Daniel Gross

Daniel Gross works at the Solidarity Union Network (SUN) where he is a member of its launch team and works hand in hand with workers forming their own unions in diverse industries. He got into unionism working in fast food, non-profit, and retail jobs. Daniel has been doing worker-led organizing and union-building for twenty plus years, both at his own jobs and accompanying thousands of workers creating unions in their industries.

He is the co-author of Labor Law for the Rank & Filer: Building Solidarity While Staying Clear of the Law with Staughton Lynd, a cult classic passed around year after year among workers looking for know-how and confidence to win change on the job, as well as Solidarity Unionism at Starbucks, the graphic booklet also with Lynd as well as noted political cartoonist Tom Keough.

Amid the context of a severely declined labor movement, Daniel and his co-workers successfully organized the groundbreaking IWW Starbucks Workers Union, which held power over a decade at the coffee giant and helped revitalize a more inclusive labor movement, especially in fast food and other tough to organize sectors.

Daniel subsequently became the founding director of Brandworkers, the first worker center of the immigrant workers in the metro New York local food manufacturing industry, a force transforming exploitative factories and a vital community resource set to commemorate its twentieth anniversary.

Daniel practiced labor law for a time, having been motivated to study law by the union-busting he had experienced and a desire to look at the law from a rank & file perspective.

He has served on the boards of the National Lawyers Guild and Food Chain Workers Alliance and was active in the Immigrant Worker Justice Working Group of Occupy Wall Street, the movement against corporate-controlled globalization and the Iraq war, and others.