Ofcourse it wasnt always that way.We had quite a strong union before maxwell and thatcher did there thing.Anyway from before i joined the company - union membership in general at the plant had been steadily plumeting in general and particularly in my department(inserting department).The main department(the press)witch is compossed of full time employees with inhouse contracts have always been and are increasingly the only voice heard and the focus of nearly all union activity.
My department happens to be the most profitable as we are concerned with inserting commercial advertisements into the product and marrying the pre-printed innerpart of the newspaper with the hot off the press main jacket wich means we can do lots of stuff like double number of color pages,increase speed of production,use fewer presses ect.Apart from the main proccess of inserting of wich i am a part the main bulk of labour has always come from casual employees and inceasingly agencies.
When i first was assigned to the job 'inserting operator',a task that paid significantly more than most in the department,exluding technicans and managers,i was still a casual on only a slightly increased hourly rate with no benifits.This continued for over 3 years with a group of over twenty of us working side by side with full time employees doing the same job and having to have our contracts renewed every 6 months.We constantly complained and were fobed off every 6 months with different exuses ranging from false promises and alegations of not being up to scratch to making us jump through hoops like complex assesments on everything from personality and relationships with co workers and managment to sickness timekeeping and performance.
None of our duty managers(the first level of managment)agreed with this and had to openly admit that we were all fully capable of doing the job and were satisfied with our performance as we worked day in day out with these ppl and they continued to employ us for years with no complaints.Infact i was part group of about a dozen who did a tailored nvq(national vocational qualification) designed specifically for our workplace wich meant technically we were more qualified than the full timers.It was always heads of departments and senior managment witch was unreachable by us who were identified by our duty managers as messing us around.
So after about 5 yrs of being there and over 3yrs of being in this position i decided with a group of about 20 ppl to join the union.We immediatly,upon joining,collectivly began calling for a uinion meeting to voice our complaints and get somthing done.This was met by a complete stonewalling with comments like its all in the pipework and youll have to wait for general meetings to raise your points.After over 6 months of kicking off about this they finally agreed to send an area representative to the next,already scheduled,meeting and that they would address our concerns.
After an hour of this meeting during wich we were forced to listen to the trivial concerns of day to day union activity the meeting was called to an end.Several of us protested that at least half of those attending the meeting had thought that this meeting was for us and we had been completly excluded.After a few exchanges they basically let us say our peace and fobed us of with the excuse that there hands were tied in negotiations of this nature as the members of our plant showed no solidarity with one another and it was well known by managment that we couldnt even enforce simple measures such as overtime bans without undermining each other.
This was my first experience with dealing with unions.We eventually got our jobs,with concessions,becouse new european laws came into affect that outlawed the situation we were in but my disgust with the union has only deepened since that time.I want to quickly outline why union membership in my department is at an all time low and why most of us dont consider it worth the price of membership.
Most decsions about rota's,pay,holidays,sick schemes ect are decided by the press.They are the most skilled in the most indespensible are of production.The most skilled operators and technicans often double up as managment at times and the whole decion makeing proccess is very informal.Union meetings are events were announcments are made based on decisions already made via a consensus witch is based on what the press will go along with.Rumers occure for example about a new rota witch the press dont want resulting in it never getting off the ground whilst informal proposals wich meet there approval are just accepted without meetings.
For years our department has had the same department rep who we never see.We universally despise this guy for his none presence at work,he always manages to get out of work with union business,leaving us to do his work and at he same time hes well known for making the most of perks such as trips to resteraunts and events.In itself you might think so what hes doing his job.But we hardly ever see him and never get anything other than exuses and fob offs when we do.A couple of years ago a special job was created for him in a little computer department none of us can understand the purpose of.He has been recently filling in for managers from time to time and is rumered to be getting a managers job soon even though whilst i am writting this he is still our rep.
For years there have been many stories of the corruption of this guy and his counterpart rep in the press witch culminated a few years ago in our department deciding to get more involved and get rid of this guy.We all supported a guy from our department who went through thr process of calling for an election for a rep for our department.Every one of us ofcourse discussed this and we all knew that our guy had complete support.In all my years in the union this is the only oppertunity ive had to vote for somthing as apperntly our rep has to be challenged in order to be replaced.Previous votes,before my time,had never been by secret ballot and was actually collected on open pieces of paper by the corrupt rep.
Just as we were about to exercise democracy they moved the goal post's.They knew we had it in the bag so they informed us that the structure of representation was to change and that we no longer needed a rep and that our rep was to become the deputy of hiscounterpart in the press in a kind of overall representation.The working conditions in our department have been steadily declining for years.We do more and more for the same pay and the ratio of fulltime employees to agencies is constantly increasing in favour of agencies.
This is the part that makes me angriest.There is no solidarity between workers weather it be between departments or between fulltime and agency staff.Agency employees are paid the least but are the hardest workers by far.they get no benefits,have no set rota and are treated as general dogs bodies through out the shop floor.The company has taken the seemingly enlightened decision to allow the agancy,trinity,to manage themselfs.As a result there is one manager on day shifts and on nights,were most of the work is,they assign eager workers as team leaders for a very small increase in wages.
Naturaly these team leaders are enthusiastic about the increased responsibilty i.e oversite of rotas,telling ppl when and when not to have breaks and how work should be organised very seriously and are more authoritarian and zealous than any managers i know.The number of shifts an agaency employee can expect to recieve in a week is used as a tool by them crack down on workers.Weather your late,refuse to do a shift on short notice,are sick or generaly dont get along quite as well with the team leader you can expect to be punished with reduced shifts or none at all.
No agency employee i know of is in the union for reasons ranging from fear of not getting shifts to thinking theres nothing the union can do for them as they dont technically work for the company.The unions arguments about our lack of solidarity being the cause of our woes is turned on its head when you consider the complete incompetence of its leaders in rallying the troops and propagandisng its presense and function.
Ok why am i telling you all this?.Well ive been into socialism for some time now but only had a rudamentary understanding of basic marxism.I used to be in a study group for the aaprp(all african peoples revolutionary party)and started out learning about nkrumahism and pan africanism(the total liberation and unification of africa under scientific socialism).As a young black british youth growing up in a predominantly white community i was very much turned on by,at that early stage,black power.Boby seal,huey p newton angela davies ect where my hereos.
I always thought the key to liberation of the working class was education and that untill we were ready to take over the means of production we would need the skills of the inteligencia and the power of the state to defend the social revolution.I considered unionism to be reformism and in my anger at capitalism prefared the idea of rising up and violently seizing power and basically throwing the capitalist's on bonfires(only slighty joking here : ) )
In the last few years i discovered chomsky and downloaded everything i could find of his of the internet including two audio files wich basicaly converted me to anarchism - namely 'goverment of the future' and 'anarchism - co-operation without restraint'.These were a massive influence on me and ive since been reading everything i can get my hands on concerning anarcho-syndicalism from godwin on down.
I feel a responsibility to get more involved with my workmates in trying to organise and teach what ive learnt.My recent attempts to get ppl to rejoin the union(its a start)have been less than successful.People are worn out with the dredgery of everyday life and just want to do there work go home and forget witch i understand.Ive decided therefor that my approach should be to gather info on ppls reasons for leaving,refusing to rejoin or being disatisfied with the union.I want to contact the union under the premise that i want to increase membership in my department and therefor our unions effectiveness in order to get as much info from them as i can i.e minuets of meetings,info on union finances ect.
My hope is to expose the corruption of the union wich could give us leverage in calling for reforms witch may bring ppl back and allow us to force changes making it more democratic and less corrupt.I need to do research before i pick up the phone as i need to know what im asking for,what my rights as a member are,what the best ways of going about this are ect.I left school with no qualifications and have very little experiance with this sort of thing.Ive read most articles on this site and been though a good part of the marxist internet archive(another good resourse)but have not managed to find any detailed relevent information on how to deal with this sort of thing.Union official websites are incredibaly baron and uninformative and i can find nothing really signifant for the new union weve just merged with.None of my friends are into this sort of thing and i think i bore them somtimes with the way i can go on about this sort of thing.Im almost certain id have the support of most ppl even beyond my department if i could come up with a decent plan to shake things up though.
I feel kind of alone in this and would greatly appreciate any pointers,links to resourses or even gestures of solidarity(a few helpful words may spur me on).I know this has been an incredibly long posting but i dont usualy get involved in message boards and once i started typing i just got carried away.I think writting this was really just an exersise in getting some of this of my chest and i already feel better for it.
Thanks for any suggestions and to anybody who managed to get through this without falling asleep.
