Mass Worker Education: Governing from the Shopfloor

Abstract

This brief proposes a framework for “mass worker education” that builds democratic governance from workers’ everyday struggles on the shopfloor. Centering peer educators, workers trained in legal rights, work processes, and workplace dynamics, it argues that worker-led education can generate shared analysis of exploitative practices, support experimentation with tactics to eliminate harms, and deepen strategic reflection on changing power relations. The brief proposes leveraging expanded capacity at NYC’s Department of Consumer and Worker Protection (DCWP) to institutionalize peer educators as a core tool of enforcement and workplace organization, with a pilot in parcel shipping operations developed in partnership with unions and community groups. It also outlines city-state collaboration to extend co-enforcement into increasingly nonunion sectors and links mass worker education to participation in assemblies that shape policy on data, technology, and other sector-wide concerns, paving the way toward mass sectoral governance.