Worker Centered

Biko Koenig's Worker Centered provides a close ethnographic account of a year-and-a-half campaign led by a worker-centered organization attempting to build a rank-and-file union at a primarily low-wage immigrant workplace.

Drawing on his embedded experience as intern, staffer, and researcher, Koenig examines the organization's strategy, its strong ideological commitment to worker leadership, and how that commitment both enabled tactical gains and obscured strategic failures.

The book interrogates tensions between allyship and frontline leadership, the challenges of translating ideals into practice, and broader critiques of business unionism and institutional constraints on organizing.

Through narrative case study and theoretical reflection, Koenig offers lessons about building worker power, the role of allies, and the complementary importance of policy and institutional work to support grassroots organizing.