Let me sleep on it
Submitted by Recomposition on Apr 20 2012 09:11
Our series on work, sleep and dreams continues with a story about a sleepwalking postal worker.
I woke up and rubbed my eyes, Saturday was a long time coming this week. My aching body stumbled towards the fridge. I swung the door open and my eyes focused on the first clear object of the morning, a bottle of Catsup. I grabbed the bottle and stood up, straightening my aching back. I opened the freezer and my eyes focused again on a frozen bag of breakfast sausage.
Interviews with organizers: Canada’s postal struggles & the New School occupation
Submitted by Recomposition on Mar 31 2012 02:18
Two interviews with organizers in recent struggles.
Beginning with the crisis of 2008, a series of community, labor, and education struggles have unfolded across the world, in the US, and Canada. As experienced organizers face new challenges, and new people are brought into the movement, the challenges and problems posed by building powerful radical movements confronts us.
Fighting and firings at Canada Post
Submitted by Recomposition on Feb 17 2012 08:57
In this post, Phinneas Gage tells a story about action on the job, management retaliation, and workers’ responses.
Harjit stood outside the depot in the cold for 15 minutes before anyone else arrived. He had a stack of picket signs next to him. The sticks poking out from the garbage bags the signs were packed in. They were slowly collecting snow. It was going to be a long day, at work a half hour early to get people their picket signs and whistles, eight hours of work, and then whatever overtime was coming.
The committee in action - Phinneas Gage
Submitted by Recomposition on Jan 31 2012 22:16
In this article Phinneas Gage describes how workers at Canada Post have organized themselves, and the ups and downs and risks of organizing.
“So let’s talk about what happened in the last month or so”. I said looking over the room full of the usual suspects. Harjit told the story like this: “the supervisors came out on to the floor to talk to everyone about taking forceback (forced overtime), they didn’t think anything was up when they asked the first person and they refused. They just nodded made a note and moved down the row”.
Don't be an overtime addict - Paul Petard
Submitted by Dan Radnika on Jan 24 2012 21:07
This little booklet was produced by the anarcho-communist cartoonist Paul Petard in the early 2000s some time, when he was working at the Post Office in London.
Stories from the CUPW Lock Out: or how to create a story that can reshape who we are and how we act
Submitted by Recomposition on Jan 14 2012 01:46
This story by our friend Bruce is reprinted from Linchpin, the publication of our comrades at Common Cause, about the CUPW lock out.
In the spring of 2011, during the rotating strikes and subsequent lockout of the Canadian Union of Postal Workers (CUPW), anarchists living in southern Ontario attempted to organize support and solidarity for their working class brothers and sisters. Specifically, members of Common Cause took an active role organizing community solidarity and fightback in Toronto and Hamilton.
Class War on the Work Floor – Audio Recording
Submitted by Recomposition on Jan 4 2012 10:16
We’re pleased to repost this from our comrades at Common Cause.
Between October 22 and October 25, Common Cause organized a speaking tour entitled “Class War On The Workfloor” in four Ontario cities (Hamilton, Toronto, Kitchener & London). The speaker was postal worker, anarchist and rank-and-file trouble maker, Rachael Stafford, from Edmonton.
Death to rank and filism!
The text below appeared in a short-lived project and one-off journal, entitled ‘Anti-Exchange and Mart’, produced in London in 1990. The article has been ‘lost’ until just recently. The article was written by a member of the Communication Worker’s Group (CWG), a rank and file postal workers organisation. It is a detailed examination of the challenges that faced, or perhaps, issues that beset, the group, written very shortly after the dissolution of the group. The text here is exactly as it appeared in 1990.
It is written from the perspective of those – termed the ‘anti-union tendency’ in the article - in the group who had a particularly fundamental critique of the role of workplace unions. The experience of the CWG informed the politics of at least two of its members in a very significant way.
On Contracts
Submitted by Recomposition on Dec 14 2011 21:49
An article by Phinneas Gage dealing with collective bargaining agreements between a small shop and the Canadian postal workers union.
I was in for one hell of a shock today. I finally got the names and addresses of the four ‘Rand’1 members working at the courier company. In the same day I saw them threaten to wildcat and then get fired.
- 1. A Rand member is someone who is paying dues to a union but has not signed a union card, named after justice Rand who set the precedent for dues checkoff for unions in Canada
General Strike in Portugal.
Submitted by Leon on Nov 25 2011 03:07
A 24-hour strike in Portugal against proposed austerity measures has grounded flights and halted public transport.
Hundreds of thousands of workers took part in the action, including air traffic controllers, metro workers, teachers and hospital staff.
A march in the capital, Lisbon, attracted thousands of protesters.
Parliament will vote next week on a deficit reduction plan being imposed as a result of an international bailout.
Portugal is getting 78bn euros (£67bn; $104bn) in emergency funds from the EU and the International Monetary Fund (IMF)
Can comment on articles and discussions