A-Infos (en) US, NAF* Firebrand #3 - Autonomous Organizing Committees by Patrick Star

   Every day at work we get shat upon. Whether it's the
paycheck that barely covers our rent, random discipline
and discipline for doing our jobs the way that makes sense
to us but my not fit into company policy, or strait up not
being treated by our bosses with respect and not being
able to have dignity in our work. Unfortunately, our lives
revolve around work. We spent the better part of a quarter
of our lives at work, one third of our lives recovering
from work and getting some sleep, and the other fraction
is spent on worrying about work, money, buying gro-
ceries and keeping the heat on. Some where in there we
are supposed to enjoy life but most of the time we're
too tired to do that, so we zone out in front of the TV
or drink ourselves to sleep.
The fact is our lives are controlled by bosses and politi-
cians. Most of the time it's more comfortable to just
throw up our hands and say fuck it, this is
how it's always been, I'll just try to make the
best of it. It seems to me this is a defeatist way of going
about our lives. So what the hell are we supposed to do
make our lives better, to be able to afford our rent, buy
healthy food, keep warm, and be able to go to the doctor
if we're sick? I say we gotta fight back, we have to
demand dignity, respect, better wages, and a healthcare
plan we can afford. It sounds like a vauge solution to fight
back, but within this article I hope to demonstrate from
experience and discussion with others how we can fight
back and win.
  Often the easiest solution is to try and get a better job,
hell, that's what I just did and now I'm making a couple
dollars more an hour. I got no complaints about that. Yet,
the same shit that pissed me off at my old job is still going
on at my new job. For example, at my new job we don't
get to take two ten minute breaks a day, we just work
straight through to lunch, and even then, we only take a 15
to 20 minute lunch. By the time I get off work, I'm so
damned tired that all I want to do is go home a sleep and
just try and make it to the weekend. At my old job, we did-
n't get breaks either. We were so understaffed due to high
turnover that we were all expected to work overtime and,
well, I would go home tired and just try and make it
through till the weekend. It's the same shit and at some
point we're going to have to dig our heels in and fight.
  I tried fighting back at my old job through the company
grievance procedure. I was given a disciplinary action
because I was put in a situation by my supervisor when I
was the only one at the job site and a crisis developed and
I had to choose between ensuring the safety of someone
from another person or leaving medications unattended (I
was a social worker in a group home for developmentally
disable folks). It was a damned if I do, damned if I don't
type of situation and I got written up for it. When I went
through the company grievance procedure, they told me
the situation didn't merit me going through the grievance
procedure. I still got the disciplinary action. The point
being, company grievance procedures are set up by the
boss and they can say whatever the fuck they want and
decide on the grievance however they want. There's no
way to fight back through a process set up by the compa-
ny. You are also alone when going through a grievance
procedure, it's you versus the company, and trust me, the
company's gunna win.
   So then what, how the hell are we supposed to fight
back?! I don't claim to have the best answer, but I do
know from experience and from talking to other labor
activists that we must fight back together collectively. We
can't take on our bosses alone cause we'll be fired or told
to get back into line. In the realm of collective action on
the job, there are a couple of avenues we can go through
to get the basic things we need in life and potentially even
more.
  Flipping through the yellow pages, you can find a list of
official unions that can help ya organize you and your co-
workers into a state recognized and somewhat protected
legal bargening unit. If you do this, depending on the
union that applies to your line of work, you may or may
not win a collective bargening contract that may or may
not better your wages, health insurance, grievance proce-
dure for discipline, and solidarity among your co-workers.
I'm not going to argue against forming a union at your
work, hell, that's what I was involved in for the last six
months, until I quit that job so I could get a job that would
hopefully get me into a building trades union, which a
more of a career move than a stance on workplace organ-
izing. The thing about official unions is this: day to day
you still get shat upon, you still probably wont have a net-
work of co-workers who will stand behind you when you
confront your boss about this or that issue that's particu-
larly pissing you off. The other problem at stoping our
efferts in the official union realm is that we have to play
by the rules of labor law, which are really the bosses
rules, not ours. Hell, the National Labor Relations
Board is so fucking right wing that it's sickening.
     Don't get pessimistic though, it's not a choice
between having a union or not having a union. It comes
down to this: If we want to fight our bosses and win we
have to have a solid grouping of co-workers who are
creative and dedicated to having each others backs
when the shit comes down the tube. What I'm proposing
and what you probably are already doing in a less organ-
ized way is a workplace committee of you and your co-
workers that fights and wins, a group that disregards what
anyone but you and your co-workers want. Fighting for
your interests on the job, fighting covertly, publicly.
Fighting by everyone taking a 10 minute break without
asking the boss, fighting by everyone fudging on their
time cards by 15 minutes, fighting by refusing to put our-
selves in physically and emotionally dangerous positions,
fighting by organizing a union, and by telling the union
bureaucrats to either step in line behind us or to get lost.
  A workplace committee can take on many forms. It can
be everyone getting together and going to the bar after
work to plan a direct action for the next day, like taking
that ten minute break we deserve (not to mention its
required by law). It can become more developed and have
an official structure and develop campaigns around issues
of pay, health care, internal official union issues like
democracy, and it can even plan solidarity actions for the
strikes of our fellow working class sisters and brothers.
  At my old job, if we had formed a workplace committee
that fought for everyday issues we faced at work we
would have been able to win more support for the union
organizing effort we were undertaking. If my co-workers
had been able to feel a sense of power at work, a voice,
hope, instead of despair and futility about the issues at
work, then we would have seen it as the next logical step
to form an official union while still carrying out our on the
job direct actions. The way I see it, the best way to take
collective action at work and to win the dignity, respect,
and material gains we deserve is to form an autonomous
workplace committee made up of only our co-workers and
controlled by us.
  A lot of folks got the idea that you either have to form a
union or never stand a chance at changing our lives for the
better. I don't see it that way. It's not an either or type of
decision. We can have our cake and eat it too. If we organ-
ize workplace committees we stand a chance of fighting
back and winning. If we don't, we'll either continue to be
shat upon by the bosses, union bosses, or both. In my next
article on workplace organizing I will talk about the expe-
rience of workplace committees in the past and present
and the potential they hold for the future.

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* Firebrand is a publication of the Firebrand Collective,
a member collective of the Northwest Anarchist Federation
(NAF).
FIREBRAND - A VOICE FOR PORTLANDS RANK AND FILE WORKERS
ISSUE 3 Spring/Summer 2005 Federation)

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