workplace activity
Articles, interviews and accounts about organising at work, problems people have come up against and lessons they have learned.
Demolition workers' direct action
Building workers who weren't being paid take matters into their own hands on this New England site. An account by Anthony, a demolition worker
Copy shop direct action and sabotage
An account of direct action and sabotage in a photocopy shop, making the job enjoyable and with more pay, by Alan, a copy shop clerk
Hospital workers' direct action
Subverting management in an American hospital by Malcolm, a hospital worker
Workers' victory! At the PT Matahari Sentosa I factory
Solidarity action from Front Anti Fasis (F.A.F) and Persatuan Skinhead Anti Fasis (P.S.A.F) for workers struggle on PT Matahari Sentosa I, Bandung, Indonesia.
Preface to »From Cellatex to Moulinex»
from Riff-Raff #2
1946: The Oakland General Strike, by Stan Weir
An account of the General Strike in Oakland, California.
By nightfall the strikers had instructed all stores except pharmacies and food markets to shut down, Bars were allowed to stay open, but they could serve only beer and had to put their juke boxes out on the sidewalk to play at full volume and no charge. 'Pistol Packin' Mama, Lay That Pistol Down', the number one hit, echoed off all the buildings.
Counter-Planning on the Shop floor, by Bill Watson
It is difficult to judge just when working-class practice at the point of production learned to bypass the union structure in dealing with its problems, and to substitute (in bits and pieces) a new organisational form. It was clear to me, with my year's stay in an auto motor plant (Detroit area, 1968), that the process had been long underway.
What I find crucial to understand is that while sabotage and other forms of independent workers' activity had existed before (certainly in the late nineteenth century and with the Wobbly period), that which exists today is unique in that it follows mass unionism and is a definite response to the obsolescence of that social form. The building of a new form of organization today by workers is the outcome of attempts, here and there, to seize control of various aspects of production. These forms are beyond unionism; they are only secondarily concerned with the process of negotiation, while unionism made that its central point.
Notes on Another Defeat for Workers in the US: The Los Angeles Supermarket Strike of 2003-2004
The story of a defeated supermarket strike in LA, 2003-4.
Media coverage was eclipsed by Hollywood's Academy Awards, but on Sunday, Feb. 29, Southern California supermarket workers voted 86% to end their five-month old strike, accepting a contract that amounts to a serious, if not total, victory for a determined employer offensive with national implications.Thus one of the most important strikes in the U.S. in years has ended in defeat.
Marx and Makhno Meet McDonald's
An account of the French "Solidarity Collective" group. Casualised workers in Paris win several strikes, honorably lose another with combined union and extra-union, legal and illegal tactics.
