"There's nothing you can do about it"

[poster342002]

Spot on! The words that you put in quotes are the ones that managment whisper about workers who speak out. Not just in my job but in others as well.

Yep; and everyone just sits there obediently honking like stupid wildebeasts waiting for the jackall to maul them one by one - instead of all turning on that jackall in a united force and forcing it to back off.

 

[KeyboardJockey]

Yep - and everyone just sits there honking like stupid wildebeasts waiting for the jackall to maul them one by one - instead of all turning on that jackall in a united force and forcing it to back off.

The problem is that as soon as the first person to speak up does so all the rest go quiet as they fancy themselves as petit-bosses as well. The speaker up is then picked off by managment.

 

[poster342002]

The problem is that as soon as the first person to speak up does so all the rest go quiet as they fancy themselves as petit-bosses as well. The speaker up is then picked off by managment.

Don't I fucking know it, mate.

 

[Groucho]

And also, to Groucho, having a left-leaning union branch doesn't necessarily mean the membership is any more radicalised. For instance, the union branch where I work is actually pretty good and comprised of a number of fine reps of a radical persuasion who do their best to fight all the battles. Has this radicalised the genreral membership in any way, thugh? Has it fuck. Whenever we've had a strike, we've still had the insane phenomenon of just about everybody strolling into work as usual.

I agree that on its own is not enough. You need a left-leaning committee that knows how to relate to the workers. Even that does not automatically change things overnight. Even in my place where we have some great reps it is far from perfect.

but you know the worst left-leaning reps are those who tried their best to lead a revolt a few times and got their fingers burnt through lack of support and who now have given up and may even despise the membership. we had an old and experienced rep like that here but we re-educated him, proving that you can teach an old dog new tricks.

 

[Groucho]

Nothing much more than I've revealed myself.

I've edited anyway just to be sure.

 

[taffboy gwyrdd]

Yeah - you can leave one reactionary workplace and join another, equally reactionary, one.

Ironically, your post highlights exactly the sort of attituded rife in workplace Britain. A sort of "if you don't like it, you know where the door is" mentality that asnwers none of the problems.

I was advancing the idea of self-empowerment. I'm sick of hearing people denigrate their work place, say they hate it and stay. It's placing themselves in "victim status". Yes, I know many workplaces are reactionary (especially in the capitalist sector) and way too stressed in the public sector.
I could be more positive, people ought to organise against management bullshit, but it is getting harder. If more people left shit jobs the recruitment / retention problems might force management to make the jobs less shit.
I am in agreement with the header, people should stand up for themselves. Leaving a job one hates is doing just that.

 

[Groucho]

Maybe I should start taking more of a part in my local branch.

Strikes achieved nothing in my dept as it was a case of majority scabbing. Also a day out on strike means another days work needs to be caught up on.

For a succesful strike you will need majority support. For a strike in your Dept you would need a ballot.

Don't start there. Forget left/right for the moment. Get involved, be polite to all. Raise the issues you feel ought to be raised and insist the branch consults members on which issues need addressing. Ensure there is good regular communication with the members on workplace issues. Something to campaign on? Start a petition, call a meeting, put posters up. Don't expect instant results.

In the meantime drop me a pm and let me know when your AGM is if you don't mind. No worries if you don't want to. My motive I'll make clear - our Nat President has the right to attend any such meeting. If not a london based NEC member (Left Unity but not a member of any faction within it) might offer to attend. Ask your BEC to invite the Pres/Gen Sec/a Vice Pres because you want them to explain themselves over Nov 5th and the supposed gains. So members hear both sides.

 

[poster342002]

Get involved, be polite to all. Raise the issues you feel ought to be raised and insist the branch consults members on which issues need addressing. Ensure there is good regular communication with the members on workplace issues. Something to campaign on? Start a petition, call a meeting, put posters up. Don't expect instant results.

Been doing that all my working life - to fuck all result. Over 10 years of making myslef blue in the face and nothing to show for it.

Just look what happens whenenever the management announce a new "initiative" to downsize and cut jobs, using enhanced disciplinary measures to make it happen: most people simply do their sealion act, clap their flippers and go "Unk! Unk! Unk! Yes - too right! We need to get rid of all the deadwood!".

Why? Because they either petty-bosses themselves and can't wait to get their hands on all those shiny new powers, or they're "wannabe" petty bosses. Either that or they just take the crap at face value. And yes, I do argue against such views, but I'm invariably just pissing in the wind.

 

[Donna Ferentes]

Poster, don't take this the wrong way, but if everything is futile why not shut the fuck up about it?

 

[KeyboardJockey]

Been doing that all my working life - to fuck all result. Over 10 years of making myslef blue in the face and nothing to show for it.

Just look what happens whenenever the management announce a new "initiative" to downsize and cut jobs, using enhanced disciplinary measures to make it happen: most people simply do their sealion act, clap their flippers and go "Unk! Unk! Unk! Yes - too right! We need to get rid of all the deadwood!". .

That is what is happening in my directorate. I've heard of 'fast track' disiplinary procedures coming in to get rid of those labeled 'inefficient ' but they are inefficient mostly because they are covering the work of three or four colleauges who have been lost because of downsizing.

Why? Because they either petrty-bosses themselves and can't wait to get their hands on all those shiny new powers, or their "wannabe" petty bosses. Either that or they just take the crap at face value. And yes, I do argue against such views, but I'm invariably just pissing in the wind.

Too fucking right. You get someone who moves from Band A to Band B and becomes a first time manager. They immediately change sides. All their previous whinging about how bad things are is totally forgotten the extra money and the extra power goes to their heads.

 

[poster342002]

They immediately change sides. All their previous whinging about how bad things are is totally forgotten the extra money and the extra power goes to their heads.

Even worse are the ones who claim to be able to be on BOTH sides at once! They bang on about how bad things are (maybe even become a union rep), then eagerly wield the boss-powers over their subordiantes under the old "I'm-just-doing-my-job" schtick.

 

[treelover]

Donna, in some ways i agree with what you said earlier, eg, keep your counsel, but then again, but if you can't vent your frustrations on here, (just look at the GG battle royale thread, which i have wisely kept out of) then where can you do it. A long time activist/campaigner/ unionist, etc is feeling dissolussioned, surely the answer is to provide support and advice and a listening ear, so to speak. To me, that is the best option and the best remedy to despair.

Poster, don't take this the wrong way, but if everything is futile why not shut the fuck up about it?

 

[bluestreak]

Then don't. Stop doing it. Become a quietist. Retreat into your personal interests and the study of history and literature. If you carry on when you shouldn't, the danger is that you overreact and end up loathing everybody and everything.

yep. that was what happened to me. spent most of my teenage years in various forms of activism and ended up bitter and angry. got back into it in my mid 20s, ended up bitter and angry.

now i've just accepted that this is the way the world is going to be. we brought it on ourselves. but at the same time i'll support things worth supporting, community groups, single-issue stuff that i think i can help with, things where it would be more wrong to ignore it. but there's not enough of us.

 

[treelover]

btw,,have any generalites stayed with p/p after the erm, upsurge on here or have they all gone back to general, sobbing and shagging, etc....

 

[poster342002]

Donna, in some ways i agree with what you said earlier, eg, keep your counsel, but then again, but if you can't vent your frustrations on here, (just look at the GG battle royale thread, which i have wisely kept out of) then where can you do it. A long time activist/campaigner/ unionist, etc is feeling dissolussioned, surely the answer is to provide support and advice and a listening ear, so to speak. To me, that is the best option and the best remedy to despair.

Thanks for the words of support! Actually I think it's important to say all the stuff on this thread, because I think a lot of the left is completely wrapped up in it's own little world of over-optimistic mutual backslapping.

Many activists are completely out of touch with the grim reality of the state of things today because they - in the main - only mix with a very narrow social circle of like-minded people, who have often managed to convince themselve that they are a cross-section of popular thought and opinion. That's something I've found, anyway. Even the workplace-based union activists are often engaged 100% on union work in the union room alongside other like-minded union activists - thus isolating them somewhat from the ugly truth of the tide of reactionary thougth and lack of solidarity going on in the workplace at large.

 

[KeyboardJockey]

Many activists are completely out of touch with the grim reality of the state of things today because they - in the main - only mix with a very narrow social cicle of like-minded people, who have often managed to convince themselve that they are a cross-section of popular thought and opinion. That's something I've found, anyway. Even the wrkplace-based union activists are often engaged 100% on union work in the union room alongside other like-minded union activists - thus isolating them somewhat from the ugly truth of the tide of reactionary thougth and lack of solidarity going on in the workplace at large.

Thats a very very good point. To be frank it seemed that only the motivated ones voted for strike action and this fed back to t he activists and shop stewards. However unless you take into account that there is no solidarity in the workplace anyone who sticks their head above the parapet is going to get it shot off.

 

[poster342002]

In my place we have meekly sat by (because there was fuck all else we could do ) while we lost over 40% of our staff. I now cover a section which used to be staffed by four people and I have to come in and do unpaid overtime in the mornings to play catch up. The alternative is some 'inefficiency' bollocks being cobbled together by managment and getting sacked.

I note nobody has been able to come up with any sort of comment on how to deal with this scenario.

 

[poster342002]

Strikes achieved nothing in my dept as it was a case of majority scabbing. Also a day out on strike means another days work needs to be caught up on.

And nobody's really been able to answer this, either. What do you do when faced with majority scbabing and what does happen when your "comrade" union-member boss starts getting nasty about the work not being caught up with afterwards?

 

[treelover]

An interesting 'heavy' article about such thread matters from a marxist perspective


Through What Stage are We Passing?

'Ed George

"[The] assertion that ‘everything is possible in human affairs’ is either meaningless or false." – E.H. Carr1

What happened to the socialist revolution?
Anyone who has pretensions to being a revolutionary socialist nowadays, at the dawn of the twenty-first century, is surely obliged to answer one simple, if salient, question: what on earth has happened to the socialist revolution?2 For those of us who believe that the socialist transformation of society must through necessity pass through the gate of the revolutionary overthrow of the capitalist order the fact is that moves to do just that have, since the mid point of the last century, been almost entirely absent from our planet; and absolutely absent3 from that part of our planet where the locus of capitalist power is lies – the advanced metropolis of western Europe, north America and Australasia.4'

http://www.whatnextjournal.co.uk/Pages/Latest/Whatstage.htm

 

[treelover]

er, on second thoughs maybe not, too economistic

 

[poster342002]

treelover,

I think the world has missed the boat for socialist/anarchist transformation. My theory is that capitalist states go through a stage of optimum vulnerability to working class overthrow (around the 1910 - 1940 era for Britain/USA, I say) and if the opportunity is missed, the nation in question slowly deteriorates into a late-capitalist mess with no means for it's working class to overthrow it. We end up with, to quote Marx, "the common ruination of all". The choice of "socialism or barbarism" has, sadly, been made and it's the latter.

 

[treelover]

Er, i'm not expecting such changes anytime soon, never have, i think i believe in a form of what B has called 'moral force' and campaign duly, so i fight within my limitations for those who are most vulnerable, etc: at the moment that is people on welfare, and poverty in africa, etc, in the future it may be refugees from terrible war zones like the Congo. To me, i prefer working on something that has even the slight possibility of achievable goals, not some telelogical event/rev, etc, many years in the future.

 

[Donna Ferentes]

I note nobody has been able to come up with any sort of comment on how to deal with this scenario.

Yes, but you're not expecting them to, are you? If anybody comes up with anything then you simply shoot them down and say "no, that's no good, it's hopeless".

Hence my remarks earlier.

 

[poster342002]

Yes, but you're not expecting them to, are you? If anybody comes up with anything then you simply shoot them down and say "no, that's no good, it's hopeless".

Hence my remarks earlier.

If someone were to come up with a practical, workable answer then I'd be all ears. Believe me, I want some sort of positive suggestions on how to deal with these problems. What I don't want is pie-in-sky nonsense rhetoric that tries to skirt around, downplay or even deny the existance of the problems outlined by Keyboardjockey and myself.

Ditto sugesstion to try tactics that have failed a thousand times already in the bizarre belief that they might succeed on the thousand-and-first attempt.

 

[Donna Ferentes]

That's not really true poster. What you're doing is painting an entirely one-sided picture of events and then refusing to accept anything that anybody says to the contrary.

 

[KeyboardJockey]

If someone were to come up with a practical, workable answer then I'd be all ears. Believe me, I want some sort of positive suggestions on how to deal with these problems. What I don't want is pie-in-sky nonsense rhetoric that tries to skirt around, downplay or even deny the existance of the problems outlined by Keyboardjockey and myself.
.

Thats the whole point. it is no good saying to people who are getting shafted 'join my groupuscule and bring on the revolution' as society is a lot more atomised from when it would be possible to do this. When you have a workplace where the majority of staff.

a) join the union for nebulous reasons and for the cheap car insurance
b) see themselves as apolitical
c) don't vote in NEC elections etc
d) see themselves as individuals first and members of a group a very poor second.

How can you expect people such as these to take an interest in politics and believe that changes are possible both in the immedidate politics of the workplace and the wider political sphere.

What defence have *I* got against a manager and managerial system who says 'I know you are doing others work but I want to see you ASKING for more work or you will be 'noticed''

Ditto sugesstion to try tactics that have failed a thousand times already in the bizarre belief that they might succeed on the thousand-and-first attempt.

Quite

 

[Donna Ferentes]

Christ.

As I said, you're not exactly in the gulag or the concentration camp, are you?

There is a heavy degree of self-indulgence in this sort of thing. "Oh, it's so difficult for me. Oh, it's impossible. Oh, nobody can possibly to anything to help."

Give it a bleedin' rest.

 

[KeyboardJockey]

Christ.

As I said, you're not exactly in the gulag or the concentration camp, are you?

There is a heavy degree of self-indulgence in this sort of thing. "Oh, it's so difficult for me. Oh, it's impossible. Oh, nobody can possibly to anything to help."

Give it a bleedin' rest.

Bollocks. So what do you suggest that I and others in my situation do? Go from one employer to another with the situation getting worse each time? It's not just myself I am thinking of there are a whole lot of people even worse off than me.

The situation is currently shit for most workers in this country despite the bollocks talked by the right wing press.

The question is how do people change this as the methods like strikes and work to rule and mass workplace organisation have failed due to a combination of factors some of which are govenmental and legislative ie restrictive union laws and societial with communities based on communalities of class disintegrating.

 

[Donna Ferentes]

Bollocks. So what do you suggest that I and others in my situation do?

I and others have made a number of suggestions already, including those contructive things you can do. And things you can do if you don't feel up to it. And the acquisition of a sense of perspective. And to stop whining if all you want to do is whine.

 

[KeyboardJockey]

I and others have made a number of suggestions already, including those contructive things you can do. And things you can do if you don't feel up to it. And the acquisition of a sense of perspective. And to stop whining if all you eant to do is whine.

I'm not fucking whining I agree there are practical things that can be done but the point I was making is that without being able to carry the majority of people in the workplace change is not going to be achieved.

Also a lot of workers don't consider organising because they have not been educated about the value of organisation

IMO locking oneself up in an individual ivory tower is how we have got this sorry position of everyone for himself in the first place.