Unions of Our Own: Daniel Gross and Peter Cole

Peter Cole is a Professor of History and Distinguished University Professor at Western Illinois University and a Research Associate in the Society, Work and Politics Institute at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa. He wrote Dockworker Power: Race and Activism in Durban and the San Francisco Bay Area (2018), winner of the Philip Taft Labor History Book Prize, and Wobblies on the Waterfront: Interracial Unionism in Progressive-Era Philadelphia (2007). He edited Ben Fletcher: The Life & Times of a Black Wobbly (revised 2nd edition, 2021) and co-edited Wobblies of the World: A Global History of the IWW (2017). He co-edited and brought the novel, Presente: A Dockworker Story (2024), written by the deceased Herb Mills, to publication. He founded and co-directs the Chicago Race Riot of 1919 Commemoration Project.

Daniel Gross has spent over twenty years building unions at his jobs and accompanying thousands of workers building unions at theirs. He co-founded the groundbreaking IWW Starbucks Workers Union in 2004, as well as Brandworkers, a deeply-rooted worker center for immigrant food manufacturing workers in metro New York. Daniel is the co-author with Staughton Lynd of Labor Law for the Rank & Filer: Building Solidarity While Staying Clear of the Law, a classic passed around by autonomy minded workers generation after generation, as well as of the graphic booklet Solidarity Unionism at Starbucks with Lynd and cartoonist Tom Keough. He has served on the board of the National Lawyers Guild, the Food Chain Workers Alliance, and was active with the Immigrant Worker Justice Working Group of Occupy Wall Street. Daniel is currently a member and a union-builder on staff at the Solidarity Union Network (SUN).