarity bonding’. We discuss the ruptures and continuations implied by these developments in terms of discursive and organizational strategy.
