SolFed & IWW training course and workshops

the basic blurb for the SolFed one is here: http://solfed.org.uk/?q=organiser-training

not near a computer at the moment, but i'm sure i or someone else can answer more comprehensively later.

How has the response been? How many have you run? I'm genuinely interested, as I think it's a great idea

The thing is this training is one that has developed in different conditions to the ones you would have had as a shop steward in the 80's, Devrim. The training is (mostly) aimed at young workers who have no experience of organising or even union membership. It's assumed that most people attending the training will be isolated militants and need to build 'from the ground up' so to speak.

There's a SolFed member who has similar shop stewarding experience to you from about the same timeframe. Now to him, as to you, a lot of what is taught on the training course is sheer second nature. You don't have to strategise or think it through that much it's just 'what an organiser does'. To most workers today (especially the young, precarious ones described above) this isn't second nature because that kind of shop-floor culture has been destroyed. It's something we'll have to work very hard to rebuild, and hopefully the training sessions we've been running can help in some small way to do so. Hope that answers your question, D.

@Jared, we've had a really good response to the training - we've run lots of sessions in various far flung places. From the ones I've attended the response has always been very good and a lot of useful discussions and experiences have been shared by the attendees. Response has been so good that we've added another training co-ordinator to the commission (AKA: Me) and we're looking to train up more people as trainers to decentralise things a little bit and open up access to the course to more people.

I think we should eventually be looking to have a person experienced enough to give the training as a fixture in every local. Then, hopefully, we can really start to build on it as a foundation.

tbh, I see this sentiment of bewilderment or "i don't need this" or whatever from older folks (particularity ones already in unions), but then you find out quick, they don't know how to do some of this basic stuff.

The background to this is a lot of SolFed members, particularly the under 30s, liking the industrial strategy but having no clue how to apply it in workplaces with no prior militancy, organisation or unionisation. There seemed to be quite a gap between our experiences and ad hoc trial and error efforts at getting things going, and the goals we were aiming at. At the same time we were aware there's a fair few experienced militants in the organisation with organising experience reaching back decades, including wildcat strikes, mass meetings, and even a boss having an unfortunate proletarian-induced heart attack, iirc. So some of us proposed the idea of a training programme to systematically share these experiences so we weren't all reinventing the wheel, and so we could learn from each others' trials and errors.

Shortly after this, a North American Wobbly moved to London and joined SolFed (he can identify himself if he wishes). I'm not sure the exact circumstances of his decision to join SolFed as well as the IWW, but either way he'd been heavily involved in the North American organiser training programme, itself (as i understand it) a hybrid of mainstream union trainings and the direct action emphasis of the Starbucks and Jimmy Johns union campaigns. So the upshot of this was these things got mashed together, and the Wobbly training was adapted to both British conditions and SolFed's industrial strategy, with an emphasis on how individual militants can build collective action from scratch along direct action lines. This is still a work in progress, and we've agreed to write a pamphlet on workplace organising to join some of the dots.

Personally i think this is one of the best things we've done in my time in SolFed (4+ years). It's had a tangible effect already in reorienting us from an organisation of people with nice ideas to an organisation that actually puts those ideas into practice. Some of our more experienced members have had reactions similar to Devrims, i.e. this is all stating the obvious and seems like overkill; although they seem to have accepted us (relative) young'uns find it really useful (e.g. locals voted to set aside a percentage of subs income for the training budget at national conference). Other experienced members have, while knowing most of the content already, found it useful to have it all in one place. It's also pitched in such a way you can bring pissed off/militant workmates along and them have something to take away from it, so it's intended to serve a function of broadening the base of workplace militants not just train up our members (although it'd be sweet if trainees think we're badass and join, that's not a principle aim or prerequisite).

In response to Devrim, i can only imagine in his time workplace culture was such that you were informally schooled in these things from day one on the job, picking up the ins and outs as you went, since industrial conflict was more commonplace and unofficial, shopfloor-organised direct action a fairly regular part of even mainstream trade unionism. But i'd imagine most people born since Thatcher have had pretty much the opposite experience: atomised, defeated workplace culture where 'resistance' means pulling a sickie or finding a new job. In those circumstances, it's been hugely helpful to formally share the bread and butter of organising (i've certainly realised things i was doing wrong in my last job, which quite possibly cost me my job), and even some of our more experienced members have said it's helped them reconsider tactics in a fresh light.

OK, like a bad penny, here I am again...

Devin and I are prolly of the same age (or close enough). We had to basically learn stuff on our own, sometimes for the good, sometimes for the bad. Not sure if Devin had any older comrades with experiance he could turn to, we basically did not. So trial and error was the rule......and I bet a big dose of trusting instinct and common sense to boot.

The best cure for lack of experiance is just getting in there and "doing it". Learn the tough lessons along the way.

That said, I'm not much familiar with the specifics of trainings that are being discussed, but I would encourage them. They can be helpful in sharing experiances, in technical stuff and trying to tie the concrete with the theoretical. I don't scorn that stuff at all. It would've been good if we had such when I was younger.

Furthermore..... veteran comrades, "we" have an obligation to share our experiances in an egualitarian manner. Well, certainly to the extent that folks would want to hear them and engage. But, I'm a bit cynical here. Like I said elsewhere, I think for some relevance is what you are doing today, not what you did some years back.

Trainings alone will not answer all the situations that will arise in struggle. Trainings can be usueful supplements to actual practice.

Ciao, ya'll.

I mostly agree with what JK said, so I might be just echoing his thoughts here, but regardless...

I don't think anyone thinks that training alone will answer or even provide you with everything. Things like confidence, common sense, people skills, temper control, etc are all things you aren't going to acquire in a 1 or 2 day training. The training can help facilitate the building up of these things, but not give you them.

You'd be surprised at the kind of mistakes people make when they're organizing in the workplace. People will wear a union pin before management knows anything, thus exposing a embryonic drive. People will talk very freely about their efforts, until word gets back to management. Others will concentrate on getting their friends or whoever seems the biggest complainer on board first instead of respected social leaders at work. There's so many needless mistakes that can be avoided, and the training helps with that.

There can be no substitute for direct shop floor confrontation and the lessons and experience one gains from it. But I've got to side with the young ones here. The good old days of on the job learning and apprenticeships is long gone. The old culture of learning from older more experienced militants was destroyed a generation ago after Thatchers class victory (I'm not sure what its like in North America). Things are further complicated by the development of the largely ununionised service sector which exploits the young inexperienced workers who are easy to replace if they show signs of militancy.

This reminds of an experiment carried out at a unite union national industrial sector conference about three years ago. A forward thinking shop steward asked all the delegates to put their hands up. She then asked anyone older than 50 to put their hands down. About a quarter of the room put their hands down. She asked any one older than 40 to put their hands down and about half the room put their hands down. She asked anyone older than than 30 to put their hands down and the rest of the room put their hands down save one. I was the only one with my hand still up. She turned round pointed at me and said that's the problem our movement (trade union) faces. Most shop stewards I know were educated and 'radicalised' during the early 1970s to early 1990s. I give the movement 10 to 15 years and then theres going to be melt down unless some major workers upheaval brings militants back to the unions. But from recent waves of militancy from young workers and students, I cant see them tolerating the old corrupt union bureaucrats who are still seen as a 'troublesome part of the familiy' by older shop stewards and workers. It's early days but it seems to me new creative methods of struggle are emerging which transcend the old relationships between workers and the unions which are tied to social democracy and 'partnership' with the capitalist boss.

related to this is the fact social partnership only works with willing partners. most bosses aren't willing to offer concessions anymore, which means the unions are just helping manage constant attacks chipping away at conditions. there's a great bit in Beverley Silver's 'Forces of Labour', which quotes some of the attitude to unions/workers' organisation following mass industrialisation. Since unions had based their power on craft production and monopolisation of necessary skills/knowledge, mechanisation was seen as the death knell of workers' power. but within 20-30 years new forms emerged - the now paradigmatic factory-based unions. The optimist in me thinks we're living in a similar transition, and things like the Starbucks/Jimmy Johns union and SeaSol/IWA/SAC tactics are pointing towards a different basis for a movement. So it's not our power as workers that has decreased but the power of the trade unions, which have had difficulty adapting to the changes brought by neoliberalism.

Yeah, I haven't been to one of these trainings, although I hope to to see what they are about, but I think that they seem a great idea for the reasons people have outlined well.

Regarding workplace mapping, this may seem strange from the perspective of having worked in the post office, but in many workplaces today, it is an important but very difficult exercise. Basically it means working out who is where, who does what jobs, who works for whom, etc.

In many contemporary workplaces it can be very tricky, as you have all sorts of agency workers, privatised or contracted out bits of services (like cleaners, telephone calls or finance perhaps), etc.

very true (especially temper control). there's no substitute for the experience. but i agree with everyone else on the value of this project, the time should come when we can stop re-inventing the wheel and FWs can have access to the techniques readily available.

yeah there's various aspects to this. it's partly about physical mapping (getting an overview of the layout and the flow of production, bottlenecks, places to steal a quick word out of sight and earshot) and partly about social mapping (understanding the power relations and informal social/cultural/personal connections in the workplace and how these impact organising). again, some of this is intuitive - you're not going to talk to the person sleeping with the boss about organising - but i've found it really helpful to sit down and think it through strategically. although saying that, i haven't worked since i got laid off from my last job (gone back to uni) so it's mostly a retrospective 'oh shit i should have...' for me at the moment!

I would say that there's nothing intuitive to everybody. I know of some campaigns that were put in possible jeopardy because some of the organizing committee bragged about their efforts drunkenly to their friends, who were all in the same social circle/scene/small town as members of management.

Other organizers have felt so proud and excited to be a part of something that they wear union buttons to work before the campaign is public/known by the boss and thus expose the campaign.

Others gain so much confidence that they do stupid things like indivudually become more confrontational to management and get fired.

There's just so many things people do that maybe, you or I, as somewhat more experienced or knowledgeable militants, would know better not to do. Work in 2011 is extremely isolating and atomized. When you get into the service sector there has never been the type of collective memory that there was in the factories, building trades or public sector. It's a whole different world.

A bit tangential but, solfed folk, you may want to change the graphic on your workplace organiser training. The four Charlie's Angels women may in it may put actual flesh and blood women off. Which is something anarchist groups ought to be working hard not to do, given the prevailing gender balance.

Other than that I think the solfed training is a great idea. I've worked 7 or so jobs (excluding those I was at less than a month) and no one I ever met had really any experience organising anything, and I was always starting from scratch myself and getting no where. If I could have given practical advice on employment law, etc. that the IWW training gives or known the direct action stuff the solfed training does (I imagine, not done it myself) I reckon I could have been far more effective at working out ways to piss of management more and work less hard at the very least.

there's actually several commissions looking into stuff like this, and as soon as someone knocks up a better graphic it'll probably be changed.

Yes! This has been raised internally as well and hopefully will change.

I found the training brilliant! It raised my organising skills by like 500% (not saying much) and led to results (of a sort anyway) pretty immediately.

i agree. also it just looks silly to try and make anarchism look sexy.
despite this, i think the SolFed organiser training thng is a great idea !

fwiw, the training does also address organising in unionised workplaces too (since it's a workshop, it takes its lead from participants actual work situations). SolFed's approach is to be in the union but look to pursue an anarcho-syndicalist strategy, i.e. organising independently as much as possible. so there's a lot of overlap, unionised workplaces aren't neccesarily organised workplaces and vice versa, and even where they are you might want to change the way they're organised, i.e. many workplaces have multiple unions that scab on each other, you might want to shift the organising locus to a shop committee made up of people from various unions/jobs/trades for example. we've had a few people on it who are in militant unions/workplaces (post office, underground) and i think they've still found stuff to take away from it too. but it's early days in terms of results, especially publicisable results.

On the union/non-union aspect, the SF training actually has a section that covers this question, with a brief discussion on how organising in a non-union workplace might differ from a unionised one and visa-versa. It's a section we might be looking to expand slightly as it's a question that does affect how you go about organising in your workplace.

And I think the training, although taking precarious/isolated militants as a base, is well suited to both unionised and non-unionised workplaces as the strategies can be applied quite broadly. At the first training I went to in Bristol we had young, private sector un-unionised attendees (e.g. a call-centre worker, a private mail worker, a games tester) as well as slightly older healthcare workers, an industry with a much heavier union presence.

Damn, JK is just too fast for me.

Yeah that;s something the NA IWW does not have, a training tailored to unionized workers, although a number of dual carders have utilized aspects of the organizer training to fit their own needs.

If this seems to be the case, then it's not a conscious decision but more a reflection of membership (at least in SF's case), or at least the ones pushing the Office Angels campaign and training. The point about "our" generation (under 30s, realistically you could probably push it to almost under 40) not having experience of unionised jobs or militant shop floors - or even knowing anyone who does - has been made before.

I think this is maybe the difference between us and the left, who are almost entirely focused on union branches and therefore ignore the almost 3/4 of the British workforce who aren't in a union. Talking to Lewisham Trots is a bit like watching grainy BBC2 documentary footage, with them waxing lyrical about Serwotka and the public sector and whatnot. This has absolutely no correlation with my experience of employment. The only time I've ever been in a unionised job was at a Royal Mail depot, where I was temping! We've watched leftists in the likes of Unite abandon the most vulnerable workers due to their struggle being "unwinnable", it's hardly surprising that people in McJobs are starting to choose decentralised, informalised workplace struggle over distant, rather mystical official unions.

Good thread.

Just to say that if folks in London are interested (esp edu workers and students) in the next month, PM me.

this is where the industrial networks are hoped to step in. to take the example of postal workers, we only have one or two as members plus a few contacts, but the public services network could produce a leaflet or poster (in fact there is a poster done i think, which might get circulated). there's three main prongs to our current approach:

1. 'Direct action solidarity'. stuff like the Office Angels dispute; the focus falls on locals and tends to be oriented to casualised/service sector work.

2. Organiser training. this is meant to equip everyone with the skills and confidence to organise at work in a direct action way, whether in a union or not, both our members and any other interested workers (other anarchists, workmates etc). some of these are being adapted to industries with the input of the industrial networks.

3. Industrial networks. The networks are pretty small and geographically dispersed, but hopefully they can produce relevant propaganda for use by locals and others, as well as being poles of attraction for militant workers in various sectors.

Ideally these three prongs will work together to build a reputation for getting results, having a pro-worker anti-union stitch-up take on public sector disputes and helping build a new generation of militants by taking anarchist/communist politics out of the realm of pure ideas and into concerted practice. but of course lots could go wrong, fail to materialise etc. but the idea is all three prongs reinforce one another. we'll see i guess. but even if we fail in one or more aspects, hopefully we'll fail differently and learn something.

I really wish I could attend one of these! I'm under 30 and have never worked in a unionised workforce — and I'm sure this would be the case for a lot of New Zealander's my age. Also the composition of a lot of workplaces is mainly small, with a low number of employees working directly with the boss (or at least in my experience). Having the skill-set to organise in such an environment would be really beneficial, as it's off the radar of most unions here.

For what it's worth Jared, SF will be coming out with a workplace organising pamphlet and we'll be recording one of the workplace organising talks we give (bout an hour or an hour and a half) that we'll also be distributing. Keep an eye out.

Still tho, maybe and incentive to get an IWA section going in New Zealand....