Blitzes in workplace organizing

there's a lot of rubble left over, and usually not enough space to bury the bodies unles you cart them out of town.

1) Lack of information concerning target area 2)Over-extension of resources if the area is hot 3) General preparedness

I've only blitzed in Starbucks. Its really rather difficult in shops with a small area becuase the workers are so close to the bosses.

The biggest problem with blitzes is lack of adequate inoculation in the rap because you need so many people and are forced to use weaker or less skilled organizers.

Rule of thumb is that the day after you blitz you're public whether you want it or not. Best is to launch on a friday so you got the weekend til the big bosses are back.

Well every visit thats successful should have an assignment attatched to it or you ain't doing anything but hustling cards. So the commit to something on monday could be the higher commit. There's a local that used to run blitzes on fri sat and sundays and if 70% of the workforce didn't show to the monday meeting they put the campaign on hold and moved on to the next facility. I think that burns turf but I wasn't their for it and they're a pretty successful awesome union so I can't really say.

I like the first public action to be the demand for recognition. But you don't do that til you have a solid majority.

You also need to think of your objectives on a blitz. Is it for membership? Or leadership ID? Or committee recrutiment? Or some segment of all three?

Yeah. I think the first public action should be a show of strength. Majority support, a representative group and a demand.

surely it would change at least on the level of what you actually say to the workers.

Without revealing confidences, what industry was this in?

Nate

I think my concept of a blitz might be a little different from what folks are talking about,perhaps.

When I was with the UE I would basically look to see where there was a concentration of factories, etc. Scope out the area to see level of unionization (or not); determine working hours and so forth. Many times I was on my own, but I tired to get members to help coordinate a leaflet "blitz" of the area. When we we trying to organize plastic industry workers, we target shops and get a team to blitz with leaflets---this sort of blitz was first step stuff. To see if there was interest in the union, etc.

Prior to this sort of blitz I'd tried to see what public information there might be on the workshops in that we were blitzing. Sometimes we had good info, sometimes not. Much of this was done in the library and without the aid of the internet. I suspect the internet is a goldmine for info purposes.

In regards to mapping things out., well to have some sort of plan. To know there's some steps thta should be folowed. Some rules of thumb and background info.

The answer to your questions would follow once a campaign was being established at an active site. But even then, yes, having a plan is important.

I would agree with thug on this, public events need to be used to show strengh. Sometimes it's a gamble too. I remember one time at a really tough shop, Tungston Alloy--tough in organizing and tough in the conditions-- we were going to have a lunch time plant gate rally/picket/demo. All signs appeared to be a go. I knew things were shaky, but it appeared we had enough glue to pull it off. Well, the glue didn't stick and we had a modest rally. Yet I would say the one thing we were able to do was pull a majority of the workers out of the lunch rooms and either out onto the street and/or the loading dock areas. So we technically pulled the shop for the rally, but that's somewhat of a strecth from we wanted.

Anyway, use public events wisely. Use press release, press conferences, u-tube and the internet to supplement the work, not as the main focus itself.

It was a nursing home strategy

Blitzes are always bad ideas when there is not a neutrality agreement.

You blitz, within 24 hours the bosses knows, withing 48 anti-union campaign starts, within 72 hours polarization occurs, and you have managed to hit your peak of organization and that's it, you can only go backwards because of fear.

This means that even if you get a majority on cards or petition or what have you, everyday after the boss respondes all you are doing is playing defensive.

Bad idea.

minority unionism is incompatible with a blitz.

blitzes are solely designed to get to a majority before the boss can respond. It's a tactic created to deal with anti-union campaigns.

the blitz itself draws the reaction. if you want an anti-union campaign from the boss, do a blitz.

Sorry man, there's no neutrality in the class struggle -:)

Perhaps "nuetrality" comes about by having a pretty tight campaign and worker support---and a boss who knows s/he will have to deal with the union sooner rather than later.

nuetrality agreements are temporary peace accords after a fight has been had.

In some cases workers in one part of an industry will fight and maybe even go on strike for workers in another part of the industry to have a nuetral organizing process.

In some cases workers in their own shop fight to win neutrality agreements so that part of the process of fighting for the union is fghting for the process. http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendid=156497505

But bosses don't just give neutrality until they have been beaten into it.

on nate's point.

blitzes were designed to get to 75% percent support before the boss could start an anti-union campaign. It you are doing a long term minority union campaign, why shot yourself in the foot and let the boss attack you before you have built a deep tough committed organization?

As soon as the boss hits back all you can do it lose steam.

Yabs comments more or less describe exactly what happened at Advanis, when we tried to organise we had a blitz. The problem was we saw the blitz as the start of the campaign, instead of going public much more cautiously. The anti union campaign hit us hard, if I was to do that drive again I would say we probably shouldn't have blitzed.

Ugh. Lets say minority campaigns are stupid and no one should ever run them at all ever?

Even against capitalism?

Yes actually. Build to majority then overthrow capitalism. The minority campaigns against capitalism in China, Russia and such didn't turn out so good I think.