Fuck this job! Taking Power Back at Work

We started our class as we do every week, with our “intro spiel”. We introduced who we are as a collective, and then laid out some of the practices we try to engage in:

• using the stack system when we want to make points during the conversation,
• remembering to make RSS a safe space and a brave space, and
• drawing our attention to the work of unlearning some of the bad habits we learned in the dominant educational system).

After the spiel, the facilitators asked the crowd some “raise your hand if” questions:

• ryhi You’re currently working (part-time, full-time, anything)
• ryhi You would work fewer hours per week for the same pay if that was an option
• ryhi you feel isolated at work
• ryhi You have ever been disrespected or treated poorly by a “superior” at work (it doesn’t have to be terrible abuse. It could just be a mean comment you didn’t feel you could react to)
• ryhi you think these problems would change if only you moved to a new job

Unfortunately, just about every hand went up for every question except for the last: everyone seemed to agree that these were problems that happen everywhere. At this point, the facilitators led us through a bit of a general analysis of capitalism: at a fundamental level, we live in a society divided into two classes (of course, there’s also plenty of hierarchy within each class!). A very small number of people (we’ll call them the “owning class”) have sole ownership of the resources we need to not only keep ourselves alive (like housing, food, and medicine), but also to all the things that make life worth living (leisure time, art, all sorts of other nice freedoms, etc). For the vast majority of the population, which includes everyone in the room during our session, we’re stuck in a kind of hostage situation: Because we don’t already have access to the necessities of life, the only thing we can do to stay alive is to sell our labor to people in this owning class in exchange for a wage. (This is why we call it the “laboring” or “working class”)

We often hear that under capitalism, there is a “free market”, because unlike in the old USSR, for instance, we’re “free” to choose any job we like. The infuriating reality, though, is that unless you or your family has already managed to store away some money from previous labor, quitting your job means risking homelessness, starvation, and, of course, the full brunt of the law from the State, which doesn’t want people who can’t contribute to the economy. As a French novelist once said:

“The law, in its majestic equality, forbids rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal their bread.”

• Some of us were forced to do things at work we didn’t want to do, or that weren’t in our contract.
• Some of us were regularly disrespected by our bosses, but we couldn’t talk back, because we were worried about getting fired.
• Almost everyone agreed they weren’t getting paid enough.
• Some of us felt that our jobs were very precarious, because of the economy, limited job skills, etc.
• One of us felt that even though their job was fairly comfortable and well-paid, every day that they came into work, they knew that all they were doing was making their boss richer: they are fairly sure that their work wasn’t contributing in any real way to society. This made them feel guilty for getting paid well while so many other people were struggling to pay rent.
• Some of us picked up smoking to cope with stress at work…and then weren’t allowed to take smoke breaks.
• Some of us were physically abused at work, or injured by their job, or got sick from their working conditions, but we couldn’t take time off, so we just kept working through the abuse, injury, and sickness.

The facilitators asked us to reflect on whether we’d ever done anything to fix these problems, or challenge our bosses. We heard lots of different experiences:

• Many of us felt like we couldn’t bring up issues by ourselves, because then we’d be fired, or otherwise punished.
• Others felt like their coworkers would report them to management if they started asking too many questions.
• Some of us expressed that we’d never been a part of a union, and didn’t know how to join.
• There were PhD students in the room who felt like drones in the academic system.
• Plenty of people didn’t feel like they “counted” as workers, because they didn’t work with their hands.
• There were lots of stories of burnout at work, because management wouldn’t hire new people after others quit.
• There were people coming from different countries who experienced different specific problems in their workplaces, and that could sometimes make them feel even more isolated.

After talking in groups, we all turned back towards the center, and people were encouraged to share their experiences:

• We heard from a freelance worker, who was afraid to speak up because they had no guaranteed hours, like contract workers do.
• We heard the story of a municipal worker who used to work in the private sector, but had to leave after their whole team quit. Now they feel like their current job is just luring young people in so that they can burn them out.
• We heard how working conditions in the NL aren’t as great as people think they are: the minimum wage is much lower for young people than for full working-age adults, so companies like Albert Heijn and many of the Horeca places in Centrum hire young, foreign workers to fill their ranks.

This brought up a broader point about how owners will take advantage of existing power structures to keep their workers from fighting back: the younger, less white, and less male you are, for example, the less power you have in general, and the more likely you are to keep your mouth shut when the boss starts pushing boundaries. In this way, the class struggle intersects directly with other struggles for liberation.

• One person told the story of their sister, whose boss recently told her that he needed her to report to the government that she only worked half-time, so that he could save money on taxes. She’d still be paid the same rate, but her pension plan would be completely ruined due to this. Unfortunately, she couldn’t do anything about this, because there simply wasn’t another job in the area she could get hired in, and with plans to get married in the next year, she couldn’t afford to lose her income.

At this point, we took a break.

When we came back, one of the facilitators began to tell us about their experiences working as an organizer for the FNV (Federatie Nederlandse Vakbeweging, the Dutch Federation of Trade Unions). Their job was to help recruit new members, get current members to come out on the picket line in case of a strike, and to spread information among the rank-and-file.

Someone in the room raised their hand to ask: how do you get started organizing your workplace? They had a serious problem at theirs, but didn’t have any experience with unions:

• This person worked at a bakery, where nearly all the workers were young internationals (plenty of uni students). They were all hired on zero-hour contracts, and the boss would routinely change the rate he was paying his workers, seemingly based on who he liked that week. He would change their schedules at leisure (giving lie to the argument that “zero-hour contracts are so flexible! They’re what the workers want!”). Workers at this bakery need to keep track of their own hours to make sure they aren’t having their hours stolen. This person was having a hard time getting their coworkers to do anything, because everyone was scared they’d be fired or just have their hours cut if they spoke up.

The facilitator talked about how often these kinds of problems come up. Most people don’t have any experience working in unions (because the labor movement has been crippled for a generation at least!), and so they default to individual approaches, trying not to be confrontational. Sometimes, they’ll just send an email, hoping they can be friendly with their boss, and he’ll be friendly back. The person from the bakery pointed out that plenty of their coworkers have said that if things get too bad, they’ll just quit and maybe even leave the country (obviously not an option for most people).

At this point, someone from HorecaUnited spoke up about how FNV Horeca, the section of the FNV that should be the one to call, was more or less a toothless union at this point, something they call a gele bond (literally a “yellow union”, but better understood to be a “sellout union”). What this means is that while they call themselves a union, and claim to be working on behalf of the workers in their section, in reality, they mostly work to limit workers’ actions, so as not to annoy the employer. In fact, their budget comes from the employers themselves! How could a union like this actually challenge owners if it needs them to pay their bills?

The facilitator then returned the conversation to the personal scale: how do you convince your fellow workers to join you in doing something? In their experience, the only real changes come when people start talking with their coworkers face-to-face. Over the years of working in organizing, they always found that workers who didn’t have friends in the workplace were in the worst situations, because if something went wrong, there’d be no one to stand up for them.

The facilitator recommended going through your employment contract with your coworkers to find out which industry you’re officially a part of, and therefore, which collective bargaining agreement your work falls under. This defines what rights you have as a worker in your industry.

Both the facilitator and the people from HorecaUnited emphasized the importance of getting to know your coworkers, learning about each other’s problems, and developing a real sense of solidarity together. The big strikes and sabotage actions are flashy and sexy, but in reality, they’re just one tactic, and if we want to be successful in organizing to make our lives better, we need to think more flexibly. (Someone brought up the work of Italian autonomists and post-workerist strategy, something we hope to have a class on soon!)

This diversity of tactics is important to remember, because the big unions don’t usually get involved in struggles unless a workplace has a large number of employees – in the Horeca industry, most businesses are too small for the unions to bother taking action against. That means we have to rely on each other, and meet each other where we’re at, instead of getting carried away with grand visions of general insurrection in the workplace.

As one of the members of HorecaUnited pointed out, no one likes it when someone shows up and starts talking about “revolution” all the time. At best, you sound out of touch, at worst, people might wonder if the boss hired you to create problems. If you want to get anywhere near the radical actions, you need to start by actually getting to know your coworkers, building trust, covering their shifts from time to time, etc. etc. HorecaUnited isn’t a union, it’s a solidarity network. Along with Vloerwerk (which focuses on industries other than horeca), it’s a way for people to connect with others and help us all fix our own problems, together.

Another participant pointed out that “the most effective strike is the strike that doesn’t need to happen”. Strikes are costly, not just for the employer, but for the workers running them. If we can get away with it, we should try to get our demands met by showing that as workers, we’re already organized and united, and if we needed to, we could strike – so why not just save us all the trouble, boss, and give us what we’re asking for?

The idea of organizing workplaces can seem daunting, especially in our increasingly isolating world. But it’s far from impossible: uber drivers in the UK worked together to get ride-sharing apps classified as employers, meaning they have to be given collective-bargaining rights. Delivery drivers for apps like Deliveroo will queue together on their bikes at places like Dam Square, and they’ll talk about how to work together against the app that has them running around the city all night long. Resistance is possible, but you can’t be stupid…

If you show up talking about revolution every day, our comrade from HorecaUnited reminds us, people are going to smell a rat: why aren’t you as worried about your job as I am? How long have you been working with us? What are you really planning? If you honestly want to organize your workplace because you want to make your working life better, you’ve got to respect that your coworkers are their own people, with their own priorities and lives and families who depend on them, and not just soldiers to march off to the revolution you’re imagining in your head.

One of the simplest ways to connect, they pointed out, was by learning together! Jobs are full of confusing shit, and not everyone knows everything they should. In their own experience, they learned from talking to coworkers one day that no one had been doing their tax returns. Everyone just assumed they wouldn’t be getting any money back from the government, and had never bothered to try. So, this person organized a Saturday night “cocktails and tax returns”, where everyone got to know each other better, and as a nice bonus, learned how to get an extra few hundred euro back in the spring!

This example brought up an idea that fits in perfectly with our thoughts here at Radical Sunday School: we don’t need the big unions to make our lives better at work, we don’t need their “experts”, and we certainly don’t need their “leadership”. We need each other. By getting together, learning from each other, finding out what we need and trying out ways to get there, we can build the solidarity, the know-how, the experience, and the confidence to pull ourselves out of the shit situations none of us signed up for. Despite everything the bosses wish we would believe, we’re not alone, and we’re not stupid. It takes hard work and consistency, but fighting for ourselves at work is something each of us can start doing today.

On that note, the facilitator announced that for the final part of the class, we’d be working together in our groups to come up with specific plans for how to build solidarity at work.

So that’s what we did.