This TED Talk features labor entrepreneur Jess Kutch, recorded live at TED 2019.

I am a labor organizer, and in 2013, I co-founded an organization called co-worker.org

that uses technology to help people join with coworkers and organize for improvements in the

workplace.

Now, there are two kinds of reactions to what I do.

Actually, no, there are three.

The first is complete confusion about what organizing is.

When my doctor asked what I do and I told him, he thought I meant organizing like Murray Condo style.

He was like, oh, that's so great, I could use some of that around here.

I would love to clean up our patient files.

And I had explained to him that, no, no, no, it's not that kind of organizing.

It's more like if you showed up to work tomorrow and all the nurses

in the office had gotten together to ask for an across-the-board raise. Oh, he replied, and he got

really quiet. Yeah, and that's the second kind of reaction, the uncomfortable kind. People usually

withdraw from the conversation and find someone else to talk to.

Well, finally, there's the third reaction,

the excited one, the, oh my God, yes, we need this.

And someone always proceeds to tell me a story.

It's always a story about a job or a co-worker

or a friend who's enduring something awful at work.

What I've noticed is that there is never a neutral response to what I do.

You're either repelled by it,

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