WashedAnus [he/him]

OF COURSE THIS IS A BIT ACCOUNT rage-cry

  • 0 Posts
  • 31 Comments
Joined 1 year ago
Cake day: January 20th, 2023
  • WashedAnus [he/him]@hexbear.nettolabour@hexbear.net•Ghosted by the IWWEnglish
    22·
    2 months ago

    The NARA GHQ is way fucking behind on administrative shit right now, and a lot of people are mad about it. There have been official letters written by branches and such about it, and apparently a lot of drama on the official drama channels. The branches are all still waiting on all of the dues remittance checks from this year, no new member or delegate applications have been processed this year, and it’s been very frustrating.

    So, it’s not just you!

  • WashedAnus [he/him]@hexbear.nettolabour@hexbear.net•Looking to unionize my workplace and have some questions to help get me started with research. Details inside.English
    2·
    3 months ago

    Sorry for the late reply, my inbox keeps marking things as read without me seeing them. It looks like glans has made some good points, and I agree with it on all points. I’m going to try to reply to all of the comments on mine since I posted in this comment instead of just this one I’m replying to.

    I would like to reiterate not counting on the perceived politics of coworkers. All of us here have had experiences with leftists flaking out at critical points, so you can’t trust that just because someone, say, listens to punk music and talks about XYZ political theory shit that they’ll actually put in the work and be there when you need them. Just the same, a lot of these old conservative guys that are against unions are against those other, bad unions, but not their good union (similar to the only good abortion is my abortion type crowd). You just have to figure out what actually motivates other people.

    I won’t cover mapping too much, as it seems you’ve done a lot of the work already. The only thing I’ll say here is: good points on watching out for the boss’s buddies, and I include managers with bosses. Basically, real “managers” are those with hire/fire authority. Everyone else is fair game for unionizing, but you gotta keep your wits about you to detect snitches before looping them in. You’ll want to keep the unionization efforts as secret as possible for as long as possible, as the bosses will try to smother it in the crib as soon as they catch wind.

    As far as marching on the boss being a hard sell: it always is. There is no part of a unionization effort that’s easy. When the Peet’s Coffee union in the East Bay was unionizing, they got everyone they could to make the drive out to the regional corporate headquarters across town, pack the lobby, and then wait outside of the office for hours until they basically forced themselves into the boss’s office to make demands. Like, I get that it’s a big ask, and you’ll have to be creative about it, and planning something like this is something that a dedicated External Organizer can help with.

    The thing about concentrating on card checks and elections is: It’s gonna take a good 6-12 months to actually have the election, then you’ll spend the next 6-12 months negotiating a contract, then you’ll spend the next 6-12 months fighting them to actually honor the contract, and they’ll drag it out until they can force another election and, oh it looks like you didn’t actually improve conditions and now everyone’s mad and they’re not motivated to keep the union certified. However, if you engage in direct action you can get shit like payraises and benefits without ever filing for an election, which will motivate your coworkers to work harder to unionize. A Fellow Worker of mine who is organizing his own workplace, which is a surprisingly similar situation to yours (as far as working on customer sites, everything being handled through leads, rarely interacting with the office which is inconvenient), got ratted out by a snitch and everyone got a $2 payraise, which has just motivated the committee to work harder (and more secretively).

  • WashedAnus [he/him]@hexbear.nettolabour@hexbear.net•Looking to unionize my workplace and have some questions to help get me started with research. Details inside.English
    10·
    3 months ago

    Does the IWW even do workplace organizing? I was under the impression that it was more of a thing you joined solo.

    Yes! Your local IWW’s website or the GHQ website (iww.org) should have workplace organizing intake forms. I will say that GHQ is swamped right now, so it might take some time (weeks, even) to get a response.

    Not sure if this is the IWW’s wheelhouse or not. I don’t want to take help from them and then form a union under Teamsters or something, kind of feels like wasting their resources idk maybe this is fine??

    I’m in amerikkka, so I’m unfamiliar with Canadian laws. However, IWW organizing generally works to involve the legal system as little as possible, as the bureaucracy takes years to do anything and, when they do, it’s too little too late (at least the US NLRB). I wouldn’t put much hope in getting anything accomplished through the legal system. However, I’ll try to give a quick primer on IWW style organizing:

    First, IWW has External Organizers (EO’s), but they’re there to coach you through organizing your own campaign rather than to do the legwork for you. This is partially because they’re all unpaid dues-paying volunteers, but also because you’re much more invested in the outcome than any EO could ever be.
    So, how do you get started? First, you are going to want to get/make a list of all of the people at your company and their personal contact info. This is useful if the boss fires everyone, but also you don’t want to use company resources to organize because the boss will find out. This can be a daunting task, especially at a big company, so you will want to make an organizing buddy ASAP.
    The overall strategy is to build your committee and spread the load out to everyone. You have to share the burden equally to prevent burnout, make your union more resilient, and to create buy-in among the members so they’re more committed.
    So, how do you do it? You have to talk with your coworkers, one-on-one, about work, outside of the workplace. You should concentrate on two types of coworkers: social leaders and easy wins, in that order. Social leaders are the informal leaders among your coworkers. Like, if you fuck up and break something, who do you go to to fix it before management finds out? They’re the most important coworkers to get on your side, because they will have an easier time converting people to the cause and they will be the hardest opposition if you don’t get them on your side.
    Throughout this whole process, you should avoid saying the ‘U’ word (“Union”) as much as possible. If, during a one-on one, your coworker perks up and says something like “Hell yeah, lets unionize!” then that’s fine, but if someone reacts negatively, like “wait are you talking about unionizing?” you can reply with something like “Hey, I don’t know about unions, I’m just talking about us getting what we deserve.”
    Also, don’t count on voting your way into a union. You should focus on direct action, starting at the lowest level, because you can escalate up from what business unions call “an IWW style march on the boss,” but you can’t escalate up from a strike.

    I don’t want to type out a whole organizing manual, as those already exist and you’ll get better results with a dedicated EO, as I’m in a different country and working on campaigns here already, but I’d be happy to answer any questions and clarify anything for you while you decide on a path to take or wait on an EO (from whichever union you decide on) to help.