UK activism - where are we at?

[Donna Ferentes]

Today, British workers work the longest hours for the worst pay in Europe

This strikes me as unlikely to be true.

 

[poster342002]

No, not really. I mean it's really not news to anybody that sometimes people can get in trouble for bringing politics to work. You know very well that people are aware of that and you know very well that nobody has any perfect answer to that problem. It's just you being purposelessly negative again.

No - it's just me asking how we get round this little inconvenient matter. Especially in many workplaces nobody is likely to back you up when you end up in that sort of shit - they'll just ignore you* (like they did when you* were spouting off) and get back to trying to climb the corporate greasy ladder.

*I use "you" in the sense of "anyone/everyone" rather than "you - donna ferentis"

 

[Donna Ferentes]

No - it;s just me asking how we get round this little inconvenient matter. Especially in many workplaces nobody is likely to back you up.

And your proposal was?

 

[poster342002]

But this is precisely the problem that activists today face and until we can begin to shift the ground on this the movement is going to be weak. Workplace organisation has been smashed. A comrade of mine who was a shop steward in the early 70s described his trade union being so powerful in the workplace that the boss had to ask their permission to sack people! And if a worker was sacked he could go and sign on and get the dole which was much higher than today.

Today, British workers work the longest hours for the worst pay in Europe, the Queens Speech includes a clause to raise the pension age - in effect asking working class people to take a massive pay cut and cut in living standards. There is the increase of McJobs with new sectors of employment that are totally un-unionised.

Fighting this is going to be difficult, but trade union membership is now growing, strikes are increasing (from an incredibly low level). I don't think political organisation in the workplace is impossible, it is difficult but their are little green shoots of revolution here and there.

And until we can get a mass rank of non-supervisory workers in workplaces again, all the above is going to be impossible.

Part of the problem is the structure of the workplace today - where everybody is someone's boss apart form a small, isolated and marginalised number of workers at the bottom of the heirarchy. I've said this before and will continue to remind people of this unpleasant situation until it becomes recognised as a matter to be addressed - which it will have to be at some point if we ever want to see a resurgance of workplace solidarity and conciousness again.

 

[Donna Ferentes]

And until we can get a mass rank of non-supervisory workers in workplaces again, all the above is going to be impossible

Phew. Better not have a go, then!

 

[poster342002]

And your proposal was?

I have none - I'm all ears. Let's get a debate going on how to "re-workerise" and "de-managerialise" the workforce. And not by pretending the problem doesn't exist or that these new class of petty bosses are all lovey-dovey and full of soldarity towards their underlings.

Except nobody wants to speak of the elephant in the living room.

 

[Donna Ferentes]

Except nobody wants to speak of the elephant in the living room.

Don't be silly. People who discuss unionisation discuss the problems involved all the time. Only some people, though, speak only of the problems.

 

[poster342002]

Don't be silly. People who discuss unionisation discuss the problems involved all the time. Only some people, though, speak only of the problems.

Well in my expereince whenever this particular issue within unionisation is raised, everyone just wants to sweep it under the carpet and pretend it isn't really an issue of any significance. We can't do this indefinately - it has to be tackled at some point.

 

[Donna Ferentes]

But you don't want to "tackle" it. You want to use it to pronounce organising "impossible".

It's just self-indulgence, man.

 

[poster342002]

But you don't want to "tackle" it. You want to use it to pronounce organising "impossible".

It's just self-indulgence, man.

That's not the case - I do want to tackle it. Trouble is, few seem to want to accept the problem even exists to begin with.

Today's workplace structures are truely fucked-up, nasty pieces of work in a way that's not being addressed. The divide-and-rule tactic has been perfected to a sick artform whereby almost everybody in the workplace is given an offial duty to screw over the person one micro-grade below them. Many people succumb to the inherant sadistic urge within such a setup to do exactly that and then say "I'm just doing my job" (perhaps even before pottering off to a union meeting?).

 

[Donna Ferentes]

As I seem to remember pointing out to you before, people have carried on socialist activity in conditions immensely more difficult than those obtaining in a British office in late 2006. Pity's sake, have some perspective.

 

[poster342002]

As I seem to remember pointing out to you before, people have carried on socialist activity in conditions immensely more difficult than those obtaining in a British office in late 2006. Pity's sake, have some perspective.

And as I pointed out before, there was then at least vast numbers of workers of the same level in most workplaces who could identify with each other and band together to fight. That is not the case now.

 

[Udo Erasmus]

I actually agree with much of your analysis, but I think one sign of hope is many people whose first activism was the anti-war movement are taking the confidence and skills of organising they learnt into other arenas, and their is evidence that for the first time union membership is increasing (slowly) rather than stagnating and the number of strikes is increasing (albeit from a very low base). While it is hard to band people together, many of the leftist ideas from the movements that are now floating around do mean that it is possible to find common ground.

For example, a guy I know (in the SP as it happens), in 2003 was a school student walking out of school, and since then has started working in a big clothing store where he has become a USDAW rep and recruited over 30 young workers to his union.

I attended a PCS picket line a while back & many of the (particularly) young people on the pickets were people who had become politicised through the anti-war movement were soaking up the ideas of the anti-globalisation movement and became politically more confident and realised that joining their union would be the next step.

 

[Donna Ferentes]

And as I pointed out before, there were then at least vast numbers of workers of the same level in most workplaces who could identify with each other and band together to fight. That is not the case now.

Yer right. Why did they use to bother with shooting, imprisonment, exile, censorship and so on when they had available to them the far more vicious option of a complicated grading structure?

 

[poster342002]

Yer right. Why did they use to bother with shooting, imprisonment, exile, censorship and so on when they had available to them the far more vicious option of a complicated grading structure?

Good question - to which I have no immediate answer (if anyone else does, please go ahead and enlighten me. Maybe the production/admisitration sytems/resources available at the time made such a system impossible then?). All I can observe is that the left has not managed to find a way of defeating this latterday ruse.

 

[soulman]

If as said earlier the anti-capitalist movement grew out of a different tradition to the trade union/leftist movement then why should those involved be expected to encourage workers to get involved with trade unions or leftist organisational structures. Surely a more natural progression would be to encourage workers to unburden themselves of those very structures, along with the tryanny of work as it's currently organised.