"we don't want to create an us-and-them mentality with management"
Hey, dipshit, it IS us versus them! WE didn't make it that way!
Fucking politically illiterate libs. Literally think the fucking company is a family.
“we don’t want to create an us-and-them mentality with management”
The worst thing about the class war is only one side knows they’re fighting it
They literally want to just talk to HR.
Imagine fighting a war and saying you want to commit your soldiers to the place where the enemy has its strongest fortifications.
This group needs inoculation. Ideally it would've happened earlier but we never get ideal conditions, eh?
A meeting to share stories of people who fought and won in similar workplaces would be good. And maybe where they failed due to trying to "work with management".
If you don't have labor buds that could come in and share these stories from their own experience, see if there are active IWW or EWOC groups locally.
This this this. Regular meetings too, if that’s not already happening. These folks need to be taught the playbook so they can recognize it when it starts rolling out. By the sounds of it, it won’t be long, so this is super time sensitive.
inoculation
Very important. Especially liberal friends I know who prepared for work place action did fail when they weren't inoculated (cause they didn't present their demands or didn't push through).
Funny enough those were and often are those that didn't want talk about inoculation, since it was so "hostile" and their boss is "nicer than those other bosses".
Also having an active vote in which people have to actively say yes for action is sometimes helpful, to have this collective decision baseline.
That said I had some success with "stress tests", to gauge what people were willing to do. The term I didn't know till recently, but basically seeing who does stuff and how they do it.
Yes, stress tests, i.e. structure tests, are also a great idea. See who shows up to meetings. See who volunteers to do actual things. The real structure test is the first real action, of course, which should be not just a list of demands but a walkout or similar.
:agony-minion: man as someone who does some organising as well I just don’t know how to overcome the level of false consciousness we’re dealing with. I’m almost getting kinda blackpilled honestly.
I know some folks who are like encyclopedic in terms of being able to remember some relevant organizing story for every single situation. It involves a lot of homework and I’ve always been shit at homework, unfortunately. Makes educating folks really difficult.
Yeh I know a few union organisers who really know their stuff, but that often adds a new battle of “rare good union organiser versus their own shitty union”
Damn straight. Most unions I’ve been in rely almost entirely on cultural attitudes to enforce basic solidarity norms. The agitation and education aspects are nonexistent and left up to being passed down by union leadership on a need-to-know basis after someone has a bad experience with management.
Although I’m lowkey in love with my current union despite the liberal leadership. Good unions do exist in the US, still. But the turnover rates at their shops are super low, so go figure they’re hard to get into.
This is the reason that managers are the front line of a union busting campaign. A lot of people like their direct supervisors. Or at the very least, they have a working rapport with them. People need to understand that ownership is going to respond to the first mention of the word “union” or even “grievances” with a call to HR, and the first thing they’re going to do is bring in “HR Consultants”. Those are your union busters. At that point, managers are going to be told, “Your job is now to execute this [dis]information campaign. All of your other duties are secondary.” And any disobedience will be treated like collaboration, which will be unambiguously punished.
This is another reason why social mapping is necessary. Some managers are social leaders. Some are not. It really depends.
They're saying this because they're afraid of retaliation and because they like their boss. Your job is to remind them how they feel and give them hope. It's time for one on one's again. Same AEIOU, emphasis on the A, the I, and the O.
DM me if you want advice
The reason :porky-happy: likes "we are a family" talk so much is that it infantilizes the workers and makes them reluctant to push back against "daddy." :kombucha-disgust:
Seems like you know what the problem is. No amount of social nicety can erase the reality of class antagonism. They won't give you what you want unless you demand it, and the effort would not have gotten this far if you could just rely on goodwill from management.
That said, accepting a delay seems better than risking fracturing the group
Have you been in contact with a union rep for organizer training? Done the one-on-one’s and social mapping and all that?
Unfortunately, union resources are not available to me.
I have done one-on-ones and very basic social mapping.
As in there’s not currently a union in your shop or you don’t have the money to register with the IWW?
I’m curious if something happened a couple weeks ago to incite all this.
Solidarity comrade. As someone that's diving headfirst into this work myself this is my biggest fear. Everyone wants to do something until it's time to do it. I don't think people take action because they're angry, I think they take action because the people they trust are doing it. If that's the case then all we can do is build that trust stronger.
Best of luck to you and your coworkers.
If you are the one organizing a strike, a boycott, or whatever else, and have sufficient political education, it's your job to educate the workers and it's your fault when this was not done sufficiently. Of course they think the company is a family, this is shoved down their throat every day. The bourgeoisie, and especially the managing forces, have a direct interest in suppressing the proletariat, convincing them that they are working for a common goal, that they share common interests, while exploiting them to the utmost extent. To direct your anger at the workers for not understanding that this is incorrect is unprincipled childishness.
What do you think I'm going to do next?
Of course, I'm going to hit the drawing board again, continue the education, and reassert why we are doing this.
But I'm annoyed and I'm venting. Am I allowed to have an emotional response during the process of struggle? Have you never met an organizer who has been annoyed?
You’re perfectly valid in being frustrated, comrade. Organizing is often frustrating and much of this frustrations comes from the uphill battles we face. I don’t think scolding you for this is any more appropriate than scolding your fellow workers for not having class consciousness.
I will admit that from what you’ve shared here, it does seem like you went from your first contact to marching on your boss very quickly. But that’s a really common thing to do, honestly. Rarely successful, but when the moment strikes it feels like you need to capture it. I don’t wanna seem like I’m talking down to you because it seems like you’ve got a handle on what you need to do next. Just wanted to mention that in case it was constructive for you.
Best of luck. Even if this push doesn’t succeed, you seem to have the right idea of just pushing forward. If you do end up getting retaliated against, most IWW branches are looking for salters at any given time
Yeah, it goes a little deeper than what I shared. It's been building up informally for like a year. It was only formalized resistance in this month.
You're right. The moment had to be seized. In fact, I believe it can't be postponed for more than a month or it will dissolve.
This likely pushed me to make some mistakes.
It happens. It sounds like all in all you’re doing good work. Leading a push like this is just a ridiculous amount of work, especially in such a short time span
If you’re looking for work, you can contact your local IWW chapter and they may be able to direct you to businesses which are currently working on unionizing and you can apply to work there. Sometimes they have people who can give you a reference or recommendation to get you in the door and the expectation is that you would help organize while you’re training and whatnot. New recruits get a ton of information thrown at them and are allowed to ask dumb questions, so it’s very useful.
