A-Infos (en) Britain, solfed bristol: How we win, not just what we win

I've not got much experience of organising, and I work in an industry where it's rare for 
people to be unionised (IT). But I did win some small victories at my last workplace 
(mostly thanks to SolFed's workplace organiser training) and like they say, the best way 
to learn is by trying! This is a report on two of those victories - blocking an attempt to 
give us unpaid overtime, and improving health and safety. Things were easier because we 
were all on permanent contracts and couldn't be replaced quickly, but harder because 
no-one else had much knowledge of unions or organising and because we worked in a small 
open-plan office where it was hard to talk without the boss overhearing. ---- My first 
issue came up just after I'd finished the probationary period of my contract, which I'd 
kept my head down for. The company was trying to squeeze more work out of us - already 
they'd had us all stay till 9pm one night unpaid to meet a deadline (we're meant to finish 
at 5), and now they were getting us to do one "working lunch" a week. I felt this was the 
thin end of the wedge, seen as unpaid overtime is an industry-wide problem, so we'd better 
fight it or it would all be downhill from here. I complained about it to people when we 
were talking in groups at lunch and on breaks, but no-one else would say anything, 
probably because they were worried about getting overheard or else maybe they just hadn't 
thought about it before as something that could be challenged (like I said, unpaid work is 
endemic in IT).

Anyway I changed tactics and instead started talking to people one-on-one. This was much 
more successful and each person I spoke to agreed that something should be done. One even 
agreed to help get people on side. So between us we had the whole team covered by the time 
of the next unpaid meeting, and I was trying to work out the best way to get everyone 
together to talk about it and make a plan. However, in the end I didn't have to! At the 
start of the meeting one of the people I'd talked to spoke up, saying that a few of us 
aren't happy with management taking our lunch break, and that other people here might have 
something to say about it too. Without any more prompting we then went around the table, 
each person saying why they were unhappy with it. Faced with every other person in the 
room against him our manager had to give in, and agreed to no more compulsory working 
lunches right there on the spot. The best part is that since everyone spoke, there was no 
ring leader for him to pick out to bargain with or punish. In the following two years I 
worked for them the company never once held a compulsory meeting outside working hours 
again. So I'm definitely glad we fought them on this. It fits with an experience our local 
has had before - that even without direct action just grassroots organising alone can be 
enough to scare bosses and managers into giving in.

Following this win, I asked people in my SF local for ideas about what to do next. We 
settled on organising around health and safety, since the company was clearly not 
following the law on several issues. Now I could have just gone to the boss myself, quoted 
the regulations at him, and maybe got a few things changed that way. But this wouldn't 
have helped build any workplace organisation, and would have got me noticed as a 
troublemaker. After all it's important how we win, not just what we win, right? So I 
decided to start off by trying a bit of direct action. I'd been asked to put together a 
list of equipment the company would need to order for some new people who were starting. 
As well as doing the list as normal I went round the team I worked in taking orders for 
things to improve health and safety and suggesting some myself - like wrist rests, 
ergonomic keyboards, footrests, stuff like that. I just tacked these orders onto the end 
of my list, marking them something like "safety equipment".  Now to be honest I'd expected 
to have to answer some questions on this, but no one said anything and the equipment was 
all delivered! The office manager who processed the order was also meant to be responsible 
for Health and Safety, so maybe she thought it was better for her to just go along with 
it? For whatever reason, it worked. Afterwards I did mysteriously get that task taken off 
my hands because I was "too good at programming to spend time putting orders together". 
But it set expectations high enough that the manager ended up doing the same thing in 
future anyway. I think it also got me people's respect, and some of them started joking 
that I was their union rep (we had no recognised union), so overall I'd say it worked well.

In the end, for one reason or another, organising stopped there and I never managed to get 
together anything permanent like meetings outside of work, getting people to join a 
mainstream union, or anything like that. Part of the problem was that I didn't want to be 
the only one taking initiative so I concentrated on individuals, tying to find at least 
one other person to do the organising with me. The first person I tried to enlist was 
promising and I had lots of discussions with him, but he was so unhappy with his job that 
he ended up quitting instead of organising. The second I tried to recruit agreed with me a 
lot politically and we had many, many good conversations. In the end though he wasn't 
interested in actually doing much more than talking (even though his job was was clearly 
too stressful and eventually made him ill). I think a lesson from this is that the most 
disaffected and the most "political" people often aren't the best to organise with. The 
other lesson is not to wait for the "right conditions" before organising or acting. As I 
hope my two examples showed, it's possible to permanently make things better at work and 
to do this in a syndicalist way, even at workplaces where it's not even usual for people 
to be in a mainstream union.

If you're interested in organising your own workplace like this, get in touch with Bristol 
SolFed. As well as holding organiser trainings we have a lot of experience and can give 
you advice on how to apply it to your own situation. We are also members of an 
international active in 18 countries, who we can call on for support

http://www.solfed.org.uk/bristol/how-we-win-not-just-what-we-win
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