I didn't know I could. It happened to be easier for me to get out of the normal US working class. Then I had the resources to learn about this stuff, though at a heavy cost of time, lots of thinking and (unfortunately) arguing with people.
It's not like I did nothing, or was self-interestedly passive. For example, I happened to have been fired by a major corporation for allegedly confronting a manager who sexually abused two girls who were either under 18 or close to it. In his car, when he drove them home. Complaints were filed against him, but he was only finally fired after they fired me, since the costs became too high.
(The guy wasn't so much evil as insane. He would go on about his world-travelling James Bond adventures in all seriousness during breaks, fantasies where he killed enemies and had to turn down the advances of royal seductresses.)
Maybe you could ask these girls, or everyone else in the workplace, why they didn't talk to some union. Or why they didn't warn everyone not to get in the guy's car, or organize people to supervise him.
Or maybe you could talk to the Mexican I later worked with, half of whose face was paralyzed because of years of inhaling unhealthy cleaning products. Why didn't he contact unions? Or organize a boycott?
I've seen people organize a small walk out in protest of some workplace humiliation they suffered, and they just accepted they'd immediately be fired as a consequence. You can ask why they didn't contact a union instead.
So why didn't I contact the IWW and organize the workplace? Well, right now I'm reading social histories of airy subjects like math. THERE, they discuss how society needs institutions to mentor and nurture peoples' talents. (The leftist/anarchist lit isn't much different, except they take the politically incorrect step to generalize it to all people, mathematicians or no.)
So there is not just an individual context but a societal one too. If the institutions aren't behind me, maybe offering me lessons and an honest view of consequences, it takes longer for me to figure this stuff out on my own. Figure out why we have a culture of passivity, what corporations are, which unions would offer me wiser advice, and so on.
Tayssir