Eric Blanc

A longtime labor activist, Eric Blanc helped found the Emergency Workplace Organizing Committee at the onset of the pandemic to support workers looking to win better conditions and a voice at work. This intense movement-building experience across the US during an unexpected labor resurgence led him to start asking big questions about how to scale up working-class power — a project that culminated in his new book We Are the Union: How Worker-to-Worker Organizing is Revitalizing Labor and Winning Big (UC Press, 2025).

Blanc is an assistant professor of labor studies at Rutgers University whose writings have appeared in publications such as The Nation, The Guardian, and Jacobin, as well as journals such as Politics & Society, New Labor Forum, and Labor Studies Journal. Among other shows, he has appeared on NPR-Weekend Edition, NPR-All Things Considered, Democracy Now!, The Dig, and Economic Update. He writes the Labor Politics substack and his first book, Red State Revolt: The Teachers' Strike Wave and Working-Class Politics was published by Verso in 2019. A proud member of his union Rutgers AAUP-AFT, he lives in New York City with his wife and son.