emotional pressure and organization

By Nate. H

This text is a translation of a publication Nate. H first appeared in the newspaper the industrial worker, then in the pamphlet Weakening the Dam, intituée « Emotionnal pressure and Organization Building », well known in its original version. Although it was originally written to be an organizational tool designed primarily for organizers of the IWW, we believe it can be useful to any person or any group of people finding themselves confronted with problematic issues in the workplace - either, to everybody. The Trade Union Combat team hopes it will be useful!

We would simultaneously accomplish two things at work:

Organize our environments.

Improve our conditions.

We could do the separately, for example, by organizing themselves without plans to improve our conditions, as poker parties or knitting circles. We could also do the reverse, either try to improve our conditions without organizing our class, for example by giving individual of bribes to our superiors or covering of praise. Neither of these things has anything to do with trade unionism. Being a union means improving our conditions by organizing or organize improving our conditions.

To build a good solidarity and improve our conditions, we must do actions at work. The actions are the oxygen of a union ; they start taking informal solidarity between the employee-s - current relationships and the agitation climate within the workplace - and the leader against our bosses in shares.

When planning action, Take a problem that bothers many and which people pay a lot of attention and importance, and ask you "Do we have the power to change this thing ? ». for example, the supervisor of the graveyard shift of the reception department / Shipping plant probably has no control over the dental insurance plan now, nor to introduce a. On the other hand, it has the right to be more or less respectful of employee-s and be more or less strict about, for example, whereabouts to the toilet.

Do so first the list of issues that the employee-s desire to improve and determine who is (are) the (the) no one(s) target by your actions because they have control over these points. Then make a list of supervisor-e-s or lower in the hierarchy bosses having a louse
see decision on these issues. Usually, lower will these people in the hierarchy, easier it will be to get what you want. This will be very important from, when, for example, five employee-s department will have very little chance to get gains that will benefit percent employee-s a workplace. However, or if they have earnings in their department, it will be easier to recruit other department which can then tackle bigger issues. It is in this way that builds the organization workplace.

Early in a campaign, it is important to focus on what could be called "emotional action" or "emotional pressure". Let me explain : The work is a concern of every moment for us, and to a different degree, is also for bosses. For them, it is generally more whenever their level down the hierarchy and vice versa. The emotional actions are those where we ask our higher to make a choice between that make our work less of a problem or whatever we do hers more. Over this or that Higher-e will be close to us in the hierarchy, more this type of action will be easy to win. Especially if this or that supervisor-e is close to us and that we see or every day, he or she will care much for our opinion and how we are dealing or.

When we confront collectively superior to make him understand how our working conditions make our lives unpleasant, we also give to this or that Higher-e a very unpleasant experience. We could see this as the sharing part of the misery that our work inflicts us with him or her. By giving these higher-e-s a dose of their own medicine, thus making their work experience as miserable as ours, we can force them to make small improvements to our working conditions. In return, it allows us to explain to our colleagues that it is possible to unite to improve our conditions and more we are many and many to come together and be supportive, over the balance of power will be in our favor, and we can get big wins.