A Troublemaker's Handbook How ToFight Back Where You Work - and Win! by Dan La Botz A Labor Notes Book Detroit1991 ~ 1 3 3 To Jakob La Botz In memory of GenoraJohnson Dollinger A Labor Notes Book Copyright 1991by Dan La Botz First Printing: January 1991 Second Printing: November 1997 About the publisher: Labor Notesis amonthly newsletter of labor news and analysis intended to help activists "put the movement back in the labor movement." It is published by the Labor Education and Research Project, which holds a biennial conference for all labor activists, acts as a resource center, and puts on schools and workshops on a variety oftopics. See the inside back cover for more information on Labor Notespublications. Reprints: Permission is granted to unions, rank and file union groups, and labor studies programs to reprint sections of this book for free distribution. Please send a copy ofsuch reprinted material to Labor Notes, 7435 Michigan Ave., Detroit, MI 48210. Requests for permission to reprint for other purposes should be directed to Labor Notes. Design: Book and cover designed by David McCullough. Cover photos: Top: New York hospital workers, members of Local 1199, strike for a decent contract in the summer of 1989. Andrew Lichtenstein/Impact Visuals. Lower left: Striking Eastern Air Lines flight attendant and Pittston miner's wife welcome Detroit auto workers to the miners' Camp Solidarity. Jim West/Impact Visuals. Center: Pittston miners read about their plant take-over in the newspaper. Cindy Reiman/Impact Visuals. Lower right: NYNEX strikers, 1199 hospital workers and Eastern Air Lines strikers marched together in an August 1989 demonstration. Les Stone/Impact Visuals. Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 90-92221 ISBN #0-914093-04-5 Table of Contents Acknowledgments. .v Listof Abbreviations.....vi A Road Map to ThisBook. vii Foreword.by Genora JohnsonDollingerbe 1. TheFight Starts Here1 2.Basics of Organizing5 3.Shop Floor Tactics. . 11 4.Organizing Around Health and Safety .32 5.Dealing withLabor-Management Coopera'tion Programs.....40 6.Reaching Out to Other Unions..52 7.Reaching Out to the Community.......63 8.Contract Campaigns.73 9.Strikes............. ..80 1O.Wildcat Strikes .96 11 . Sitdown Strikes 103 12.Inside Strategies 117 ivA Troublemaker's Handbook 13. Corporate Campaigns........ 14.Organizing Among Immigrant Workers 15. Organizing Around Women's Issues 16. Organizing Against Racism.... 17.Organizing in the Non-Union Workplace 18. Organizing the Unorganized 19. Taking Power in Your Local 20.Locals to LearnFrom.... 21. Strategic Planning for Unions .. 127 .. 140 151 ...164 178 189 ......196 .210 22. .226 Bayond the Workplace.... Appendix A:Corporate Campaign Questionnaire. Appendix B:Researching Your Employer..... .... 233 .......239 .243 Appendix C:UnionNewspapers and Rank and FileNewsletters...246 Appendix D:Strategic Planning Guides..250 Appendix E:Resources..252 Bibliography.....257 Index........ 259 Acknowledgments This book isthe product of the collective experience of labor Notes: its staffand a broad network of activists who read and support it. The original idea of the book was developed in conversations among staff members and supporters of labor Notes, including Mike Parker, Steve Early, Rand Wilson, Enid Eckstein, Jane Slaughter, and Kim Moody. The draft proposal for the book, arough outline of topics and issues, was prepared byJane Slaughter. It was the labor Notes staff who went through their address books and told me who to call and what to ask them about. ATroublemaker's Handbook involved conversations and interviews with something like 200 rank and file workers, union officers, staffers, and members of other organizations (civil rights organizations, working women's groups, health and safety coalitions, etc.) in the United States and Canada. It would have been impossible to write this book without the generous help of the many organizations and individuals with whom we spoke. My greatest thanks to all who took the time to speak with me and share their experiences and their expertise. I should specially thank all the activists who were interviewed but whose stories didn't make it into the final draft of the book. In general, when we had several stories that made similar points, we chose the shortest one. Ofcourse, those who helped by sharing their ideas will not necessarily agree with all of the conclusions we have drawn. Some of the ideas discussed here may be controversial, and we especially appreciate the support of those who do not shy away from controversy. Ultimately, only labor Notes is responsible for the ideas presented here. Special thanks go to Mike Konopacki and Gary Huck of Huck-Konopacki labor Cartoons for contributing their fine cartoons. Many of the photographs in the book come from participants in the events themselves, and others were taken by Jim West, who in his spare time is Jim Woodward, editor of Labor Notes. Jim painstakingly laid out the entire book. Dave McCullough designed it, as he did our previous three books. Marta Hoetger and Scott Kinberger were speedy proofreaders. While I am the primary author of this book, several others have also had ahand in it. We are honored to have a Foreword by GenoraJohnson Dollinger. Ken Blum wrote Appendix B on Researching Your Employer. Ellis Boal, aDetroit labor attorney who has worked with both Teamsters for a Democratic Union and the New Directions Movement in the UAW, contributed all the legal research and comments you will find in special boxes and in the endnotes throughout the book. Camille Colatosti of the labor Notes staff helped with the story ofJustice for Janitors in Chapter 18. Phill Kwik wrote about the Pittston miners in Chapters 11and 22. Kim Moody commented on the draft, contributed substantially to Chapter 13 on Corporate Campaigns, and wrote the first draft of Chapters 1 and 22. Jane Slaughter helped to shape this book from beginning to end. She revised the entire manuscript, trying to turn my frequently wordy stories into howwe-did-it examples that others could learn from. She chose the Stewards Corners, found the graphics, wrote the appendix on Resources, and throughout the book, when she saw omissions or weaknesses, made calls, conducted interviews and wrote pieces herself to fill the gaps. I am grateful to the DickGoldensohn Fund, Inc. for an investigative journalism grant to help support the research and writing of this book. Finally, thanks to my wife, Sherry Baron, who has given me her support in so many ways. Listof Abbreviations ACLU ACTWU AFSCME AFT ATU CAW CBTU CWA EEOC HERE lAM IBEW IBT ILGWU IUE NAACP NEA NLRB NOW NPMHU OCAW OSHA PATCO RWDSU SEIU TWU TWU UAW UE UFCW UMWA UPIU USW VDT American Civil Liberties Union Amalgamated Clothing and Textile Workers Union American Federation ofState, County and Municipal Employees American Federation ofTeachers Amalgamated Transit Union Canadian Auto Workers Coalition of Black Trade Unionists Communications Workers ofAmerica Equal Employment Opportunity Commission Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees International Union International Association of Machinists International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers International Brotherhood ofTeamsters International Ladies Garment Workers Union International Union of Electrical Workers National Association for the Advancement of Colored People National Education Association National Labor Relations Board National Organization for Women National Postal Mail Handlers Union Oil, Chemical and Atomic Workers Occupational Safety and Health Administration Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union Service Employees International Union Telecommunications Workers Union (Canada) Transport Workers Union ofAmerica United Auto Workers United Electrical Workers United Food and Commercial Workers United Mine Workers ofAmerica United PapelWorkers International Union United Steelworkers Video display terminal For acomplete list of the unions which appear in this handbook, see the index. A RoadMap to ThisBook This book is an organizing manual. It ismeant for workers who want respect and justice from their employers and control over their lives at work. Ninetynine times out of a hundred, this means confrontation with a boss who thinks only bosses need control. So think ofthis book as a handbook for troublemakers. We decided to present these tactics by letting the real experts tell their own stories. Rather than a list of rules for organizing, you will find dozens ofworkers who describe in their own words what worked for them. Many times these stories are inspiring as well as instructive. We think that you will be able to take what you need from each person's or union's experience. Most of the stories are from workers who are already in unions. But many of the tactics can be used by those who don't have a union, and there are two chapters specifically on non-union situations and on organizing anew union. This book isnot acomplete survey of the labor movement in the 1980s, nor a collection of all the important struggles that could have been included. Rather we have chosen examples that clearly illustrated certain tactics and principles of organizing. Neither isthe book a legal rights handbook, although with the help of attorney Ellis Boal we have included some information on your legal rights throughout. You may want to consult your own attorney before trying any of the moves which we have indicated may not be legal. Use Your Head Obviously,most tactics will work better in some situations dIan others, depending on the circumstances of dIe industry or region or union. It would not be wise simply to copy the strategies described here. We might put a warning label on this book: Do not use the enclosed tactics witlwut first consulting with your co-workers. The 22 chapters deal with a range of topics from shop floor struggles to sitdown strikes. The workplaces range from factories to offices, fromVancouver to Texas, in the private sector and in the public sector. Because the topics overlap so much, you will find many cross-references to stories in other chapters; the index can also help you find what you want. The book can be read straight through from cover to cover, but individual chapters will also make sense on their own. Note that we have included a list of abbreviations on the page opposite. This was to avoid tediously spelling out the fullnames of unions each time. steward's Corners Subscribers to Labor Noteswill recognize the "Steward's Corners" found at the end ofsome chapters. Since 1984 Labor Noteshas run a column about shop floor tactics and local union initiatives which has become one of our most popular features.Steward's Corners should be read as integral parts of their chapters (some have been shortened). The continuing Steward's Corners in Labor Noteswill act as an ongoing update toA Troublemaker's Handbook,so readers would be well advised to take out a subscription. At the end of each chapter are "Action Questions." These are meant to help you take the ideas in the chapter and apply them to your own situation. The Action Questions are best answered in a group rather than individually, and that group should be dIe people who will have responsibility for carrying out the answers. There are no correct answers to the questions, but they should stimulate discussion. You may want to turn to this book from time to time when you are faced with aparticular problem, such as an upcoming strike. However, rather than waiting until the problem arises, we recommend that you begin using this book now for group discussion in your workplace. Chapter 21on Strategic Planning is meant to help get your union into atake-charge gear rather than waiting formanagement's next move. '" Foreword byGenoraJohnsonDollinger In this book Dan La Botz arms us with a wide range of options for grappling with the problems unions face in this era. We need all of them. Today, the 13 million-member larger unions sit on treasuries overflowing with dues dollars. They have buttressed themselves with billion-dollar strike and pension funds, and supplementary fundsto protect against layoffs and job dislocations. If finances were the measure, the big established unions would pass muster with flying colors. But big bank accounts are not Genora Johnson Dollinger.enough. Unions have changed since the feisty days of the 1930s. Many seem arthritic, with recurring symptoms ofAlzheimer's. Unable to remember their past, bureaucratic union leaders cannot develop the strategies we need to overcome labor's retreat. Lacking imagination and boldness, they participate in joint programs with the GenoraJohnson Dollinger was the organizer of the Women's Emergency Brigade in Flint, Michigan in 1937. While General Motors workers sat in to demand aunion, the women defended the plants from outside, marching and battling the police. Their story is told in the video With Babies and Banners(see Appendix E). employers and forget what is fundamental to unionism-that management and labor are on opposing sides. The odds against labor seem formidable today just as they seemed to us over fifty years ago. But the instincts and talents of workers on the job should never be underestimated. It was a simple strategy devised by aChevrolet plant worker in 1937 that forced General Motors, the world's largest corporation, to accept-unwillingly-the first United Auto Workers contract. In 1937, we did not worry about court injunctions that threatened union funds. We didn't have a bountiful treasury that could be wiped out by court order. That some activiststoday have resurrected the sitdown strike isa good sign. It indicates that at least some union members are seeking out amore aggressive approach. WomenHave a Different Role Today's workforce differs a great deal from the one on which the CIO was founded. When we organized the Women's Auxiliary and the para-military Women's Emergency Brigade in support of the great General Motors Sitdown Strike in 1937, some ofus did work in GM or supplier plants. But most of us were the wives, daughters and sisters ofworkers in the plants. Women were amuch smaller part of the workforce, but by their vital contribution to the winning of that strike they set ashining example for their sisters who followed them into the war plants of World War II. By contrast, today women-now almost 50% of the labor force-compose the fastest growing sector both of workers and of union membership. But their problems as workers have not been ally incorporated into unions' assumptions. This book shows us how women are organizing in new sectors and putting new bargaining issues on the labor agenda. xATroublemaker's Handbook Dead End In 1881, over ahundred years ago, the American Federation of Labor inscribed in its founding program the need for the eight-hour day. A half century later, it was clear that the AFL had reached a dead end. The CIa was the first major advance over the foundations laid by the AFL. It brought about a social revolution in labor-management relations. Our victory in 1937 led to the organization of the basic industries in this country. Sweeping across the country, millions of workers were soon signing union cards. The insurgent new movement wasnot only a great economic force;it inevitably spilled over into labor political action. In the industrial states of Pennsylvania, Ohio and Michigan, Labor's Non-Partisan Leagues sprouted up. Labor felt its new-found strength and wanted to elect its own candidates to office. The alliance oflabor with the Democratic Party put a stop to this independent political action. As a consequence, workers today lack a party that represents their interests. Thousands of factories andjobs have been transported to foreign shores, where labor is cheaper and often unorganized. We need political answers to stop run-away industries and to win national health care and child care and adequate pensions for all. Most of the working people in this country agree. The minority who bother to vote identify with neither the Democratic nor the Republican party, but instead usually register as independents. Once again, union leaders lag behind. stagnant No More Over fifty years have passed since the glory days of the CIa. Fifty years is along time in the life of an organization. The stories in this Handbook,told by some of the best rank and fileunion activists today, increase my confidence that the current stagnation cannot last much longer. In these pages, Dan La Boa has uncovered the great diversity of methods being used by the generation which is trying to shake up the old institutions. They will become our new, forward-looking union leadership. Today more than ever we need the bigger strategies that Dan points to in his final chapter. But we also need to relearn the basics-to re-create the unions from the bottom up, on the shop floors and in the offices. And we need to rebuild the union as a communityinstitution. The people whose stories we read in this book are beginning this process. It's up to all of us to help them succeed. A TROUBLEMAKER'SHANDBOOK Labor Notes7435 Michigan Ave., Detroit, Michigan 43210313/842.6262 TheFight StartsHere1 . When you read about unions in the newspapers, what do you read? About the decline of the union movement, about national level bargaining, about the personalities at the heads of unions. What are the topics at union conventions? Speeches by politicians, national legislative goals. The workplace itself-the shop floor-the area where we spend eight hours per day-is the one area of union practice which receives scant attention-whether from the media, academics, or often even national union leaders themselves. This chapter explains why we think the workplace isthe key to rebuilding the labor movement. ProfoundChanges inthe Workplace Since the mid-1970s there has been atremendous change in the situation of the U.S. labor move1ment.The 1974-5 recession brought an end to the 30year period of relative economic stability in the U.S. economy. There was a wave ofbankruptcies, mergers, buyouts, and plant closings that cost millions of workers their jobs, many of them union jobs. Concessions to Chrysler in 1979, 1980 and 1981were followed by a wave of employer demands for givebacks.Concessionary bargaining spread throughout the economy in both private industry and the public sector. Pattern agreements broke down in the auto, coal, steel, rubber, electrical, copper, airline,trucking, longshore, wood products, paper, and meatpacking industries. Ronald Reagan's firing of 11,500 air traffic controllers and the destruction of PATCO in 1981 signaled that the government was solidly in support of the employers' offensive against unions. Under Reagan the NLRB and OSHA were weakened to the point that they became all but useless to workers. Employers introduced various "joint" programs such asQuality of Work Life and team concept to undermine unionism. These spread rapidly as they were embraced by many union leaders. A series of militant strikes, carried out in the fashion which had become traditional in the 1940s70s, such as the Phelps-Dodge, Greyhound, and TWA strikes, proved to be ineffective in the 1980s. All of these developments combined to reduce the percentage of organized workers to apre-CIa level of 16 percent. At the same time women entered the workforce in ever greater numbers, reaching nearly half of the wage earners in the country. These women workers, however, earned only $.69 for every dollar a manmade. And in many cities (Boston, New York, Washington, Miami, Chicago, Los Angeles, San Francisco and others), new waves of immigrants from Central America, the Caribbean, and Asia were transforming the ethnic make-up of the workforce in both industrial and service sectors. Between 1970 and 1990 the U.S. workforce had been dramatically transformed, and so had working conditions and the balance of power between labor and management. Changes Inthe WorldEconomy These developments were really the expression of profound changes taking place in the world economy. During the 1960s and 1970s Japan and Western Europe rose to become major competitors of the United States, ending the post-war domination the United States had achieved. At the same time, several "underdeveloped" nations achieved levels of industrial 2A Troublemaker's Handbook development-using low-wage labor-that made them competitive in the capitalist world. Countries such as Hong Kong. Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, Mexico and Brazil became attractive sites for production of goods once made in the U.S. By 1975 the United States was merely first among many competitors, and by the late 1980s it wasno longer clear that the U.S. was first. The growth in the productive power of so many developed and underdeveloped countries meant overcapacity on a world scale in industries such as steel, auto, and electronics. At the same time there were major changes in the size and structure of the world's dominant corporations. These corporations became multinationals, operating in many areas of the globe. For the first time in world history, production was actually being organized on a world scale. with parts produced and assembled in various countries. Capital had become extremely fluid. The rapid movement of capital in the form of money and machines was made possible by technological developments: the automation of the shipping industry. including containerization; the improvement of telecommunications, including satellites, micro-processing and cable optics. The key to it all was the computer. Technological change also took place in the factory with the introduction of computers and robots on a vast scale. In every area ofsociety from welfare officeto poultry plant to grocery checkout, technology was being used to make everything move along faster and faster.Hundreds of thousands ofjobs were eliminated, and the jobs that remained were sped up. The changes in the world economy had two impacts upon the relationship between employers and workers. First, the increased international competition put pressure on employers to lower their costs. Employers naturally chose labor costs as a prime target. Second. the internationalization of production put the multinational employers in amuch stronger position versus their unions. Pushed by competition, and emboldened by their relatively stronger position, the employers launched an offensive: demands for concessions, the destruction of pattern agreements. and in some cases union busting. To accomplish these aims,they used new strategies or revived old ones: anti-union law firms and consultants; forced strikes and lockouts; scabs. Collaboration or Resistance? The new employer militancy which arose in the 1980s led unions to respond in one of two ways: collaboration or resistance. In some unions the dividing line between the two trends was clear. In the Teamsters union, for example. the International leadership under Roy Williams and Jackie Presser attempted to collaborate with the employers. They accepted two-tier wage scales, productivity deals, flexible scheduling and other measures which over the long haul tended to destroy the union's contracts and in some sectors, such as steelhauling, caU into question the very existence of the union. The other trend, the resistance trend, was exemplified above all by the Teamsters for a Democratic Union reform group within the union (fDU), which led contract rejection movements in every major Teamster jurisdiction in the late I980s and campaigned for one member-one vote in elections of top officers. In 1990. the candidacy of Ron Carey for president of the Teamsters provided a rallying point for the resistance trend. In most unions, however, the resistance trend did not manifest itself as anational internal caucus like TDU or like the New Directions Movement in the United Auto Workers. A handful of unions such as the United Electrical Workers, the American Postal Workers Union, and the Oil, Chemical, and Atomic Workers officially rejected the new cooperative approach. In other unions, the resistance trend manifested itself in particular struggles. In the midI980s, those at Hormel and Watsonville Canning stood out. Later in the decade it was shown in the Black-led movement to democratize the Mail Handlers Union and the growth of opposition caucuses in large local unions like Communications Workers Local 1101at New York Telephone and Transport Workers LocalIOO in the New York City Transit Authority. The resistance trend was visible in the lengthy strikes at Eastern Airlines and Greyhound. It became apparent in the creative tactics employed in the The Fight Starts Here_3 Oregon State Employees' "rolling strikes," the CWA:s NYNEX strike, New York 1199's contract fight,the OCAW's corporate campaign against BASF, and, above all, in the mass mobilization led by the United Mine Workers in the Pittston strike. The resistance trend was responsible for the development ofsome inventive workplace strategies and tactics to respond to the new employer offensive. Some of them have become quite famous in the labor movement: the "inside strategy" based on "running the shop backwards"; the "corporate campaign" based on amultidimensional attack on the individuals and institutions supporting a particular corporation. Local P-9's struggle against Hormel gave rise to the Adopt-AFamily idea later used by the BASF workers. The OCAW's victory at BASF showed the potential for alliances with environmentalists. The 1199 Health and Hospital workers showed the importance oflabor-community coalitions. The Pittston UMW members turned a strike into a social movement based on civil disobedience. These are some of the struggles and tactics that are profiled in this book. And these are only the most famous.In scores of other workplaces, workers used their ingenuity and their courage to organize their co-workers and fight to regain control of the workplace. Why the Workplace? The problems facing working people are so huge-as described above-and the needed solutions so sweeping, that one might well ask, Why is Labor Notes publishing a book on the small stuff-the shop floor? When working people need everything from plant closing legislation to international solidarity to anew political party, why focus on the everyday and the mundane? There are several reasons: 1) Wehave nochoice-the employers have declared the workplace thebaUleground ofthe 1990's.In their drive for competitiveness, employers are out to squeeze every ounce of "flexibility" they can out of their workforces. Asfar as they are concerned, the battle for productivity means abolishing "rigid work rules" and creating the new multifunctional, team-player worker. They want anew workplace regime which takes away the last vestiges of worker control. In the 1940's and 1950's, many unions made an implicit deal with the employers: we give up much of our control on the shop floor, and you give us more money. This "worked" until the employers decided they couldn't afford it anymore. Now the employers want it all. 2) Rank and fileactivism at theworkplace is the foundationofthe labor movement. Labor historian David Montgomery says:"unions had their origins in the attempt to get some sort of collective control over the conditions of work, running all the way from wage rates to work rules, in the 19th century. The workplace is both where the union movement had its birth, and where the daily conflict lies that makes it impossible to snuff the union movement out." Even for those of us who have good wages and decent working conditions, the employer's poweroften an arbitrary power-rankles. The employer has the power to close the plant or agency, to fire us, to lay us off, to discipline us, to transfer us,to change our job, to increase our workload. The employer has the power. But the employer does not have all the power. Most of us simply don't accept the idea that the boss should control everything. We resist, and that resistance is the source of our power. It was this resistance at the workplace which gave birth to unions. It is at the workplace that the conflict first arises between management which gives the orders and workers who must take the orders. It is a conflict built into the system of free enterprise, big business, or capitalism, call it what you will. It is a conflict which cannot be wished away and which will always resurface as long as employers own the workplace and workers do not. Just asthere is anatural tendency for employers and workers to be driven into conflict, there is also a natural tendency for workers to be brought together in solidarity. We work together to get the job done. We depend on each other for help and support to do so. In some occupations we depend on each other for our very survival. The union is born out of that solidarity. Before there was the union, there was simply solidarity. When workers help and protect each other on the job, that is solidarity. When workers do not snitch on each other HI,I'MYOUREMpWYER. ANDr'M 60VERNMfNT.WHEARDYOUWE.R STRANOED.WHATYOUNEED ARE GOOD:r085, CHILDCAREIGOOO HE.1LTH(OVERAr:,FLEX II3LE WORKHOURS,JOB TRAINING,ETC. .. 4A Troublemaker's Handbook to management, that is solidarity. When workers do not compete with each other to work faster,that is solidarity. When workers first joined together in collective action to slow down production to ahuman pace in order to protect their jobs, health, and earnings, that was solidarity becoming aunion. We Are the Experts Why is the workplace the source of our strength? Our strength begins with the fact that at the workplace we are experts. Collectively we know just about everything about the company or agency, about the products, the service, the customer. We know the employer's strengths and its weaknesses, we know the pressure points. Our knowledge is a tremendous source of power. In addition, we have the power to slow down production or even to stop it. While internationalized production may have weakened this power, strikes nevertheless remain apotent weapon. Particular departments or plants may have the power to shut down an entire enterprise because they produce akey component. Some newfangled ways of organizing production such as "just in time" inventory make a company even more vulnerable to job actions and strikes. Public employees' job actions may disrupt essential services. For many public employees the workplace is the interface between workers and the public. Teachers meet students and parents; health care workers meet patients. For public employees the workplace is the place not only to organize themselves but to reach out and organize the support of those whom they are serving. .3) It is in the daily struggles on the shop floor that workers often gam the confidence to get involved in union af fairsand take on broader issues.An active union presence in the workplace can lay the basis for larger mobilizations, from contract campaigns to political campaigns. Conversely, powerlessness and disorganization on the job undermine our ability to act collectively in the broader society. Workers need not only strong unions, but coalitions with other social movements. Such coalitions will not be constructed on the basis of weakness. *** If the labor movement is to be reinvigorated and reformed so that it can improve the lives of all working people, such a revival will start from the bottom up. Every workplace has its troublemakers, but troublemakers armed with the tactical experience of the last fewyears become something more powerful: organizers. We think the fight for astrong labor movement starts today. It starts today where you work. Take this book and go out and make trouble. Notes_______________________________________________________________________ 1. For a more complete analysis, see An InjuryToAU:The Decline ofAmericanUnionism,by Kim Moody. See Appendix E. A TROUBLEMAKER'SHANDBOOK Labor Notu7 ~ Michigan Ave., Detroit, Michigan 4821031318426262 Basicsof Organizing2. You have aproblem at work. You believe that management is being unfair. Something has to be done. But where do you begin? This chapter is about the fundamentals of dealing with problems where you work, whether in a union or anon-union workplace. It will talk about the things to do beforeyou start organizing and about some of the tried-and-true principles oforganizing. No PersonalProblems One of the basic ideas behind this book is that the solutions to problems which seem to be personal ones are usually collective. I'M GETTING SIC.KOF REDESIGNING THISWORKPLACE JOSTTOFIT YOURNEEDS! The employer tries to make us believe that our problems are merely personal. For example: the boss calls Barbara into the office and writes her up for being late. Barbara explains that she was late because her sitter was late. The boss says he's sorry, but he can't bend the rules for one person. As she leaves the office, Barbara may think: "But it isn't one person, it's everyone in the office. Everybody in this place has been absent or late at least once because of a problem with childcare." And it isn't just in that office. Columnist Anna Quindlen wrote in the NewYorkT i ~ s ,"[What if a union ofworking mothers held] aone-day nationwide strike. In unison at apredetermined time, we will rise and say: 'My kid is sick, and so is my sitter,' and walk out. Look around your office. Think of how many desks would be empty. Think of how much work wouldn't get done. " The need for childcare-to choose just one example-affects tens of millions ofworkers. The same applies to other "personal" problems such as reactions to chemicals, injuries, and stress. It is in management's interest to make the problems appear to be "personal" so that management will not bear responsibility. There are commnn problems and there are collective solutions.That is the underlying premise of this book. From here on when we refer to what you can do, we do not mean you as an individual, but rather you and your co-workers. "You all," as they say down South. SeeChapter 17,Organizing in a Non-UnionWorkplace,and Chapter 18, Organizing theUnorganized, for morebasic information. Ask Questions and Listento the Answers The suggestions in this section may seem to apply primarily to the beginning organizer in anonunion workplace, or to arank and filer in a workplace 6A Troublemaker's Handbook Your LegalRights To Organize AGen8'ral. The ni'ost important "legal" advice is to be well organized. Legal strategies aid day-to-day work. They don't take the place of it. Any position, legal or otherwise, is going to be enhanced if the people behind it act as a group, have plans that are thought out, and follow through on it. If the matter comes to ahearing or to court, any judge is going to be impressed by a well-attended and well-organized presentation. Don't set yourself up. Be amodel worker, come on time, and be above reproach. Keep anotebook of all suspicious things. Record the Five W's:Whathappened, where it happened, whenit happened, wlw saw it (names, addresses, phones), and why each party claimed to act as they did. B. Your Right toDistribute Literature. You have an absolute legal right to distribute literiture. In the workplace, the law says you can do it in nonworking areas on nonworking time. This includes the parking lot, the time-clock, the cafeteria, or any place where people gq on break out of the work area. Aisles are usually considered work areas, but that could depend on the circumstances. If you are soliciting or taking signatures on petitions but not distributing literature, you may do so in working areas on nonworking time. If you are merely discussing union issues, you may do so anywhere on nonworking time. You may also discuss union issues on working time, ifit doesn't interfere with your work. If workers carry on conversations on other personal topics then you can discuss union topics too. You have an absolute right to distribute literature at or in common areas of the union hall, including union meetings. C. Strikes,Picketing,and Other Protected Activities. Unless. there is in effect acontract with a no-strike clause, you may engage in group action to force the company to accept union conditions. Such activities are only protected under federal labor law ifdone by two or more individuals together. Striking, picketing, petitioning, grieving, group complaints to the Department ofLabor are the classic examples. This right isprotected by the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), which must receive and serve your charge within six months. However, the NLRB has a policy of deferring action on such cases if there is a grievance procedure in effect which theoretically could resolve the issue. without much union presence. But most of them also apply to stewards or union officers. Many stewards have become accustomed to the idea that once they are elected or appointed, it's their job to solve problems for the members. In fact,stewards are much more effective when they think of themselves as organizers-catalysts, leaders, but not Lone Rangers. You have aproblem; where do you begin? Some people when they first feel they have been treated unfairly fly into a rage or start loudly crusading against the boss. This can be dangerous. Management jealously guards its authority in the workplace, and when you begin to question authority you become a threat. In most workplaces, from the moment you start to question authority, you become a troublemaker in management's eyes. If you have never before made any waves where you work, you may be shocked, hurt or angered by how quickly management turns against you. This is one more reason not to act alone, and also to be discreet when you begin to talk to others. Talk to your co-workers and ask them what they think about what's happening at work lately. What do they think about the problem you're concerned about? Listen to what others have to say. Get their views and opinions. Most people think of an organizer as an agitator and a rabble-rouser (and there are times when an organizer must be those things), but a good organizer is first of all one who asks good questions and listens well to others. Having listened well, the organizer is able to express not only his or her own views and feelings but those of the group. Almost inevitably there will be some people who are more concerned than others, and afew ofthose people will want to do something about it. Those few people now form the initial core of your "organization." You might ask the two most interested people to have coffee or lunch with you, introduce them to each other, and then ask, "What do you think we should do about this?" Ifthey are indeed ready to do somethingnot just complain-you are almost ready to begin organizing. Map Your Workplace Knowledge is power. Or at least it is the beginning of power. You will want to know everything you can about your workplace and your employer. This will be a long-term, on-going process of education. Appendix B on Researching Your Employer describes how to uncover the bigger picture ofhow your workplace fits into the company, the industry, and the overall economy. But for now you begin with your department. Following is adescription of how to map your workplace to reveal how people are already organized, both formally and informally, by the work process and by their social inclinations. It will show you how to find and use the natural leaders who already exist in every workplace. (This section, written by Rick Smith, is reprinted from Lo,bor Notes, January 1987. Smith was 7Basics of Organizing onthestaffof Teamstersfora Democratic Union(TDU), thenational reformorganizationwithin theTeamsters, andisnowan organizerfor TeamsterLocal 728 in Atlanta.) Thesteward orshop floor activistcannot affordtoover look the natural organization thatexistsin mostworkplaces.Resist thetendencyto complicate shop floororganizationbyestablishingartificial structures or involvedcommitteesandcaucuseswithout firsttakingadvantageofthe organization that already exists."Mapping" yourworkplace willhelpyouto communicate withyourcoworkersandincreasethe union's power. Manage. menthaslong understood the value of identifying informal work groups, their leaders, and their weak links. In fact,one of the main thrusts of management training is to develop strategies to alter the psychology of the workplace. United Parcel Service, for example, has developed its psychological manipulation techniques to a fine art. The UPS managers' training manual, titled Charting theSpheres ofInfluence,shows how to map the workplace to identify the informal work groups, isolate leadership of these groups, exploit the weak links, and in the end, break up the groups if they can't be used to management's advantage. While most companies haven't developed their techniques to the fineOrwellian art that UPS has, many do use some of the same methods. Have outspoken workers or leaders in your workplace been transferred, promoted into management or singled s,,(,PL.'/ Cf.2\fiJ_---.1 ~ ' 5 o An example of a workplace map. '---it40 O'!5f,AJGj, out for discipline? Are work groups broken up and rearranged p ~ r i odically? Has the layout of the workplace been arranged to make communication between workers difficult? Do you get to walk around on your job? Who does? Who doesn't? Are certain people_.picked on or disCiplined by manage. ment in public? How does this af fect the rest of the workforce? Do you feel you are always under surveillance? You get the point. All of the above can be used to break up unity and communication between workers in your shop. How ToMap Your Workplace If you work in a large shop, you may want to begin by mapping just your department or shift and then work with other stewards to piece together amap of the entire workplace. You can begin by drawing an outline of your department and putting in work stations, desks, machines, etc.-a floor plan. Now,place a circle where each worker is usually stationed, and write in their names. If you can, chart the flow of production by using a broken line or arrow. Indicate on your map where members of management are usually stationed and their normal path through the shop. Mark the places where workers tend to congregate (break areas, lunch rooms, bathrooms, water fountains). Now identify and circle the informal work groups. Informal work groups are groups of workers who work faceto face with each other every day. They have an opportunity to communicate to each other every day while working and perhaps spend time together on breaks, eat lunch together, or generally 8A Troublemaker's Handbook hang out with each other. Mark the influential people or informal work group leaders. In each group is there a person who seems to enjoy a special influence or respect? Sometimes they're stewards or activists, but in many cases the leaders will not be. Do conversations in the group ever get into shop talk? Ifso, what do they talk about? Is there an unspoken code of behavior in these groups towards management or problems at work? Is there an informal production standard which is followed and enforced by group members? Ifyou're aware of loners or people who don't mix with any group, indicate that by using some special mark. Also,identify the weakest links: the company brown nose, perhaps a part-timer or new hire, and anyone who isparticularly timid. You may want to begin taking notes on each worker and record such things as when the person started work, grievances filed,whether they have been active in any union projects, etc. Keep these notes on separate index cards in afile. Your map may show you how the workplace is set up to keep people apart, agood enough reason for map making. But the real reason formap making isto develop more unity and power in the workplace. Using Your Map Let's say you have an important message to communicate, but you don't have the time or resources to reach every worker. Ifyou can reach the leaders of the informal work groups and get them on your side, you can bet that the word can get around to everyone. Once leaders have been identified and agree to cooperate, it's possible to develop anetwork which includes both stewards and these de facto stewards who can exert considerable power and influence. Informal work groups also have the advantage of creating certain loyalties among their members. You can draw on this loyalty to figure out unified strategies for problems, and take advantage of people's natural tendency to stick up for those who are close to them. Sometimes it's necessary to negotiate between the work groups which, while experiencing common problems, also have concerns involving only their own members. For example, at one shop I worked at,two informal work groups existed in my department. One group consisted of machine operators who die-casted transmission cases, and the other of inspectors. Management didn't allow inspectors to talk to machine operators. At one point management increased machine operators' production quotas, which caused inspectors to mark many of the pieces as scrap, because they were having trouble keeping up with production too. Both work groups were facing pressures from the speed-up and tended to blame each other. Eventually the leaders of the two work groups worked out an arrangement to deal with the speed-up. It was agreed that the inspectors would mark as scrap any transmission case with the tiniest little flaw,causing the scrap to pile up. Management would then have to come up and turn off the machines in order to figure out what was causing the problems. Soon each machine was experiencing afew hours of downtime every day. Mter a week of this,management reduced the production quota. Besides working with the group leaders, it's important to draw in the loners too. More than likely, their apathy, isolation, or anti-union ideas stem from personal feelings of powerlessness and fear. Ifcollective action can be pulled off successfully and a sense of security established through the group's action, fear and feelings of impotence can be reduced. Ifyou've got aparticularly tough cookie in your shop who seriously threatens unity, don't be afraid to use the social pressures that work groups can bring to bear to get that person back in line. This applies to supervisory personnel too, especially the supervisor who likes to think he's everyone's pal. TheBalance of Power The bottom line for this type of workplace organization isto tilt the balance of power in the workers' favor.It can win grievances, for example. If grievances remain individual problems and are kept in the hands ofjust the steward or union higher-ups, the natural organization and loyalty that exist among work groups is lost. Chances are that the grievance is lost, too. However, if the work groups can be used to make ashow of unity, the threat that production could be hampered can be enough to forcemanagement into a settlement. For example, back in the die casting plant: amachine operator was fired on trumped-up charges. The leader in that work group informed key people in the skilled trades who had easy access to all in the plant to tell them something was going to happen at lunch time in the lunch room. At each lunch break, ameeting was held to explain the situation. It was decided to organize for a symbolic action. The next day black armbands were handed out in the parking lot to everyone entering work. The key people in every work group were informed to use their influence to enforce the action. It was suggested that everyone has an off day once in a while, and it would really be ashame if everyone had an off day at the same time. Mer two days of this, the machine operator was brought back to work. Such an action would have been impossible without arecognition of the informal work groups and their leaders. The grievance procedure worked because management understood that the grievance had become the concern of all the groups and that problems lay ahead unless it was resolved. SomeBasicPrinciples The rest of this book will show how people have used various organizing strategies and tactics. We recommend that you go from here to Chapter 3, Shop Floor Tactics. 9Basics of Organizing Each group has its opinion makers, its natural leaders. They are not always the loudest or the most talkative, but they are the ones the others listen to. You will have gone along way if you win over those natural leaders . Get People Involved in Activity. Life is not a schoolroom and people do not learn simply from going to meetings or reading leaflets. Most people learn, change, and grow in the process of action. Will you take this leaflet? Will you pass it on to your friend? Will you mail in this postcard? Will you sign this petition? Ifyou want to develop new leaders, you must give them something tlley can do, however small that first step is. Make That Collective Activity. However, the point isnot only to get individuals involved, but to join them together in a solidarity-conscious group. We want to create agroup which sees itself as a whole: We are the Union. We are the Movement. Will you come to the meeting? Can we get the whole department to visit the boss togetller? Can we count on all of you for the picket line? . d ~ Activities Should Escalate Over ~Time. Ask people to become involved in activities of increasing commitment and .._________---IIIIIIii---------------.. However, before you do, following isa list of what successful organizers say are the most important principles to remember. You may want to come back and look at this list again when you have read the book. Question Authority. Organizing begins when people question authority. Someone asks, "What are they doing to us? Why are they doing it? Is it right?" Encourage people to ask, Who is making the decisions, who is being forced to live with the decisions, and why should that be so? People should not accept arule or an answer simply because it comes from the authorities, whether that authority isthe government, the boss,the union-or you. An effective organizer encourages co-workers to think for themselves. Talk One-on-One. Almost everyactivist interviewed for this book said, "The most important thing about organizing is personal, one-on-one discussion." Leaflets are necessary, meetings are important, rallies are wonderful-but none of them will ever take the place of one-on-one discussion. Frequently when you have simply listened to a co-worker and heard what is on his mind, you have won him over because you are the only one who will listen. When you talk to Linda at the next desk and overcome her fears, answer her questions, lift her morale, invite her to the meeting, or take her to the rally-that's what organizing is all about. Find the Natural Leaders. Every workplace has its social groupings of co-workers and friends. difficulty. Are you willing to wear a button saying "Vote No"? Will you vote against the contract? Will you vote for a strike? Are you prepared to walk a picket line? Are you willing to be arrested? Several of the campaigns in this book included hundreds of people willingly going to jail for something they believed in. For many of them it started with that first question, Will you take this leaflet? Confront Management. Organizing is about changing power relationships, changing the balance of forces between management and workers. Confrontation with the employer has to be built into the escalating activities. The first confrontation may be something as simple as wearing a "Vote No" button. If people are not willing to risk upsetting the boss, they won't win. Win Small Victories. Most movements, from a small group in one workplace to massive social protests which change society (like the civil rights or women's movements), grow on the basis ofsmall victories. The victories give us the confidence that we can do more. They win us new supporters who now see that "you can fight City Hall." With each victory the group becomes more confident and therefore capable of winning larger victories. Organization Is Everything. Organization need not be overly formal or structurally top-heavy, but it must be there. A telephone tree and amailing list may be all the organization you need, but if those things are what you need then you must have them. The last twenty years have supplied many examples of 10A Troublemaker's Handbook reform movements which arose, fought hard-and then died because they didn't stay organized. As one of the old TDU leaders, Bill Slater, says, "Only the organized survive." ActionQuestions_________ 1. Does your boss ever tell you you have a personal problem when it is really a problem common to many workers? How does the boss tell you to solve it? How might it be solved in order to help everybody? 2. Draw a map of your workplace showing the different departments or rooms. Put an X in key areas which control the flow of production and circle the informal work groups. 3. Below is a sociogram of a typical workplace. Each circle with the attached names is a work group. The person in the middle is the leader or opinion maker of that group. Lines connecting different circles are drawn between friends or individuals who influence each other's thinking. Fill in the blank sociogram with the names and groups in your workplace, modifying the drawing if necessary. 4. Make a list of the recurring problems that are Sample sociogram TYRONECAMILLE 1M ALICIA TERRY G CARLOS EDMUNDO brought up by your co-workers. Which problem would you choose to talk to your co-workers about first? Why would you choose that issue? How would you approach them? 5. Organizing is often a question ofjudging different individuals' strengths and weaknesses, and helping to draw out their strengths. Make a list of the closest ten people with whom you work. Which two or three would you begin by talking to? Why? What are their strengths? 6. !fyou wanted to meet discreetly, where would you meet? Could you talk at work, in the cafeteria, in the parking lot? Would it be best to meet in a coffee shop or a bar? Would it be good to meet at someone's home? 7. Ifyou are answering these questions with your co-workers, pool what you know about the company or agency. Who are the key decision makers? Who owns it? How is it organized? Are there other branches, offices or plants in your area? Are they unionized? 8. What do you know about your local union? What is the name ofyour International? Who isthe top officer? Who is the union representative in your workplace or your department? Do you have a copy of the contract? Do you have a copy of the union byDraw your own: laws and constitution? (You should be able to get the by-laws from your local union representative, but if not, you can get them through the Office of Labor-Management Services. See Appendix B for more suggestions on researching your employer and your union.) A TROUBLEMAKER'S HANDBOOK Labor Noteo7485 Michipu Ave., Detroit, Mkhipu 48210Sll!(842-6262 Shop Floor Tactics3. You've got a problem in the workplace. Why not simply filea grievance? Perhaps the word "file" is the clue. Ask any successful shop floor activist: it's amistake to rely simply on the contract and the grievance procedure to settle problems. Successful organizing requires rank and fileaction, visible organizing on the shop floor in confrontation with management. As Bud Schulte, former steward in ameatpacking plant, puts it: "When we met with the foreman, it was not just me and the foreman. We always tried to take asmany people as we could into these meetings. Once the foremen realized that it wasn't just the other steward and myself who was making these complaints out of thin air, he was a little more conducive to doing some things for us." Grievances must of course be filed, but they should also be fought for by: Making them visible and public, so that the members are aware ofwhat is taking place. Making them collective, group grievances involving as many members as possible. Making them active, involving the members themselves in various actions. Making them confrontational, so that members are mobilized to facethe company officials who are causing their problems and who have the power to resolve them. SeeChapter 17 on Organiz.ing in the Non-UnionWorkplace for more creative shop floor tactics. Of course, the shop floor activity described here can take place whether or not a grievance is formally filed. Asyour members become more organized and more accustomed to these sorts of activities, you may find that more and more problems can be resolved without resorting to formal grievances. Joe Fahey is the president and business agent of Teamster Local 912 in Watsonville, California. "Workplace organizing is often better than the grievance procedure," says Fahey, "and it's also fun. It's fun because it works, because all of a sudden you feelyour power. And when you feel everybody together you say, Yeah, this is what the union is. The union isn't the person who filesthe grievance and waits two or three months until it reappears and then presents it. When you win on the shop floor, everybody feels good. "I've won a lot of grievances, and I'm glad I won, it's better than losing. But it's three months later and you wonder what was the grievance about anyway? And it doesn't mean that much to people. It reinforces IISee how wellour automatic grievancemachinery works!" 12A Troublemaker's Handbook Why Grievances Are Not Enough The contract is akind of historical record of the achievements of the union, a sediment left behind by past organizing drives and strikes. It institutionalizes the victories of the past, and establishes the minimum that a worker should be able to expect from that employer. It is amistake, however, to view the contract as a sacred document. The agreement was not carried down from the mountain on stone tablets. It was the result of a struggle between the employer and the union, perhaps a lockout or strike, which eventually resulted in a compromise worked out at the negotiating table. The employer wanted more, and we wanted more. We were at war and a ceasefire was called and a truce was reached-until the conflict breaks out again. In the meantime, every time management gets a chance, they will attempt to encroach into the territory that we have won, taking away things we thought the contract protected. The contract is combed by both management and the union in the search for possible interpretations. The contract is never interpreted literally. In the hands ofa good union steward it is interpreted creatively in the interests of the members. Being aunion steward, however, is not amatter of mastering the art ofinterpretation. Winning your point often depends not so much on the contract language as on the power of the union. Since the contract is the sediment ofpast struggles, it can tell you only what the balance of forces between management and labor was, say, in April three years ago, not what it is today. Winning a grievance or any other shop floor struggle depends on the balance of forces today. Simply filing agrievance does nothing to alter that balance of forces in the members' favor. It is usually not acollective activity, but is carried out by one individual, the steward. It takes the issue off the shop floor and out of the hands of the rank and filemembers. While the grievance goes its way from step to step, the members have nothing to do but wait. How Can Just Grievances Be Lost? Besides these problems, there is no way that simply filing grievances could begin to redress the injustices that go on in every workplace every month. Let us imagine that there are 1,000 violations of the contract by management in aparticular factory of 1,000 workers over the course of a month-probably a low estimate. Then think about the workers who have these legitimate grievances: Some are probationary employees who are wise not to file a grievance yet. Some, perhaps newer workers, are not knowledgeable about the contract and do not know that they have the right to grieve. Some hope to go into management. Some are too shy or timid to speak up. Some who already facediscrimination, such as members of racial minorities, women or gays, may fear that filing agrievance will only add to their problems. Some fear they will be marked as troublemakers and singled out for transfer or discipline. Some are immigrants who do not know English or are not familiar with the workings of unions. Now think about the steward: Even a good union steward has limited time and energy, and so will not be able to constantly comb the shop getting all the shy or fearful workers to submit their grievances. Even the pretty good steward is likely to work with the grievances that are submitted and not worry about those that are not. In any case, a union steward must reach a modus vivendi with management, that is, they both have to live in that shop. He or she will have to exercise judgment about the many possible grievances. The steward has to pick her fights. Ifa grievance is not settled at the first or second step and goes into the machinery, it isno longer simply settled on its merits or the justice of the case. Union and management make trade-offs, and some just grievances will be traded off in what the officials see as the best interest of the union as a whole. So, in the end, of the thousand just grievances which might have been filed, only perhaps adozen are actually filed. The union leaders feel forced to trade away half of those. Finally afew are won months later, but perhaps only the workers directly involved ever know about them. Ifone could read the thoughts of the thousand workers in this shop, some would be satisfied.But there would be hundreds who were resentful because they had suffered an injustice at management's hands. Strengthening the Grievance System What can a local union and individual stewards do to partially counteract these weaknesses of the grievance system? Besides the many tactics spelled out in this chapter: The union can periodically hold department or shop meetings in the plant, perhaps in the lunch area, to explain the members' rights and ask if they have problems. The stewards can create assistant stewards so that in the course of a week or two the steward or the assistants have talked to all the workers in the area, just to see how things are going. In this way shy workers are encouraged to come forward. The steward can make sure that there is somebody who can talk to workers in their own language. Shop Floor Tactics_13 the idea that the union is a bureaucracy and it's not the people. "In many cases, if you can win with an effective workplace strategy, then it's better than what the contract says. The stewards come to me and say,'Is this a grievance?' And I say, 'No, let's try it anyway.' And, because they've got the people behind them, they bluff their way into getting some past practice established that's not even in the contract." When we organize over issues in the workplace, sometimes we are fighting to enforce the contract. Sometimes we are stretching the contract, trying to use the language to win something it wasn't intended for.Sometimes we fight for things which have no basis at all in the contract, but are issues the members care about. In any case many of the same tactics can be used whether or not the issue has a basis in the contract language. The union's fundamental shop floor tools are economic pressure and political pressure. This chapter deals mainly with organizing rank and filemembers. To read about organizing and training stewards, see the Stewards Corners by Paul Roose, John Clout, and Steve Hochman and Bill Mollenhauer at the end of this chapter. PoliticalPressure Political pressure, in this sense, does not refer to candidates or city councils. Politics is simply another word for power, the authority that allows management to retain control of the workplace. There are many waysto undermine that power. Management's kind of power requires hierarchy, hierarchy requires authorities, authorities have to be serious, and seriousness leads to pomposity. The boss becomes a pompous ass, and ridicule becomes a tool to deflate a self-important supervisor. Charlie Chaplin movies like "Modern Times" and "The Little Dictator" should be required viewing for stewards. Management's kind of power rests on control from above. When the employees organize themselves from below and take initiative, that undermines management's controL Many organizers interviewed for this book observed that any sort ofunified actionby workers seems toerode 1lIIlnagemeru's authority, even if it is only a symbolic action such as wearing the same color t-shirts. Management's kind of power is exerted within the boundaries of the workplace, and sometimes that power seems simply overwhelming. Sometimes in order to defeat that power it isnecessary to expand the boundaries of the struggle beyond the workplace. The employer, who isGod in the plant, may be merely mortal in the larger society. Other forces can be brought to bear, from the media to regulatory agencies to activist groups such as the National Organization for Women, the NAACP or Greenpeace. One well-placed phone call can do alot ofdamage. When other authorities are brought in, 1lIIlnagemmt's weight is diminished,and the union's weight is relatively greater. See Chapter 13 on Corporate Campaigns for much more on these political pressure tactics. Ridicule Suzanne Wall, a staffer for the Oregon Public Employees Union, SEIU Local 503, gives a couple of examples of how workers have used ridicule to chal-BULL SHIT DEFLECTOR BULL SHIT DEFLECTOR Instructfons: Cut out. and then cut along the curved Inner lines. Wear one on each ear. 14A Troublemaker's Handbook lenge overbearing supervisors. "One of the branch managers of the Children's Service Division held a staff meeting," Wall remembers, "and insulted the workers by calling them slugs, which is a famous animal in Oregon." In the Pacific Northwest slugs grow to a size of six inches to a foot long; some are bright yellow and particularly revolting to the squeamish. "So the next day at work they decided to turn it around on him. They went out and bought shiny plastic stuff and made slug trails, slime trails all over the office, and put up signs that said 'Slug Crossing Here: They did a petition at the same time. And it worked so well that the next day the manager, who could never apologize officially, brought in a plate of doughnuts marked 'Slug Bait.'" At another Children's Service office there was a similar incident when the manager referred to a group of workers who had gathered to discuss a problem as a bunch of crybabies. "So the workers all started wearing stickers in a series on the crybaby theme. One was, 'I'm a crybaby too.' Another was, 'There isreason to cry: At the end of the week they all gathered in the parking lot for a unity break and did a 'cry-in' and everybodyjust wailed and moaned." Rand Wilson, who now works as a free-lance union consultant, tells of the time he worked for a biotechnology company. "There were about 200 people in the plant and a dozen in my work area. One time everybody in my department was ticked offbecause we had too many bosses, and it was one of those departments where you don't know who isthe boss. Believe me, it's a lot of aggravation. "So we made up these organizational charts which showed this vast layer ofbureaucracy and bosses over the workers in that department. We xeroxed them and pinned them on our smocks and we wore them around. Everybody in the department loved it. "Everybody agreed to wear it, and that was unifying, and then it made such a statement to the bosses it sent them into a complete tizzy. We got ameeting with one of the higher-up supervisors within hours and a good airing of our grievance. And it was also nice because word went around that that group has their act together." The Group Grievance or Petition To make a collective protest the activist or steward simply gets as many workers as possible to sign on to a grievance. Or if the contract forbidsmore than a certain number of employees from signing a grievance, they can sign a petition supporting it. The steward can then take the group to visit the manager. Mary Baird works for Ohio Bell as a service technician in repair. "When I first started working at the phone company I was a clerical worker," says Baird. "We typed orders into computer terminals. There were about 14 of us and I was appointed steward. "It was a real oppressive work situation. The supervisor was abusive to these women who were quite young, most of them only a few years out of high school. They had no consciousness about what it meant to have aunion, or that they had any particular rights. They were doing things like going to tell the supervisor on each other, having cat fights in the hall. It was just horrendous. "I started on the very basic level ofletting them know that I was the union steward and giving everybody a copy of the grievance procedure. And then I started this little one-page 'conspiracy' type newsletter. I didn't make copies of it, we just passed it around. It had cartoons and a few things about incidents that were occurring. People really got akick out of that. "Then afew incidents occurred where the foreman got so abusive with her language that one of the older women actually got sick at her stomach. So I filed a grievance and convinced everybody to sign it. Usually you just had one person sign it. This was stepping outside of procedure. "I had come from aprevious location in Kentucky where I was the steward, and you always took the grievant into the meeting with you. Here you didn't do that, the stewardjust went in with the foreman and talked about it. But I insisted that all 14 people who signed the grievance should take part in the meeting. "Then they took myself and a chiefsteward aside, the manager and the manager's boss, and gave us a sob story about how this supervisor was on probation for excessive grievances, and she'd been moved from other locations. And could we please not put this in writing, or could we rescind it with the promise that things will improve? "I said, 'Well, I can't answer for all these people, you have 14 people here that have filed this grievance, so we're going to have to have time to discuss this.' They gave us an hour of company time with no management around. One of the women had been in the Marines for five years, and she told the difference between being here where we have aunion and being in the Marines where you had to stand on your head and spit a nickel if they told you to. It was real exciting. People changed real fast. And at the end of the hour we said, No, we weren't going to rescind our grievance. "The supervisor became anon-management worker in another location a fewmonths after that. But really she needed to. And you know, I ran into her at aChristmas party someplace about two years down the road, and she thanked me. She said, 'I just couldn't deal with that position.''' Baird tells of another incident: "I was a service rep then. There was this poor older woman named Pat who was put on final warning and threatened with being fired if any time within the next 12months she was aminute late to work or absent. It was terrible because she was only about nine months from getting all of her 25 years seniority. so they were trying to get rid of her. It put her in this position where she was about to have anervous breakdown. Shop Floor Tactics15 "This was a much bigger office, there were 50 some workers. A lot of people wanted to walk out, to go on a wildcat strike, they were pretty angry. But it wasn't going to be effective, because only about a third of the people would do it. So we made up a flyer and we put a little cartoon figure with a picket sign on it, and it said, 'Standing Up fur Pat Is Standing Up For Me.' It oudined all of the atrocious things they were trying to do and really made the company look bad. "Then we had apetition and five or six of us circulated the petition in the parking lot outside of the building in the morning. Everybody signed the petition because we were going into the first level grievance that day. "Normally these things drag out and eventually go clear to the top and something mayor may not happen, but this woman was desperate and people were really angry and that's how we organized around it. And when we went into the grievance meeting, the thing was settled. She was taken off final warning." TheGroup Protest In a group protest a worker or steward gathers other workers together and they go together to visit the supervisor or higher authority. This type ofaction has several advantages: it tends to interrupt production, at least for a little while. It can have an element ofphysical intimidation. Ifit is planned discreedyand carried out suddenly, it can have the added advantage ofsurprise. Ronnie Allen, aformer committeeperson at General Motors' gear and axle plant in Detroit, says, "People talk about an older workforce. Sometimes they get stagnant and set in their ways, and so you have to generate some enthusiasm, get them involved, so they're accomplishing something for themselves. And the way to do that is to have floor-type actions on contractual language that management is not abiding by. "In the skilled trades area, they're supposed to supply coveralls. An individual goes to the crib to get a pair of clean coveralls, and they're not available for him in his size, or they're torn or whatever. Ifthis goes on on a regular basis, then what you have to do is get a group ofskilled tradesmen as a whole to say,'We either want coveralls to work in, or we're not going to work in these soiled coveralls.' One time I took a group of eighty skilledtradesmeu()ver to the crib and said, 'Hey, we demand to have coveralls.' That's one tactic to get people involved." Ann Cohen is the president ofAFSCME Local 1637 representing 1,500 blue and pink collar employees of the city of Philadelphia. Her members have thrown contractors out of city facilities. "Let me tell you who we threw out," says Cohen. "We threw out some rug shampooers. We threw out some people who had come to paint file cabinets, some people who were doing installation ofsecurity gates. "What happens is the reps get really mad and go to the people and say, 'I'm so sick of filing grievances, it doesn't work. Let's go throw them out.' "Usually these are two-bit contractors, they have three or four guys, and we go over with 30 or 40 folks, and we say to them, 'We're sorry, but you're doing our work, and we'd like you to leave.' Of course they do. "We have contract language that says management must give 30 days notice of their contemplation of contracting out and meet all these economic requirements, and the cases where we've thrown folks out they have just completely ignored the contract. We do it in conjunction with grievances and arbitrations. "The crew that has helped the most on these kinds of things is the custodial crew in the Department of Public Property, either second or third shift. Because the city will bring in the contractors after normal work hours, so it's the custodial crew that finds them. The custodial workers are probably the lowest on the ladder in terms of pay and respect, but they are the watchdogs, and that's real good for morale. "We tell the carpenters and the electricians and the painters that the custodians threw the outside contractors out. We have a great steward now, she's just a really feisty older woman. She says, 'Well, Ihope I did the right thing, I took the people and we threw them out.''' See Chapter 12 on Inside Strategies for more on group protests. Pulling out of United Way Often corporations put great stake in their charitable contributions to organizations such as the United Way.Many managers take great pride in reaching one hundred percent employee participation. For the corporation these contributions represent good will and good advertising. Sometimes an organized withdrawal ofsupport will upset the company almost as much as a concerted action on the job. One company that takes United Way seriously is United Parcel Service. J. Anthony Smith, aUPS package car driver and a steward in Teamster Local 639 in northern Virginia, says, "One time another steward and I were suspended. The workers' response to that was to start a withdrawal from United Way. They made it very clear that nobody was against United Way, and that they wanted people to continue to give money to United Way. They even provided people with addresses and phone numbers so they could continue to give money-but they would not do it through the company. They took that feather from their cap." Smith and his fellow steward were returned to work. Pickets and Outside Pressure Sometimes political pressure on the employer should come from both inside and outside the workplace simultaneously. Paul Krissel ispresident of the Pennsylvania Social Services Union, Local 668 of the Service Employees, representing social service workers employed by the state. 16A Troublemaker's Handbook "One office had a terrible manager who had been harassing and intimidating the workers," says Krissel, "and we developed a campaign to create an embarrassing situation for that person and for the Welfare Department. The Welfareended up moving her from the office. That reqUIred a lot of activity on the part of the members.. "This particular person had harassed and Intimidated people who were activists in the union. So we filed some unfair labor practice charges, and we had the members involved in stating the particulars: here's all the things that this woman did. "Then when the manager brought this one union member into her office to interrogate her over her involvement with the union folks, our members did a demonstration. They did an informational picket. "Then they flooded the phone lines to [the state capitol in] Harrisburg with callsevery w:orker demanding that they cease and They did.a.l?t of informational pickets. they brought mlocal polItICIans, they brought in some of the state legislators. They saidCome into our office and we'll tell you all the horror about this manager and how she disrupts the workforce and treats people in an arbitrary fashion. And that worked." The manager was removed. Economic Pressure The union has many ways to bring economic pressure short of a strike: Work-to-rule campaigns in which workers adhere exactly to company procedures or to the contract. Slowdowns, in which members reduce output to an agreed amount. Making scrap. producing products which will not pass quality control. Getting lost, a common practice of warehouse workers, maintenance crews, truck drivers and others who work in large facilities or on the streets and are not easy to police. Some of these practices can get you disciplined; for example, truck drivers may be charged with "stealing time." Refusing to donate time. Many workers "donate" unpaid time to the company by beginning work before they are on the clock, working through breaks or lunch, or staying after work. If the union organizes a meeting or other action for the 15 before starting time or for lunch time, they cut mto this unpaid work. Activities that affect production schedules will be taken very seriously by management. Meeting a production schedule may be the basis for a supervisor's bonus, for example. The company may lose a customer ifit falls behind in its orders. This, of course, is the point. Therefore such actions must be taken even more seriously by the union. They require tion, practice, timing, and above all they reqUIre umty. See the note at the end of this chapter for some legal points.l

Awork-to-rule campaign takes advantage of the fact that management theoretically has one way of doing things ("going by the book") but in practice wants workers to take short-cuts in the name of productivity. In a work-to-rule w?rkers meticulously abide by the contract and any wntten company rules and work procedures which may apply. Workers take no short-cuts, show no initiative in solving problems, and if any difficulty presents itself ask for instructions. For example, says GeorgIa Butler, treasurer of Mail Handlers Local 307, "When management is not treating us right, we have what we call 'A Fair Day's Work for a Fair Day's Pay Day.' When you don't do anything extra, you miss many By its very nature the work-to-rule campaIgn, properly executed, isnot in violation of the contract. On the contrary, it is based on strict adherence to the rules, and this is its virtue. Management is sending two contradictory signals about how the work is to be done, and no one can blame the workers for choosing the one that benefits them. A work-to-rule can be used as a pressure tactic on any issue, from getting rid ofa supervisor to protesting unfair discipline to extra persuasion in acontract campaign. UPS workers in northern Virginia have developed work-to-rules to afine art. UPS management routinely conducts strict methods audits where the slightest miss.tep isfailure. to follow instructions and IS used for diSCIplInary actIOn. To resist such harassment, stewards Anthony Smith and Doug Bell have organized Methods Awareness Days, or MAD days. "They keep coming out with all these rules and regulations and instructions and things that you're supposed to do," says Smith, who is amember of Teamsters for aDemocratic Union (TDU). "And of course in all workplaces nobody followsthem because you cannot do the job following t;heirProduction just falls apart follOWIngtheIr dIrectIons. Working in the workplace you know best how to do the job and get it done as dose to within their methods as possible and still get out some sort of reasonable production. "On MAD days we just followtheir rules to the letter. UPS has got so many methods you cannot remember them all. Managers themselves cannot remember all of the methods. The activists know the methods better than anybody, because they're harped on more than anybody else about those methods. So . they're catching all these methods from all of these dIfferent managers, they're memorizing, they're learning them better than anybody. and then throwing them back at the managers. "There was an instance where we had a steward placed on indefinite suspension and at UPS that's the same as terminated. We had aMAD day and he was back the next day. This was after we had done MAD days anumber of times previously, so they had seen the effects many times before. "On MAD days we hold aparking lot meeting Floor Tactics17 where we stress that drivers should follow the c,?mpany's methods I:?the letter-both the very restricuve and the safety-onented practices. We stress that drivers should not work off the clock before their normal starting time, should take their full lunch, always walk to and from the package car [truck], and use proper lifting techniques." In order to avoid accusations that they are or \

ganizing aslowdown, the TDUers stress that they only followUPS rules and take nothing additional from the company. At one point the company retaliated against MAD days by issuing warning letters and suspensions, cha;rging the stewards with encouraging a slowdown. SmIth went to the NLRB, charging UPS with interfering with union activity. The Board upheld the stewards. "Because we were out in the open and had so many witnesses to disprove UPS's accusations, their charge of a slowdown went nowhere," says Smith. "Our MAD days have anoticeable effect. According to information the company gave the NLRB, we cut them by a stop per hour on the road. "But the biggest thing, not just on MAD day but all the time, isthe steward has to set an example. You can show that you'renot working off the clock, you're taking your lunch, and you're still working there. I often run as high as one-and-a-halfhours over company standards, where somebody else will run two-anda-half under. But my methods are perfect." Quality Control Program Dock workers in Barstow, California carried out a similar campaign and got rid ofatyrannical terminal manager. Scott Askey works at the Yellow Freight terminal and is amember ofTDU. "He abused our seniority rights," says Askey, "and he was abusing us as people. He had quite a number ofsexual harassment charges filed against him. And he was alleged to be skimming money." The workers went to their union, Teamster Local 63, and "the local told us that if we had the guts to do something about getting rid of him, they would back us up. "We called it a quality control program," says Askey."People paid particular attention to all work rules; they did the best professional job that they could ?o as far as taping boxes that were broken open, addmg plywood and cardboard to help secure a load, to make the load ride better, and also to protect the other freight from being damaged. Basically everybody took extra pride in their job-which in turn meant it took longer to do it. "The quality control program ran almost 50 days. We brought Barstow to their attention, because the company deals in facts and figures, and the production in Barstow had dropped drastically and had stayed dropped for 47,48 days. "Yellow Freight in Kansas City came down; they fired the terminal manager and his second in command. They didn't even transfer them to another terminal. It was a real victory. It brought unity to the High Desert here where a lot of people weren't aware what unionism really was." A variant ofthe work-to-rule isthe refusal to do work, work which is not,included in the job descnpuon or the contract. Nurses mBoston City Hospital have found this to be a good way to put pressure on management. "We don't have the right to strike in Massachusetts," explains Enid Eckstein, a staffer for SEIU Local"but we've been able to wage fairly militant on-the-Job fights by refusal to do non-nursing functions. We don't take the garbage out, we don't answer the phone, we don't move beds, we don't deliver food to our patients. I saw one study that said that 74 percent ofa registered nurse's time is spent in non-nursing work, so they've got alot ofpower there." Follow Stupid Rules Sometimes when management institutes new rules without having thought out the consequences, following the rules can show that they are stupid, so stupid that they have to be withdrawn. Teamster business agent Joe Fahey tells what happened in a frozen food plant in Watsonville, California. "The women stand on the production line cut ting cauliflower and broccoli, and nature calls every once in a while and they go off to the bathroom. Well, some go-getter in the company has this great idea: 'We've got to stop all these people going off the line to go to the bathroom. It's hurting production.' "So he stationed afloorlady (which is like a foreman) by the bathroom-full-time, all day. She is standing there with a clipboard, and when you went to the bathroom you had to give her your name and your work number, and then she had a stopwatch and she timed how long you were in the bathroom. "1 was at the company one day when the women came off the floor and about 50 women gathered around me and said, what are you going to do about it? I said, how many are there working on the shift? They said, about 200. And 1 said, how many toilets are there? They said, about six. 1 said, what is it that the company is telling you to do? They said, they want us go on our breaks and lunch. And how long is your 18A Troublemake(a Handbook break? About ten minutes. So I said, Well, I think you should try it. Tomorrow everybody should wait until their break. "That day is still one of the nicest moments of my four years being afull-timeunion rep. The company had gotten the word that something was going to happen. Here is this guy who started this policy, the vice-president of production, standing by the bathroom. All of a sudden the belt stops, and I look over and I see this line ofwomen marching down and they've got smiles from ear to ear, 200 of them. And theyjhst line up, to wait their turn on the ten-minute break for the bathroom, because that's what the company wants them to do. "So that's the end of the floorlady with the clipboard and the stopwatch. But more than that, it built the union. People felt that they could do something, they didn't have to wait for me or somebody else to come in and fix it." Slowdowns Most work-to-rule campaigns have the effect of slowing down production, but a slowdown may go even further, since it does not take strict adherence to the rules as its limit. Slowdowns may lead to individual workers being disciplined, to groups ofworkers being fired,or to entire workforces being locked out. Management's harsh discipline is atestament to the effectiveness of the slowdown. Tim Costello has been atruck driver for 20 some years. Several years ago he drove atank truck for Metropolitan Petroleum in Boston. "We would have specific beefs that the union wouldn't deal with," says Costello, "and we were quite successful in forming counter-organizations almost, sort ofad hoc. We would call them 'drivers committees.' We would pull slowdowns and we would negotiate sort ofsecretly with management by posting demands. "One time we caught them at the coldest time of the year. We had three or four beefs that the union wasn't moving on, and these were really things that could be solved. We had a big meeting across the street, and we typed up a list ofgrievances and we posted them at management's door at night. We signed it 'The Drivers Committee' and everybody was in on it. And then we slowed down gradually. We set a rate and we stuck to it. We did things like that several