anyone got tips for union organising mall workers?
Jun 19 2009 23:57
advice, tips, links any and all appreciated.
Jun 21 2009 05:56
#2
mall workers, not mail workers, aj 
Jun 21 2009 21:49
#3
I read mail workers as well!
Jun 22 2009 00:23
#4
tbh, so did I, but I was confused because I was fairly sure that Omar's union wasn't working on organising postal workers, so I read it again to make sure.
Jun 22 2009 08:53
#5
Unite organises postal workers. The militant rank and file Postal Workers Federation is affiliated to Unite in Auckland and the M&C in Wellington.
Jun 22 2009 09:42
#6
I stand corrected! I think I had heard they were linked with M&CU in Welly but hadn't known about the Auckland Unite link.
Jun 22 2009 17:32
#7
foot, mouth , blushes , sorry for not having my glasses on
Jun 23 2009 03:38
#8
yeah shopping mall workers...
guess not.
Jun 23 2009 03:46
#9
ajjohnstone wrote:
Being an ex-postal worker and having been involved in many of the disputes , both official and unofficial , what i would advise is not to be too optimistic or overly ambitious and be prepared for officials to undermine your attempts even the so called militant branch ones
yes, but problem is that Omar is an official!
what about self-organising rather than organising from above? that's my tip.
Jun 24 2009 11:14
#10
Omar, it might help if you say what sort of mall workers (all of em, how are they broken down?), what sort of mall (e.g. multiple small shops in a single complex, mostly selling clothing and consumer durables), what problems you've had so far, what problems your contacts have raised, etc.
Make contact ASAP with any organised transport workers? So who drops the stuff off, and when?
as far as I can work out, everythng is alot easier in NZ because you have a statutory right to access (so you don't have to hang out back of loading bays at 1am and stuff, and the union generally looks like a less 'outside' element)...?
Jul 4 2009 05:15
#11
posi- yeah 190 shops mostly ununionised retail chain stores, clothing electronics, books, cafes, a food court. unionised cinema and fastfood restaurants. unionised supermarkets and banks as well.
Skraeling- what are your definitions of "self-organised" and "organising from above"?
we've been in the mall now for four days doing recruitment and its a real mixed bag for results. interesting recpetion from the workers.
Jul 4 2009 06:59
#12
Self-organisation means that workers organise themselves, whether they're mall or mail workers. It doesn't mean people going round 'recruiting'. If you're doing the recruiting presumably you think you're the ones who are going to do the organising, rather than let workers create their own forms of organisation.
The only recruitment I've ever seen in a mall is for the army, a motoring organisation and weight watchers. None of these seem like they'd be very useful to militant workers.
What about looking at the reason workers struggle? Number one reason is because they can no longer tolerate some aspect of their working or living conditions. Now there's something to talk about
Jul 4 2009 14:57
#13
What if you're not doing it "top down" organising, and simply going into other workplaces to talk to other workers about organising?
They'll have to get the idea and know-how from someone/where. Not to mention it can be intimidating trying to organise in certain workplaces(probationary periods and whatnot). more ideas?
Jul 4 2009 23:52
#14
Quote:
Self-organisation means that workers organise themselves, whether they're mall or mail workers.
So who provides unorganised workers with the tools to organise? The roving IWW itinerant in the Pacific northwest, preaching class war and workers control? The CNTista making his way to a remote part of Spain to agitate for insurrection amongst the peasants? I believe in workers organising themselves-with outside inspiration. Your strategy seems to be to play a waiting game with the working class with no place for the agitator. Can you tell me where this strategy has ever built a revolution? Or indeed built anything?
Quote:
It doesn't mean people going round 'recruiting'. If you're doing the recruiting presumably you think you're the ones who are going to do the organising, rather than let workers create their own forms of organisation.
No place then for a dusty & tired Joe Hill riding the boxcars through the Midwest, doling out union cards and collecting subs? Or what about Antonio Negri and the autonomists heading out to Porto Marghera to get workers to join workers councils? The CNT organisers handing out leaflets and soliciting cadre at the discos in '30s Barcelona? The '68ers spreading the call for a general strike by flyposting the streets of Paris? Because waiting for mall workers to spontaneously organise without the assistance of outside activists and revolutionaries has been successful where?
Quote:
What about looking at the reason workers struggle? Number one reason is because they can no longer tolerate some aspect of their working or living conditions. Now there's something to talk about
What if they are prepared to "tolerate" their working conditions? Shall we leave them to themselves then?
Self-organisation is a process and not a magic formula. If you want to wait for the workers to organise themselves on a mass scale without you going and agitating then your not an anarcho-syndicalist, communist or revolutionary but a dreamer. Or your just abdicating your own responsibility to our class and have absolutely no understanding how the revolutionary movements of the past were built
Quote:
as far as I can work out, everythng is alot easier in NZ because you have a statutory right to access (so you don't have to hang out back of loading bays at 1am and stuff, and the union generally looks like a less 'outside' element)...?
Yeah and the tories will try and change this right of access next year, specifically citing the ability of our union to exercise this right to organise the unorganised.
Jul 5 2009 00:26
#15
Omar asks "So who provides unorganised workers with the tools to organise?" This sounds a bit like the Lenin of "What is to be Done?". In that work Lenin said that workers could only achieve a trade union consciousness without help from outside. The history of the working class shows that we're quite capable of organising ourselves, even if a minority is bound to see some things first. Just look at the experience of the 1905 Revolution in Russia. Workers created soviets, but it was some time before revolutionaries began to really grasp their significance. Or take the mass strike in Poland in 1980, where all sorts of organisations were created without the assistance of activists. Indeed, whoever had the bright idea of creating Solidarnosc certainly undermined the self-organisation that had taken place across an entire country.
As for 30s Barcelona, I don't think they had discos, and ultimately the CNT were organising to recruit for the war effort in defence of the capitalist government against the Francoists.
No, workers keep on showing the capacity to organise themselves. The example of every unofficial strike shows workers have to go beyond the framework of the unions and the pro-union activists. Workers organise themselves even when they don't have the 'right' to. And come to think about it, revolution isn't legal either.
Jul 5 2009 01:25
#16
I think one problem with retail is that the traditional union form and demands are almost completely redundant. People come and go in a matter of months (or weeks) and sustaining union membership is next to impossible.
A better approach imo is to use what Riff Raff called 'Faceless Resistance' and build from there. Of course, such organisation needs to come from the shopfloor but you can still go in from without to make contacts with people. And concentrating on building a sense of collective non-compliance to ease the pace of work - rather than the traditional union concerns of pay and benefits - is a good starting point to encouraging the confidence of retail staff to act collectively.
I think this sort of workplace organising is much more realistic in a sector which universally seems to be unorganised and where mass assemblies and strikes are a far off dream.
Jul 5 2009 09:12
#17
As for 30s Barcelona, I don't think they had discos, and ultimately the CNT were organising to recruit for the war effort in defence of the capitalist government against the Francoists
- this is grossly simplistic rubbish! see review of "Red Barcelona" on the archive section of our web site www.rebelworker.org for a more realistic and nuanced discussion of the trajectory of the CNT in the 30's
Jul 5 2009 10:43
#18
One thing I've learned from my experience in retail, assuming you're organizing from the inside, is to use the changing shifts to your benefit. Since you're not always assigned with the same people, it may take a few days to talk to everyone about a subject, but it's a lot harder to trace than a whole bunch of people talking together, and you'd be talking to your mates to pass the downtime anyway.
As for coming in from the outside, though.. Last time I tried that it didn't get much feedback. High turnout means that if someone does stay for a long time, it means they have a stake in the company, so they're harder to convince to unionize "against" the company. And the rest just want to get on with the job until they move on with their lives to something better. Unless you're in the shop and have to deal with the same things they are, so you know exactly when to leverage a grievance into collective action, you're just not going to get very far. Also, there's nothing to help you retain the collective action culture, even if you did manage to help people realize how beneficial it is, due to, again, the high turnout.
So I'd say salting is the only tactic that has any chance of working. Even that is marginal.
Being an ex-postal worker and having been involved in many of the disputes , both official and unofficial , what i would advise is not to be too optimistic or overly ambitious and be prepared for officials to undermine your attempts even the so called militant branch ones
Be prepared to be disappointed
Try and create a network of contacts in DOs and Mail Centres
Try to acquire accurate info on whats happening and be a conduit to your work colleagues
Perhaps , its too obvious but join this forum and exchange experiences and knowledge
http://www.royalmailchat.co.uk/home.php
And any other that exist in the IWW or SolFed