Organizing Others

where are you in the country?

Is this a joke?

what part of the midwest?

It's not as funny as this one about cannibalism:

With a little bit of salad on the side?

Have you talked to them? My advice is to just be friendly, courteous, have a bit of a laff and make sure you're seen as someone who's nice and approachable. The reason I say all this is because I used to work as a porter at a large London university. All the porters there (me included) hated the students with a vengance because they generally treated us like subhuman shit. Anyway, if they see you as not being one of the usual spoilt student wankers, then if you talk about organising at a later date, they may take you seriously.

Is there an IWW branch near you?

Yeah, aside from Serge's points which are essential the most important thing at an early stage like this, and going in cold to boot, is find out how many people work there, who they are (not all the employees are visible to you remember), if they have any other operations in the same city and whether or not anyone has tried to organise them before. Gathering this information is an art in itself mind you, but can be done, I can give you some tips in a later post, but I'm off to my own crappy job now.

Hi Makaira. What you're proposing is more or less in the mold of the USAS Campus Workers solidarity campaigns - which they run under the titles 'Right to Organise' and 'Living Wage'. For my own part, I'd advise that your nearest USAS organiser is probably your best first contact - they'll have concrete experience helping others do what you're proposing, from a similar position. (They'll probably be busy, but be persistent.) (I'm not saying don't contact any local IWW, go for it, just that it'd be a mistake to miss out having a relationship with the one organisation which has a sustained record of victories in this very type of campaign over the last 7 years or so. Another good contact may be your local Jobs With Justice Chapter.)

With that in mind, my first port of call for resources would be the: USAS Resources section. The first, third and fourth links on that page will take you to excellent lists of resources. There's probably more than two dozen pdfs and websites worth looking over, including stories of how others have made it work before.

My second port of call would be to buy a copy of The Troublemakers Handbook from Labor Notes - it's pretty cool. Another good piece of literature, if you can get a copy is Students Against Sweatshops, by L. Featherstone - that'll give some background of others' experience.

It's a positive sign that you're wary of your own lack of experience - I am, having only been organising full-time for about 4 months. To an extent, the only way to learn is do it, but USAS, JWJ, and possibly other local community/labor solidarity organisations will run trainings, which I'm sure you'll find valauable. Try to go on one - if nothing else, it's interesting.

If I can give any one key piece of advice it would be... go slow. Your first objective should be to listen hard, and long, and to as many workers as you can. Make it a research project at first. They're about 5 years old, but check out the testimonies from the Harvard Living Wage Campaign. See if you can get other students interested. But be wary of the obvious politicos. Don't try and start organising too soon.

At some point, if workers are ready to organise and you want to be involved with that, you're almost certainly going to have to adopt an attitude to a union. If you pick a mainstream union, it will probably be the SEIU. They're fucked up in many ways - but also have a fairly impressive record of success in some ways. You've got to work out the pros and cons to working with them as opposed to (for example) the IWW. The IWW obviously may problems with winning support for the workers, due to its image. You may get more support from the SEIU. No campus worker solidarity campaign has yet involved the IWW, the SEIU have been involved in many victories. Obviously it's not your job to choose a union for the workers, but it's worth a bit of a think.

EDIT: Actually, it's probably misleadinng of me to imply that IWW locals won't work with other unions - I understand that some even have an explicit strategy of helping to support locals of other unions... so yeah. The main point is: it may come up that getting the SEIU involved becomes an issue... you may want to have a think about that.

Some folks on here are ultra suspicious of phrases like the one revol quoted above - taking it to imply you think you're some sort of charity missionary. For myself, I don't make that assumption. I think that the phrase you used might set of alarm bells in the heads of all sorts of anarchos, but that most people don't feel the need to walk semantic rice paper like they do. Instead, I'm assuming that you want to have a solidaristic and respectful relationship with the people around you, and that involves taking some practical attitude toward their working conditions. Fine. Good for you - and it's a shame that anyone would leap on that in any sort of negative way. Students acting on just that basis have made a phenomenal impact over the past ten years in the US, and I'm sure you've got a place in that tradition.

Holly shit... www.serviceworkersrising.org

Chartwells is a division of Eurest. Eurest is owned by a company called Compass.

Compass group is based out of London.

Compass group through it's Eurest, Chartwells and Levy division is heavily union. With thousands of its workers organized through massive campaigns in the last three years.

Many of them in the midwest.

Food service division of Compasss/Chartwells organize with UNITE HERE.

feel free to email me with specific questions.

I am not sure that you have realised what he is laughing at. The sentence reads that the food is comprised of African-Americans.

It reminds me of the story that Ali used to tell about when he went inti a restaurant in his home town after winning his Olympic gold, and was informed that they didn't serve Negroes. `That's ok, I don` want to eat Negroes` he replied.

On a more serious note I think that you have to accept that it is not the task of individual students to try to organize university workers, and that the chances of you succeeding are virtual zero. Your time would be better spent trying to do things with other students about what effects them in the university\ and getting involved in political discussions, and activity outside the university. outside of the university

Devrim

Actually I thought campus campaigns were often pretty successful because it's a giant workplace all in one place with a potentially massive "progressive" support base amongst its customers - students and other uni staff. That and that unis generally have to look nice and a bit pinko.

Well, obviously not the task of an individual student - that would be virtually impossible. But well organised groups of students do have a record - with greater or lesser union involvement - of helping organise campus workforces in the US...

Makaira - how are the janitors at your uni?

The best bet would be to look at whether you could get a student solidarity campaign up and running.
If they are telling you that they are unhappy then why not print them off some info on succesful strikes. Your intention may not be to be patronising but based on your post there's a chance you'll come across that way.

Not uncommon though, especially when you weigh up the usual role of trade unions in pacifying workers and promoting a general air of powerlessness and futility. You might want to suss out which union it is. Find out if they've got form for kow-towing or sweetheart deals. Or is the rep angling for promotion or shagging someone in management? Believe me, it happens. Some people on here will probably know stuff about that particular union if you find out who it is.

What city are you in? which college?
I think you said the midwest somewhere?

where in the midwest are you?

V. Interesting thread. Currently IWW Clydeside now has a job branch at Glasgow Uni and when the Crichton dispute and the Janitors dispute are over if nothing else comes up we'll be moving to a unionisation drive of non-union staff at the student unions.

Revol, you're being a prick in your first comment. Devrim, your crystal ball needs polishing - USAS in Buffalo did some very helpful work on campus workers organizing, which is worth much more than yet another student group discussing politics.

Makaira, I suggest that you private message me and other IWW people on here, private message Chuck, private message Posi, and anyone else with practical advice to give instead of sniping (ignore the sniping). That'll give you a good well-balanced picture of possible ways to move forward.

The other thing is that you're going to need a lot more people than just you if you expect results. Also, results will be slow in coming and will take a lot of work.

before you accidently create a boss campaign before workers are themselves talking union. I know Nate can give practical experience based help as could I but since the industrial market is mostly service workers rising... I'd personally choose not to give any advice other than to talk to chuck.

Duke what do you mean?

1. Someone who is asking advice on the internet and then plans to go start talking to workers is going to accidently launch a boss anti-union campaign.
2. The unite-here has density with this particular company so they'd be better to give advice than me.

Thats all.

Or you could simply get in touch with someone with experience both in organizing and that company which would be easy since Chuck is such a person. Writing a story about the plight of the poor brown people may make you feel better but it ultimately doesn't get the workers anything. People win by winning themselves.

I don't want to sound mean but I worked in a university dining common for five years (many years ago). Someone wrote a story about us poor poor mistreated workers. Three times over those five years. I wish they'd introduced us to an organizer that would've given us the skills and tools to fight our own battles rather than wrung their hands a cried out for justice on our behalf. I almost punched one cunt in the face to be honest. Maybe I was young and poor and angry or maybe I was a human being that had the balls to fight and didn't need Erin Brokovitch to save me.

Workers regain their dignity through excersizing their power as workers. Dignity can't be given.

You have no idea how much effort I put in to making that as polite as is possible for me to do. Take it for what it is.

Makaira, I think Duke is genuinely trying to be diplomatic here. Seriously the yardstick for any sort of organising should be who are you empowering? With a business union there may be problems, lots of them, but even the worst of the business unions relies on workers taking a stand against their bosses just to exist, this may be a small thing, but its important and other meaningful action can't be taken until this happens. Your report may convince someone higher up to srew these people less hard, but in the long run the only thing that will improve the lot of these workers is the confidence the workers have to take on the bosses in their own workplace, and only organising on the shop floor (regardless of a business union, IWW shop, or workplace resistance group) will give these workers power they can use themselves.