Kevin Van Meter and Robert Ovetz
Café, nonprofit, and public and private sector workers across the United States are on the move—refusing current regimes of work, fighting bosses and organizing unions, speaking about their working lives and demanding workplace democracy. Our workshop will examine two recent workers inquires with café and nonprofit workers in the US. Robert Ovetz will recount his inquiry into the nonprofit industry in his forthcoming Rebels for the System: NGOs, Capitalism and the Labor Movement (Haymarket, 2026). Kevin Van Meter will report on his recently coauthored “Class Composition in the Café Sector” (Notes from Below, 2025) and speak about his forthcoming Reading Struggles: Working-Class Self-Activity from Detroit to Turin and Back Again (AK Press). In this workshop participants will have the opportunity to practice a workers’ inquiry to understand the position of their work in the current capitalist economy to develop new tactics and strategies to build our power. The workshop teaches how workers’ inquiry can help circulate workers’ struggles and build working-class power to take on fascism.
