Gathering New Contacts
Jun 18 2007
Let's assume the following to be true: the best approach is one on one or two on one conversation outside the workplace, preferably in people's homes.
Two cases, one where your target is a place where you don't have inside support yet. Another where you have some support but the workers aren't public about their organizing and don't have addresses of co-workers. They ask you for advice.
In both, what are some ways to get more home addresses?
Jun 19 2007
#2
follow people home
Jun 19 2007
#3
check to see what kind of paperwork is laying around your workplace. when i did this in a large health care facility, i found staff phone lists, payroll lists, lists of people who needed restraint retraining, etc. laying around every department you never know what you'll find. even if it doesn't have an address you can easily turn a phone number, or sometimes just a name, into an address. just be careful not to get caught taking shit.
Jun 19 2007
#4
name tags and phone books
Jun 19 2007
#5
nate, since you're in the US, Zabasearch will be useful if you just have a name
Jun 19 2007
#6
salts
salts
salts
and more salts
Jun 19 2007
#7
Sleep with them. Actually, nevermind, that isn't terribly successful.
Jun 19 2007
#8
Thanks y'all, and keep 'em coming please.
Jeff, if you can find that other thread I'd appreciate it.
Organizer, what do you advise your salts to do to get addresses? Here's the ideas I've got so far - petition for something harmless (like funding for cancer research), raffle, christmas or other holidary card list, dumpstering for paperwork, coming up w/ excuses to go to people's houses like driving them home or asking to borrow something or getting yourself invited over for drinks.
Any other advice people have is appreciated, especially on turning partial info into address would be appreciated.
Jun 19 2007
#9
Here's the old thread: http://libcom.org/forums/organise/building-initial-employee-lists-workplace
Jun 19 2007
#10
all except dumpstering.
it is illegeal and will get a salt fired. much more useful on the inside than taking a risk and getting fired.
ps. dumpstering could also lead to arrest....reallly really bad in an organizing campaign.
Jun 19 2007
#11
organizer wrote:
all except dumpstering.it is illegeal and will get a salt fired. much more useful on the inside than taking a risk and getting fired.
ps. dumpstering could also lead to arrest....reallly really bad in an organizing campaign.
Presumably the salt could get someone on the outside to do it for them, if necessary
Jun 19 2007
#12
I've dumpstered for lists plenty of times but then I'm in industries where salts aren't practical.
Jun 19 2007
#13
high staff turnover?
Jun 19 2007
#14
Naw. Thats perfect for salts. I organize in the healthcare industry. Its more important to deal with the internal social hierarchy by taking the most educated units first like nurses then move the rest of the jobs on the inside through their committee. Its not very effective to put someone through 4 years of nursing school so they can salt a campaign.
Jun 19 2007
#15
in lots of health care facilities, and i'm sure this is the case in other industries, paper shredding is outsourced and is picked up from each department once-a-week. find out what company does it, when they pick it up and where it goes - if they're organized it might be easier to get your hands on it.
Jun 19 2007
#16
navindra....still illegal.
fuck, doesn't your union have a fucking lawyer.
don't do illegal shit.
Jun 19 2007
#17
organizer wrote:
navindra....still illegal.fuck, doesn't your union have a fucking lawyer.
don't do illegal shit.
Pussy.
Jun 19 2007
#18
organizer wrote:
don't do illegal shit.
don't get caught doing illegal shit
Jun 19 2007
#19
This was the kind of shit I would have loved to get involved in when I was doing office temping. I handled tons of contacts databases and HR files. I placed an anonymous call to help out a nosy investigative reporter once regarding backroom negotiations over a big gentrification development but that was all I had to show for my efforts. You'd really have to have a secret network of 30-40 people to get any kind of systemic (non-random) access to information in an industry or to target specific firms within a city.
Jun 19 2007
#20
A guy I used to know, latino organizer at one of the CtW unions before the split, got caught in an alley late at night with another organizer dumpstering for info once by a cop. Cop was like "what the fuck?!" he was like "oh god officer it's terrible, my stupid fiancee was showing her ring to her girlfriend and she accidentally left it on the tray when she threw out her meal, we just got engaged and she's not used to wearing a ring yet, she didn't realize it until she got home and was all in tears and I was like trying to comfort her but also it's an expensive damn ring so now I'm digging through the trash trying to find it, it's disgusting but I don't know what else to do, can you shine your flashlight higher so I can see better?" the cop was like "uhhh... well, hurry up and finish this up, youre not supposed to be here" and drove off. After that they started just throwing the bags of trash in the back of their car and taking them back to the office to search through. I think they did that for like three months.
Jun 19 2007
#21
Nate wrote:
A guy I used to know, latino organizer at one of the CtW unions before the split, got caught in an alley late at night with another organizer dumpstering for info once by a cop. Cop was like "what the fuck?!" he was like "oh god officer it's terrible, my stupid fiancee was showing her ring to her girlfriend and she accidentally left it on the tray when she threw out her meal, we just got engaged and she's not used to wearing a ring yet, she didn't realize it until she got home and was all in tears and I was like trying to comfort her but also it's an expensive damn ring so now I'm digging through the trash trying to find it, it's disgusting but I don't know what else to do, can you shine your flashlight higher so I can see better?" the cop was like "uhhh... well, hurry up and finish this up, youre not supposed to be here" and drove off. After that they started just throwing the bags of trash in the back of their car and taking them back to the office to search through. I think they did that for like three months.
Thats the key. Take the trash with you. Don't search there. Plus, it ain't illegal to take trash. Its only illegal to trespass.
Jun 19 2007
#22
Are you sure it is not illegal to take trash? I thought it became property of the city, like the receptacle it is in...
Jun 19 2007
#23
j.rogue wrote:
Are you sure it is not illegal to take trash? I thought it became property of the city, like the receptacle it is in...
Not in general. There may be local ordinances around it depending on where you live. Its the same reason tabloid journalists rummage through celebrities garbage and cops can go through trash without a warrant and such.
Jun 19 2007
#24
In the UK it is technically illegal to take trash. uh, I mean, rubbish.
Jun 20 2007
#25
thugarchist wrote:
Nate wrote:
A guy I used to know, latino organizer at one of the CtW unions before the split, got caught in an alley late at night with another organizer dumpstering for info once by a cop. Cop was like "what the fuck?!" he was like "oh god officer it's terrible, my stupid fiancee was showing her ring to her girlfriend and she accidentally left it on the tray when she threw out her meal, we just got engaged and she's not used to wearing a ring yet, she didn't realize it until she got home and was all in tears and I was like trying to comfort her but also it's an expensive damn ring so now I'm digging through the trash trying to find it, it's disgusting but I don't know what else to do, can you shine your flashlight higher so I can see better?" the cop was like "uhhh... well, hurry up and finish this up, youre not supposed to be here" and drove off. After that they started just throwing the bags of trash in the back of their car and taking them back to the office to search through. I think they did that for like three months.Thats the key. Take the trash with you. Don't search there. Plus, it ain't illegal to take trash. Its only illegal to trespass.
wrong
wrong
so long as the trash is on private property the trash is still private property.
only once the trash has reached public property is it ok to take.
Jun 20 2007
#26
posi wrote:
In the UK it is technically illegal to take trash. uh, I mean, rubbish.
and in the us.
don't listen to him. stay away from trash, until it's on the public sidewalk getting ready to be picked up.
Jun 20 2007
#27
But dumpsters generally don't leave the property.
UNLESS it is legal to pull stuff out of it once it in no longer physically touching the property.
THEREFORE the best time to pull stuff out of dumpsters legal-wise is the moments before it is being duumped into the truck.
Ready.... GO!
Jun 20 2007
#28
don't do it is the message.
create, find, nurture, train salts instead.
Jun 20 2007
#29
Duke: dude
why are you encouraging the wobs to get salts?
all they'll do is fucking raid turf
you're an idiot
RK: cause they won't do it
and you know they won't
Duke: nas serious
nates
RK: it's like telling a crack head to get a job
does'nt work
Duke: hmm
maybe
Jun 20 2007
#30
One time I managed to get ahold of the email addresses of every worker for my dispatch company in my region and emailed once an informational about us trying to form a union branch in the area. I got one response. Now, people who work at this company are doing it for maybe a matter of six months, few go over two years because of the conditions, but still that level of passivity was somewhat surprising. I speculate that people were a little unnerved at being solicited and that's why I would be pretty skeptical at trash digging for addresses. If you wind up doing it I'd say any contact you initiate would have to be thought out pretty well and include an apology for intruding on people's privacy (not that I think this way, but other people do, so...).
In my own workplace I've managed to get everyone's contact info from an excel file on the company server, but more importantly I hang out with my coworkers a lot. What's more of a challenge is making contacts up the supply chain from where we work, to the bigger company that farms out our work to us. That's hard. One of my co-workers has managed to make inroads there though since she used to work in the corporations offices as a temp.
there was a thread about this before, in this forum somewhere.