Organisation tactics & Casual Work

[Mitch]

www.enrager.net/forums/viewtopic.php?t=3266

Here's an interesting debate on organising tactics and casual work with news of a workshop - London unfortunately again.

I'd be interested to know how many temp workers actually attend this workshop. I think it's a brilliant idea, but looks a little 'thrown up'. For workshops like these to actually raise awareness and assist the casual workers, in this case temp workers, it's aimed at there would need to be a lot of hard work behind it, for example:

Really knowing what's going on in your local community.
Already demonstrating strong resistance to casualisation locally.

In other words building trust, and gathering together small groups of casual workers locally. This takes time and a lot of hard work. My experience of trying to reach homeworkers locally in Burnley and Pendle proved very difficult. Homework, and casual work, isolates people, people lose confidence, and there is great fear of losing work - there has to be a lot of leg work to build up trust and much further down the line workshops will come. I presume all this legwork has been done before the workshop??

As Octoberlost knows from his recent experience, the theories and talking about the practice are good stuff, but the actual organising of casual workers in the workplace is extremely difficult.

I'm still at stage one- getting to know what's going on in my local community, raising awareness, and building trust within activist networks locally and trying to reach homeworkers/casual workers locally.

Here's hoping the workshop isn't another talking shop? I do think there is something to learn from the recent Manchester Electricians fight. The momentum built up from a real challenge to bosses - trust must have been built up during this. Question is will this build into a wider anti-casualisation campaign.

On anti-casualisation campaigns nationally there seems to be no linking in - lots of pockets of activity - but no coherent national build up.

[Steve]

I agree Mitch. How many people attending will be those directly affected by casualisation etc is debatable. I think it is something we could aim for in the North West in the future but unless the awarness comes fist it will be just a talking shop.

Unfortunate title as well. Precarity? I didn't know what that meant and others don't either. Anyway they are going to send the minutes etc via Preston SF so I'll pass them on when we get them.

As for linking up; at the moment there are only pockets and the NW one is only just developing so hopefully in the future we can link up.

[Mitch]

If nothing else this could be an awareness raiser in itself, and also hopefully serve to identify temp worker leaders - temp workers themselves must lead any organisation effort (they would have done well to do this before the workshop?) with the support behind them of a strong anti-casualisation union, community groups, and people in the community who will be there long-term to come in with hard-hitting highly visible direct action.

It must be realised also that casual workers are an incredibly mixed bag - to generalise you have large numbers of students and young people often working for temping agencies in bars etc. and sometimes filling in with temp work between other projects, and you have now in areas like Burnley large numbers of long-term casual workers across all age ranges, many who have been made redundant. Within temping you have casual workers in gender segregated areas, ie. large numbers of women doing secretarial work - then industrial areas, in Burnley it's in engineering and large multi-nationals like Hurel Hispano are in my mind exploiting the desperation of many of our local workers who are increasingly finding it hard to find work and have to take whatever is available.

So what you have are a mixed bag of interests - where some groups, ie. students may find it easier to act (ie. less fear of losing what little living wage they can get) and then you have many casual workers and homeworkers, as I was beginning to find out, who are extremely fearful of losing the work they have - this includes asylum seekers. What we discovered recently in Burnley is that casual workers are coming in from as far away as Scotland to work at Hurel Hispano.

I think that there is a great need for more thorough research into temping agency activities and tactics, so that we can think through more clearly how to organise across all types of casual work.

Look forward to the minutes of this meeting/workshop.

What attracted me to working with the National Group on Homeworking was their clear strategy on bottom up-organising. This means that homeworkers are on all committees, involved in decision making all the way along the line, and they have identified homeworker leaders like Julie in Wales who made Christmas Crackers at home, and challenged her employer for paying her below the minimum wage. She is now an NGH organiser. Most important this.

There are lessons here I think for casual workers getting organised. Building I think must first come in the local - then with a connecting/umbrella national anti-casualisation union. I'd have been more inclined to include experiences and sharing of information by recent anti-casualisation campaigns - such as the Manchester Electricians, or getting someone like Julie from the National Group on Homeworking to come and speak at this workshop.

Tapping into any research currently being done on temping would be most useful. Temping agencies are not that new - it's been going and growing since the early 1980s. I began temping doing secretarial in the late 1980s, and have temped extensively in Burnley. Casual work is big business in poor, rundown areas like Burnley - it's a tactical, grubby business by temping agencies and they are soul destroying in Burnley!

A strong web forum for casual workers to start sharing stories would be useful - I can see this is already happening on Enrager which is positive.

More comments after minutes received no doubt. Support networks of casual workers should be thinking through what they can offer casual workers in terms of support. Hope they've considered confidentiality as well - this can be crucial initially with casual workers as trust is built up. I always keep it to the fore of my thoughts - what casual workers have to lose when they lose work they are desparate for!

Steve - why don't you suggest to the Wombles - contacting the National Group on Homworking? They may prickle at the fact it's an NGO, but NGOs can go on journeys too, and this one is getting more hard-hitting with direct action tactics. There is much to learn from them regarding building confidence/trust, plus bottom up organising. They are currently exploring working with No Sweat - and this is a good awareness raising exercise at the very least, but No Sweat as far as I can see has no clear direct action strategy - not in the local anyway and this is another lip-serving marketing oriented campaign, ingrained in capitalism and they're doomed to failure for real change for casual workers - for a start it's not a campaign led by casual workers!!
www.homeworking.gn.apc.org/

[Mitch]

www.wombles.org.uk/news/article_2004_12_7_1708.php

Fancy a game of Precariopoly? Umm, I found this interview very interesting in terms of what's going on around the world - ie. spread of casual work or precarious work as Foti calls it. I'm also interested in his ideas on organising together different kinds of 'precarious' workers (the growing term for casual workers in Europe), and his example of 100,000 temp workers blocking the streets of Milan with a view to shutting down top retailers - hitting business where it hurts - is interesting as well. I'd like to see that eventually through Burnley, with demos outside the increasing number of pawn shops emerging alongside Woolworths in the town centre, or temping agencies and outside unscrupulous employers in the area. I also appreciate his no-nonsense criticism of Europe lurching towards American neoliberalism - I think this is an important point as there are academics within employment studies that hold up certain European countries like Sweden and Germany (different kinds of capitalisms) as models for the UK, when in truth the gap between rich and poor is growing across Europe as private business gains increasingly more power over protective States in these countries.

However, I'm not sure I agree with all his suggestions of tactics, and I struggle with the increasing introduction of jargon - chainmakers, precarious - which I think will be alienating to many groups. But then he seems to be speaking about targetting youth for organising - and he seems to talk mostly about 'precarious knowledge workers' getting organised - that is high earners who are casual workers in service industries. I think the issues should be more about raising awareness within these groups, and how they might support, not act for, industrial homeworkers say or industrial/secretarial temps. This intellectualising by Foti seems rather dangerous to me because it rather skits over the existence of class. I'm well out of touch with the academic arena, specifically employment studies, but I have seen this before - the attempt to do away with the concept of class difference, and I see class difference as very much alive today, albeit the changes in the type and nature of work that people do now.

Does anyone else think that tactics like this appear top down, would lead to a youth led/knowledge worker 'precarity' campaign, and potentially alienate the majority of the working class? I can't see how his suggested organising tactics link into the local - into Burnley.

I appreciate the expression of what I call 'big picture' theory which envisages where mass global organising should go, what I'm saying is that 50 homeworkers outside Tescos, Burnley might be more effective than two or three Wombles smashing Tescos Burnley window.

I'm puzzled, but interested in how this article has at least got me thinking more about organising tactics. Also, he seems to neglect the role of local communities in organising around casual work - casual work and low pay has a knock on effect on communities - although he does point to the rise in prescription of anti-depressants etc. His link between the effects of such 'precarity' and mental health are welcome - we can certainly see this in Burnley and Nelson.

[Mitch]

I'd welcome more information/minutes of that gathering on temping on the 11th December Steve when they arrive. Be good to post them up here on the forum.

Best Mitch

[octoberlost]

A nice pic for you...!"

[Mitch]

Very good - tell me something I don't know Octoberlost! We should be working quickly to create alternatives.

Still waiting for those minutes from tempworker workshop???

[Steve]

They have sent out some draft minutes that are a bit sparse and they asked if they could not be posted out as yet until updated. It does say they didn't take very detailed minutes anyway.

If anyone wants to see the draft minutes email [e-mail] and I'll forward them to you.

Just a snippet about defining 'pecarity'

distinctions were made between the terms: "precarity" and "casualisation" - casualised and flexible work being aspects of precarity, and precarity being a decription of our lives under capitalism in post-industrial societies, and encompassing work conditions, new forms of post-industrial labour e.g. service industry, IT and new media, "job-seeking", the falling away of the welfare state (and in Europe the idea of nation states), insecurity of housing, collapse of ideas of community & working-class identity, social isolation, increasing state surveillance & control.