Organising In The Workplace

GENERAL
The most important advice is to be well organised. Legal
strategies can aid day -to-day work. They can’t take the place of
it. Any position, legal or otherwise is going to be stronger if the
people behind it act as a group, have plans that are thought out,
and follow through on them. If the matter comes to a hearing or
to court, any judge is going to be impressed by a well-attended
and well-organised presentation.
Don’t set yourself up. Be a model worker, come on time,
and be above reproach.
Keep a notebook of all suspicious things. Record the five
W’s: What happened, Where it happened, When it happened,
Who saw it (names, addresses, phone numbers), and why each
party claimed they acted as they did.

NO PERSONAL PROBLEMS
The employer tries to make us believe that our problems are
merely personal. For example: the boss calls Portia into the
office and gives her a warning for being late. Portia explains that
she was late because her sitter was late. The boss says he’s
sorry, but he can’t bend the rules for one person. As she leaves
the office, Portia may think: “But it isn’t one person, it’s everyone
in this office. Everybody in this place has been absent or late at
least once because of a problem with child care.”
And it isn’t just that office. A reporter once wrote, “[what if a
union of working mothers held] a one-day nation-wide strike. In
unison at a predetermined time, we will rise and say, “My kid is
sick, and so is my sitter,” and walk out. Look around your office.
Think how much work wouldn’t get done.”
The need for childcare - to choose just one example - affects
tens of millions of workers. The same applies to other “personal”
problems such as reactions to chemicals, injuries, and stress. It
is in management’s interest to make the problems appear to be
“personal” so that management will not bear responsibility.

QUESTIONS AND LISTEN
TO THE ANSWERS
You have a problem; where do you begin?
Some people when they first feel that they have been treated
unfairly fly into a rage or start loudly speaking out against the
boss. This can be dangerous. Management jealousy guards its
authority in the workplace, and when you begin to question
authority, you become a threat. In most workplaces, from the
moment you begin to question authority, you become a
troublemaker in management’s eyes. If you have never before
made any waves where you work, you may be shocked, hurt or
angered by how quickly management turns against you. This is
one more reason not to act alone, and also to be careful when
you begin to talk to others.
Talk to your co-workers and ask them what they think about
what’s happening at work lately. What do they think about the
problems you’re concerned about. Listen to what others have to
say. Get their views and opinions. Most people think of an
organiser as an agitator and rabble-rouser (and there are times
when an organiser must be those things), but a good organiser is
first of all one who asks good questions and listens well to others.
Having listened well, the organiser is able to express not only his
or her own views and feelings but those of the group.
Almost inevitably there will be some people who are more
concerned than others, and a few of those people will want to do
something about it. Those few people now f orm the initial core of
your “organisation.” You might ask the two most interested
people to have coffee or lunch with you, introduce them to each
other, and then ask, “What do you think we should do about
this?” If they are indeed ready to do something, not just
complain, you are almost ready to begin organising.

MAP YOUR WORKPLACE
Knowledge is power. Or at least it is the beginning of power.
Your will want to know everything you can about your work place
and you employer. This will be a long-term, on-going process of
education. You should begin with your department. Remember,
all the information you gather can be used by you against your
employer or by them against you so be sure not to let it fall into
the hands of management or their supporters.
The steward and/or shop floor activist cannot afford to
overlook the natural organisation that exists in most work places.
Resist the tendency to complicate shop floor organisation by
establishing artificial structures or involved committees and
caucuses without first taking advantage of the organisation that
already exists. “Mapping” your work place will help you to
communicate with your co-workers and increase the union’s
power.
Management has long understood the value of identifying
informal work groups, their natural organisers, and their weak
links. In fact, one of the main thrusts of management training is
to develop strategies to alter the psychology of the work place.
A company called United Parcel Service in America, for
example, has developed its psychological manipulation
techniques into a fine art. The UPS managers’ training manual,
titled Charting Spheres of Influence, shows how to map the work
place to identify the informal work groups, isolate natural
organisers or instigators in these groups, exploit the weak links,
and in the end, break up the groups if they can’t be used to
management’s advantage.
While most companies have not developed their techniques
to the same level that UPS has, many do use some of the same
methods. Have outspoken workers, instigators or organisers in
your work place been transferred, promoted into management or
singled out for discipline? Are work groups broken up and
rearranged periodically? Has the layout to the work place been
arranged to make communication between workers difficult?
Do you get to walk around on your job? Who does? Who
doesn’t? Are certain people picked on or disciplined by
management in public? How does this affect the rest of the work
force? Do you feel you are always under surveillance? You get
the point. All of the above can be used to break up unity and
communication between he workers in your shop.

How to Map Your Workplace
If you work in a large shop, you may want to begin by
mapping just your department or shift and then work with other
stewards and/or shop floor activists to piece together a map of
the entire work place.
You can begin by drawing an outline of your department and
putting in work stations, desks, machines, etc – a floor plan. Now
place a circle where each worker is usually stationed, and write in
their names. If you can, chart the flow of production by using a
broken line or arrow. Indicate on your map where members of
management are usually stationed and their normal path through
the shop. Mark the places where workers tend to gather (break
areas, lunch rooms, bathrooms, water fountains).
Now identify and circle the informal work groups. Informal
work groups are groups of workers who work face-to-face with
each other every day. They have the opportunity to
communicate to each other every day while working and perhaps
spend time together on breaks, eat lunch together, or generally
hang out with each other.
Mark the influential people or influential work group
organisers or instigators. In each group is there a person who
seems to enjoy a special influence or respect? Sometimes they
are stewards or activists, but in many cases the organisers or
instigators will not be. Do conversations in the group ever get
into shoptalk? If so, what do they talk about? Is there an
unspoken code of behaviour in these groups towards
management or problems at work? Is there an informal
production standard that is followed and enforced by group
members?
If you are aware of loners or people who don’t mix with any
group, indicate that by using some special mark. Also identify the
weakest links: any friends of the bosses, perhaps a part-timer or
new hire, and anyone who is particularly scared.
You may want to begin taking notes on each worker and
record such things as when the person started work, grievances
filed, whether they have been active in any union projects, etc.
Keep these notes on separate index cards in a file.
Your map may show you how the workplace is set up to
keep people apart, a good reason for map-making. But the real
reason for map-making is to develop more unity in the workplace.

Using Your Map
Let’s say you have an important message to communicate,
but you don’t have the time or resources to reach every one of
your co-workers. If you can reach the natural organisers in the
informal work groups and get them on your side, you can bet that
the word will get around to everyone. Once organisers have
been identified and agree to co-operate, it is possible to develop
a network which includes both stewards and these natural
organisers who can exert considerable power and influence.
Informal work groups also have the advantage of creating
certain loyalties among their members. You can draw on this
loyalty to figure out unified strategies for problems, and take
advantage of people’s natural tendency to stick up for those who
are close to them.
Sometimes it is necessary to negotiate between the work
groups which, while experiencing common problems, also have
concerns involving only their own members. For example, at one
shop, two informal work groups existed in the department. One
group consisted of machine operators who die-casted
transmission cases and the other consisted of inspectors.
Management didn’t allow inspectors to talk to machine operators.
At one point management increased machine operators’
production quotas, which caused inspectors to mark many of the
pieces as scrap, because they were having trouble keeping up
with the production too. Both work groups were facing pressures
from the speed-up and tended to blame each other.
Eventually, representatives of the two work groups worked
out an arrangement to deal with the speed-up. It was agreed that
the inspectors would mark as scrap any transmission case with
the tiniest little flaw, causing the scrap pile to pile up.
Management would then have to come up and turn off the
machines in order to figure out what was causing the problem.
Soon every machine was experiencing a few hours of downtime
every day. After a week of this, management reduced the
production quota.
Besides working with the group organisers, it is important to
draw in the loners too. More than likely, their apathy, isolation, or
anti-union ideas stem from personal feelings of powerlessness
and fear. If collective action can be pulled off suc cessfully and a
sense of security established through the group’s action, fear and
feelings of uselessness can be reduced.
If you have got a particularly tough character in your shop
who seriously threatens unity, don’t be afraid to use the social
pressures that work groups can bring to bear to get that person
back in line. This applies to supervisory personnel too, especially
the supervisor who likes to think he or she is everyone’s friend.

The Balance Of Power
The bottom line for this type of workplace organisation is to
tip the balance of power in our favour. It can win grievances, for
example. If grievances remain individual problems or are kept in
the hands of just the steward or union higher-ups, the natural
organisation and loyalty that exists among work groups is lost.
Chances are that the grievance is lost, too.
However, if the work groups can be used to make a show of
unity, the threat that production could be hampered can be
enough to force management into a settlement. For example,
back in the die-casting plant: a machine operator was fired on
made up charges. A representative of that work group informed
key people in the skilled trades who had easy access to all
workers in the plant to tell them something was going to happen
at lunch time in the lunch room.
At each lunch-break, a meeting was held to explain the
situation. It was decided to organise for a symbolic action. The
next day black armbands were handed out in the parking lot to
everyone entering work. The key people in every work group
were informed to use their influence to make sure everybody
participated in the action. It was suggested that everyone had an
off day once in a while, and it would really be a shame if
everyone had an off day at the same time.
After two days of this, the machine operator was brought
back to work. Such an action would have been impossible
without recognition of the informal work groups and their
representatives. The grievance procedure worked because
management understood that the grievance had become the
concern of all the groups and that problems lay ahead unless it
was resolved.

SOME BASIC PRINCIPLES
The following is a list of what successful organisers’ say are
the most important principles to remember:

· Question Authority. Organising begins when people
question authority. Someone asks, “What are they doing to us?
Why are they doing it? Is it right?” Encourage people to ask,
‘Who is making the decisions, who is being forced to live with the
decisions, and why should that be so?’ People should not accept
a rule or an answer simply because it comes from the authorities,
whether that authority is the government, the boss, the union – or
you. An effective organiser encourages co-workers to think for
themselves.

· Talk One-on-One. Almost every experienced activist
agrees that “The most important thing about organising is
personal one-to-one discussion.” Leaflets are necessary,
meetings are important, rallies are wonderful – but none of them
will ever take the place of one-on-one discussion. Frequently,
when you have simply listened to a co-worker and heard what is
on her or his mind, you have won them over because you are the
only one who will listen. When you talk to Nonhlanhla at the next
desk and overcome her fears, answer her questions, lift her
morale, invite her to the meeting, or take her to the rally – that is
what organising is all about.

· Find the Natural Organisers or Instigators. Every
workplace has its social groupings of co-workers and friends.
Each group has its opinion makers, its natural organisers and its
instigators. They are not always the loudest or the most talkative,
but they are the ones the others listen to and will choose to
represent them. You will have gone a long way if you win over
these natural organisers.

· Get People Involved in Activity. Life is not a classroom
and people do not learn simply by going to meetings or reading
leaflets. Most people learn, change, and grow in the process of
action. Will you take this leaflet? Will you pass it on to your
friend? Will you mail in this postcard? Will you sign this petition?
If you want to develop new organisers, you must give them
something they can do, however small the first step is.

· Make That Collective Activity. However, the point is not
only to get individuals involved, but also to join them together in a
solidarity -conscious group. We want to create a group that sees
itself as a whole: we are the union. We are the movement. Will
you come to the meeting? Can you get the whole department to
visit the boss together? Can we count on all of you for the picket
line?

· Activities Should Escalate Over Time. Ask people to
become involved in activities of increasing commitment and
difficulty. Are you willing to wear a button saying “Vote No”? Will
you vote against the contract? Will you vote for a strike? Are
you prepared to walk a picket line? Are you willing to be
arrested? Some union campaigns have included hundreds of
people willing to go to jail for something they believed in. For
many of them it started wi th that first question, Will you take this
leaflet?

· Confront Management. Organising is about changing
power relationships, the balance of forces between management
and workers. Confrontation with the employer has to be built into
the increasing activities. The first confrontation may be
something as simple as wearing a “Vote No” button. If people
are not willing to risk upsetting the boss, they won’t win.

· Win Small Victories. Most movements, from a small
group in one workplace, to massive social protests which
changed society (i.e. the anti-apartheid movement), grow on the
basis of small victories. The victories give us confidence that we
can do more. They win us new supporters who now see that
“You can fight the boss.” With each victory the group becomes
more confident and, therefore, more capable of winning larger
victories.

· Organising is Everything. Organisation need not be
overly formal or structurally top-heavy, but it must be there. A
telephone tree and a mailing list may be all the organisation that
you need, but if those things are what you need, then you must
have them. The last twenty years have supplied many examples
of reform movements that grew, fought hard – and then died
because they didn’t stay organised. As one labour organiser, Bill
Slater, says, “Only the organised survive.”

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