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when you talk to people ask them what they like about their job too. people will often be turned off if youre the person who is seen as constantly complaining and negative. asking people both what they like and what they dont like means you can frame organizing in a less nebulous way and more of a way to make work better by enhancing the positives and reducing the negatives. along with that is be a good employee, at least to your coworkers. if you want people to listen to you and take your opinion seriously be the person who is willing to do your job well and be a good coworker. if youre seen as being lazy or unhelpful or making their job harder then people will not want to organize with you. last thing is have one on one discussions with people about something concrete. if theres a particular grievance at your work or something going on focus on that, not a nebulous idea like "hey do you want to form a union?" if you frame it in concrete and specific terms it makes it easier to then make the case for a union by explaining how a union or any kind of organization by the workers can help win that particular demand. it also helps you identify people who might be supportive without putting your neck out if youre unsure what they think. asking people about how they feel about some policy or something and gauging their response can help tell you who would be pro union and who wouldnt be, and thats important because you dont want to out yourself to employees who could be hostile and you also dont want to motivate or mobilize coworkers who could be hostile.
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Jan 9, 2020 03:34
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kingcobweb posted:this is all great advice, at DSA we had a presentation from someone who worked at UPS and organized his workplace (despite his union rather than because of it) and something he emphasized was to be a good worker, to make yourself indispensable yeah, your comment about the worker organizing in spite of the union brings up another good point: if you are building a union, the union is you the workers, not whatever agency you go with e.g. SEIU. when you start you need to build a strong core group of people that understand that and are looking to make the union truly democratic and run from the bottom up. this is your organizing committee. before you actually start the process of unionizing you should have around 10% of your workforce actively looking to organize who are coming to meetings and talking to their coworkers as well, and around 40-50% that you have mapped out and know that they will sign cards if a union vote comes. if you dont have that strong core of rank and file organizers, then the union agency can come in and wreck poo poo for you, seen that happen in places before, or the union becomes very bureaucratic with low participation and doesnt actually accomplish anything. i know a lot of union staff and theyre good people but their agencies often dont care as much about your local as they do their national org and what your local means for it. they can often times be an obstacle to organizing even if it sounds crazy at first.
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Jan 9, 2020 03:48
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I briefly mentioned mapping above so here's a short blurb on what it is. its just cataloging how supportive someone is of a union/organizing by assigning them a number. a 1 is people like you, the organizers and anyone else who will come to meetings and be active and actually do poo poo. a 2 is someone who will sign a card and pay dues. a 3 is undecided. a 4 is soft opposition. a 5 is a hard and fast no, usually dont even bother talking to them. when you actually start your campaign in earnest and are talking to people to sign cards, your goal shouldnt be to turn a 4 into a 1, its always to move them 1 step closer to a 1. if you turn a 4 into a 3 thats a victory. use a spreadsheet to track all this and also get the phones and emails of the 1s and 2s so you can pester them with texts and emails and stuff to keep them engaged and mobilized during the card drive or during campaigns.
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Jan 9, 2020 03:53
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a lot of this stuff applies to all organizing not just workplace stuff too. organizing tenants, neighbors, even building a party or organization many of the same ideas and principles hold up.
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May 16, 2020 02:31
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mila kunis posted:My neighbourhood is pretty poor and the government has done jack for tenants, does anyone have experience with organizing mutual aid? what do you mean by mutual aid? can have a lot of meanings. I'd say generally approaching organization solely from the premise of trying to provide mutual aid is depoliticizing. the political precedes the organizational, so having a demand, a reason, etc. for organizing is what's important. for example if rents in the building/neighborhood are too high, talk to fellow tenants about the rent and how it's too high and how you can organize to collectively fight for lower rent. basically the point im making is you cant tell people what to care about. what do they care about, and then make the argument that the best way to achieve that is to organize collectively to achieve the demand, goal, whatever. a lot of mutual aid groups serve as charity and attempt to recruit people on the basis of come do this charity because its good. well, this doesnt politicize for people the idea that really what is needed is a collective fight against the rich and political elites who are creating the conditions which necessitate the charity. now, if people are looking for ways to organize to provide relief to one another then yeah that becomes a pole to organize around and especially now during the corona virus a lot of people are looking for this specifically. basically you need to talk to people, see what their concerns and grievances are. then make the case that the way to fight to resolve those grievances is to organize collectively. then the process of organizing really begins. its a complex process and takes time, sometimes years, and its not easy to sum up in a single post but the key thing is that the political question precedes the organizational one. have to have a political point to organize to motivate the process of organizing people, which takes time and energy that people will not engage with unless they are politically motivated to do so.
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May 17, 2020 23:38
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kingcobweb posted:someone bumped my other, worse thread about organizing so i'm bumping this one instead. i need to read no shortcuts, many comrades have recommended it and someone even sent me the dissertation with the same name she wrote which is basically a rough draft so i can read it for free, but alas, so little time and so much other poo poo to read and hell, even to do
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Sep 15, 2020 19:31
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Pentecoastal Elites posted:I've been trying for a while now to get any sort of organization in my workplace happening but its been very slow going. I work in tech with a unusually older crowd, so it's a very unfriendly combination of libertarianism and boomer brain. In a weird way, COVID really put the breaks on everything because the whole office is working from home and the thing I was trying to organize around was our boss buying out half of our building and setting up essentially a fully stocked sports bar for "company gatherings" (him and his friends at 2pm every weekday) while delaying our contractually obligated raises for months because he was "switching around the payroll software". unfortunately you cant force people to organize. just have to be patient and continue to put your politics forward and work to convince people 1 by 1.
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Sep 16, 2020 12:58
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Lovelyn posted:Solid advice, thanks. Will be applying to RN Residencies in the coming months and the average caseload in the hospitals near me go up to 5, which is terrifying. I don't think fighting for lower ratios is even on the agenda with everything going on, so I get it. I'll just take my time and try to build as much worker power as I can congrats on getting through nursing school, hardest thing I’ve ever done. depending on where you’re at nurses unions can range from strong to non existent if you’re in the US. honestly hearing your hospitals only go up to 5 pts on med surg sounds like a dream compared to where I was when I started out, we would have 6 max and there were days in my first year where I had a team of 6 and had to charge. ratios are definitely a huge deal and for a good example of how not to organize take a look at the example out of massachusettes from 2 years ago where they failed to get an amendment passed limiting the nurse patient ratio.
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Sep 21, 2020 12:09
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yeah actual organization comes from talking to coworkers and making them politically active, in their workplace and beyond. that the unions themselves are conservative is a huge barrier but it can be overcome by organizing the actual workers. the teachers strikes are a good example of this, they were wildcat and didnt involve the unions but the teachers had been organizing themselves for such an action for months
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Oct 21, 2020 12:49
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glad you’ve had some success, solidarity!
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Nov 15, 2020 03:14
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In Training posted:Thank you to all the posters in this thread who have provided advice or resources, I read No Shortcuts on the OP's rec and after a month or two of scattered convos and doing my own research on local organizing resources I was able to tip my workplace into taking organization and unionization seriously. Had our first real meeting last night and the support from coworkers has already exceeded my expectations, I don't know where this will wind up but probably wouldn't have happened without the guiding hand of everyone here. Thank you all so much! hell yeah, glad things are going well. no shortcuts is really good, required reading
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Dec 11, 2020 01:12
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personally feel like this thread should be permanently stickied to the top of the sub forum but i also understand that its filled with valuable information, anecdotes, resources, etc. so can understand if the IKs feel like it's more important to hide it and make sure no one sees it
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Dec 18, 2020 16:46
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Tom Smykowski posted:You guys know any other good news sites for union stuff like in these times? Or twitter accounts or whatever? https://labornotes.org/ labor notes, they have a monthly newspaper you can usually pick up for free from like AFLCIO people or other large labor orgs around or just read their website https://labornotes.org/ most socialist organizations have their own newspapers or publications too and they usually have labor news and current events with political analysis so like DSA has democratic left, socialist alternative has paper by same name, etc. then theres journals like jacobin. most unions also put out their own publications if youre a member of one you can get them but can also sign up to receive them too for a fee. dont know the name of all of them but im a member of NNU so I get their journal which comes out every few months.
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Jan 4, 2021 21:59
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also IKs please take break from probating people for posting "lol" in threads to give us a list of who has voted this thread less than 5 cause at the risk of being banned: lol
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Jan 4, 2021 22:00
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we discussed the google union in our branch tonight. its weak and anemic but the reality is its the first real workplace organization at a big tech company like that ever so its a huge step forward and will hopefully help open the door and get more tech workers discussing the idea of unionization and workplace organizing
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Jan 5, 2021 05:37
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ToxicAcne posted:Yeah I've become extremely skeptical of the whole "not having demands puts you in a stronger position" angle. Just say that you are advocating for better wages, hours, sexual harassments policy, job security etc. Stuff that everybody wants. yeah this is ultimately correct, demands are what lead to organization not the other way around. to get people to organize you have to have demands to organize for, doesn’t really work to say let’s spend a bunch of time meeting and planning for years and then we’ll figure out why we’re doing it later. seems obvious but a lot of people don’t realize this and it’s often time people who are more left in their politics because they just value unionization and so they want to convince people of unionizing for its own sake, but that’s not really what motivates people the majority of times to give up their evenings or weekends
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Jan 10, 2021 16:44
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for medium or large sized meetings in any situation just use stack which is basically people raise their hand and you write down their names in the order they raised them and then they get to speak when its their turn. if someone has already spoken a lot and they raise their hand before someone who has spoken none, you bump the person who hasnt spoken above the person who has spoken a bunch already so everyone gets equal access to time. over zoom, you can do this by using the raise hand function or just asking people to type their name into the chat window. can also ask them to specificy if they have a comment or a question so can bump the questions up to the front and they can then be answered in the discussion. it can take a while for people to get used to this if theyve never done it before but it leads to the most functional meetings ever and i legit get pissed off when im in work meetings because they dont use it and i just silently fume about how much better the meeting would be run if they used it.
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Jan 16, 2021 14:13
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the IWW doesnt really operate in the same way as a traditional union and while theyve organized some workplaces I dont think anyone would say they function like a union in most places theyre active. if theres an active chapter near you that is engaged with struggle and you agree with their approach then yeah I would say join. If there's not, you might still want to join but just like any organization where theres not already an active presence near you it will mean that it will be up to you to build it up and so then it becomes of a question of just do you agree with the IWW and its approach and want to build a chapter where youre at?
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Jan 19, 2021 01:10
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yeah I mean so then it’s the second part of my post, if they’re active around you and you like the organizations politics and focus then join. if they’re not active near you then know that you’ll be the one to have to build a presence in your area for the organization. basically it’s just a question of if you agree with their politics and approach. if you do reach out to them and you can at least talk to a recruiter and get a better feel for if you want to join or not.
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Jan 19, 2021 03:15
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can help the trade unions in myanmar by donating to the All Burma Federation Of Trade Unions strike fund as they continue to join in the protests against the military dictatorship https://www.gofundme.com/f/abftu
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Mar 9, 2021 19:38
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CoolCab posted:aye, fair enough, my uni sent me an out of the blue stimmy on account of plague apocalypse, unexpected windfalls are an opportune time to express solidarity via material support. if you can spare it, it's good for your soul. 
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Mar 12, 2021 23:35
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bessemer amazon union votes are all in, though it will likely be some weeks before the count is finished. seems like the vote could go either way, the campaign itself is much stronger than some of the other high profile union campaigns in the south over the last few years like the volkswaggen plant in tennessee which was heavily top down, but there are still some weaknesses. regardless of the count it will just be the beginning. if it wins the union will have a tough fight ahead in their first contract fight, and if it loses theres 100% an NLRB lawsuit there cause amazon has very brazenly violated labor law, would just be a question of how determined the workers are to keep fighting in the event of a loss which would be demoralizing and possibly destabilizing.
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Mar 31, 2021 03:59
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SSJ_naruto_2003 posted:I was canvassing Bessemer nearly every other weekend with psl, the majority of the community supports a union but that doesn't mean it will happen. Lots of the younger workers at the Amazon warehouse were the ones who told me they were voting no. loving idiot s its cause of some of the problems and weaknesses of the campaign, combined with misinfo from amazon. know comrades who talked to folks there who had already cast a no vote but who after a 10 min convo had changed their mind. we cant be dismissive of people for not coming to the correct conclusions immediately we gotta be patient and always willing to work to win people over.
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Apr 1, 2021 02:18
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Jane mcalavey has an article in nation about it. very good imo and describes a lot of the problems of this campaign which I’ve seen first hand and in other places in these high profile campaigns that fail. https://t.co/S0Z0EU4O0M
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Apr 9, 2021 19:48
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yep. it’s a frustration I share and I’m not even that old. very easy to find a bunch of self described socialists these days, very hard to find the ones who will knock doors, make phone calls, stand at a table, etc.
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Apr 10, 2021 02:08
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SchnorkIes posted:a lot of socialists are staunchly anti-union now right? a lot of the online left sees any union seeking concessions within the wage labor system (as opposed to openly trying to abolish wage labor) as fundamentally anti-labor no they arent. fringe online weirdos are.
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Apr 10, 2021 10:50
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Tom Smykowski posted:I was at a meeting for an alliance of different unions in the area and people would qualify their statements with stuff like "I gotta warn you, I'm a fringe far leftist..." and I'd expect some incoming hoxhaist idea and then they'd finish with "...I volunteered for Bernie before switching over to Biden" yep. get off the internet, especially twitter and even more especially cspam. have known so many people usually college students studying poli sci irl who will tell me all their radical ideas and how theyre so far left, and then complain about how they cant talk to any of their family or coworkers about politics because theyre all too conservative. as if the point of having marxist politics isnt to convince the people around you to take collective action for your mutual benefit. if you cant or are unwilling talk to a republican/trump voter about socialism and try to win them over to some of your ideas then what use are your ideas, and what use are you to the labor movement? a lot of the people you see posting online are those people, or sometimes untreated/poorly treated mentally ill individuals who are obsessed with conspiratorial thinking or fringe political movements. the socialist movement in the us and globally is growing right now but its still mostly just that the ideas are becoming popularized more while the actual organization trails. to become mainstream and really fight for power we have to get organized which means having people who are committed to doing the long term nuts and bolts work of building organization meaning sitting through union meetings, keeping spreadsheets of contacts, canvassing/phonebanking/tabling. once you start doing that stuff you realize how disconnected most online discussion is from the actual political situation.
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Apr 10, 2021 13:53
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outside organization and organizers are good and imo essential to any kind of success for labor, especially support from the community. west virginia teachers demonstrated how important that is. but it has to be the workers who are taking the lead themselves and taking ownership of things themselves. theres a tendency among a lot of labor organizers to fall into a kind of substitutionalism where they do all the organizing and identify key workers as "leaders" which doesnt translate into actually building them up to be genuine leaders by training them to be effective organizers but more having them talk to the press, give public comments, and be the public face. this is for a variety of reasons. some are insidious like the fact that a lot of the us labor union infrastructure is totally bureaucratized due to the business unionism model theyve embraced which means they often dont want the workers being too militant. some are genuine and come from a good place because the paid staffers have the ability and knowledge to do this stuff and want to do it, or they feel theyre inconveniencing the workers, or sometimes they mistake a lot of passive support for willingness to do the work that would be necessary to organize, which turns out is not there when rubber meets the road.
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Apr 10, 2021 19:55
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Tom Smykowski posted:More evidence that venture capitalists are dumb as gently caress lol not necessarily. for decades a lot of major unions in the US have been opposed class struggle politics and basically act and even sell themselves to workers and management as mediators between the 2 sides whos job is to help avoid or prevent strikes or disruptions in work. a lot of peoples support for unions is also idealistic, meaning they like the idea but dont have any practical experience with unions or concrete demands they see being won through organizing with a union. its part of what helps to explain why support for unions in the US has grown so high in the last few years but actual unionization rates are unchanged. so in practice plenty of existing unions already operate more or less this way but just with dues going to inflated salaries for union staffers and leadership. dunno that it will come to anything but makes sense that some capitalists are looking to turn unions into a way to generate profit. its also why existing labor leadership needs to adopt a more militant approach to organizing, like instead of just filing suits with the NLRB when employees are fired for organizing, organizing strikes to get them reinstated.
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Aug 14, 2022 05:01
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