Lessons to be learned from a failed action

Before taking action, we must identify the obstacles that stand in our way. A computer technician tells us his story.

I've been supporting unions and criticizing capitalism and big business for a long time.. However, I had never dared to act concretely, until recently. To do this, I met organizers and organizers of the SITT-IWW, I participated in an OT101 and I put my new knowledge into practice by trying to take action and organize my workplace. My organizing campaign is still in its infancy, but I recently participated in my first action and would like to share some of my thoughts.

I work in IT security for a large mortgage services company in the Midwest.. It's a questionable ethical company., but I tell myself that by helping to secure the data that is already in their possession, I protect current customers and do not help the company to attack new people. This is not concrete rhetoric, but it gets me through my days.

The lack of flexibility is one of the biggest annoyances of my job.: we are not allowed to work from home. At the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, we have been forced to switch to telework due to health restrictions, but as soon as these have been lifted, we had to go back to the office. I am relatively new to this workplace, but colleagues who have been there for a long time told me that before the pandemic, our employer allowed telecommuting on occasion. I've also heard senior executives talk about it.

Since we came back to the office, the company has implemented increasingly severe measures to force us to present ourselves on site. Now, we have the choice between coming to the office or taking a day off. Sans exception. They don't care that we're uncomfortable spending our days in crowded auditoriums, without wearing a mask being compulsory and without being able to keep a safe distance from each other. Without surprise, only managers and their friends are exempt from this obligation.

Our employer also sent a memo to team leaders to tell them not to reveal the number of cases of COVID-19 among employees.. Even if a person tests positive, she still has to go back to work. Short, the company is even less flexible than before the pandemic and the ban on disclosing the number of cases has the effect of putting the health of employees at risk.

This regulation was already causing discontent among employees, but recently, it's a snowstorm that came to test our patience. Heavy snowfall was forecast for two days: all schools closed, and the media was strongly suggesting people stay off the road and stay home if possible. Despite this, our employer wrote to remind us that working from home was prohibited, and that people who did not show up to work during the storm had to take a day off or not be paid.

People worried about driving in storms were even suggested to sleep in a hotel near the office.! The company had negotiated a special rate for the occasion, but the room still cost more than most of us make in a day. This announcement was published on the company's internal portal, in a section where it is possible to leave comments. Several employees criticized this perverse initiative, and one person wrote that the situation was “dystopian”. She was fired immediately..

My colleagues were outraged by this decision. An employee from another team approached us to offer us all to take time off the next day., and thus leave the company understaffed. He told us that several people were already planning to do it and he encouraged us to join them.. Colin*, one of my colleagues, was really up for it and he got the other five team members to follow him.

I was very excited, since I had already thought about doing this kind of action. I had also identified Colin as one of the leaders of our group when I did my social mapping.. He's a big mouth and he's often the one who starts conversations. When the time comes to choose an activity to do as a team, his colleagues often tend to accept what he offers.

But I lacked confidence.. I had just started to organize my workplace and I had not yet had one-on-one meetings with Colin and with my other colleagues., and even less with members of other teams in the department. We talked about our problems as a group, but it ended there. Ideally, I should have waited before doing something like that., but Colin was up for it and he strongly encouraged the others to get on board. Conditions seemed favorable, the action itself was small scale and quite realistic: it had to include my team of five and other employees in different teams. So I said I was in too, and I created a group on Signal for me and my colleagues (with the exception of our team leader) can communicate.

This is the plan we agreed on: we were going to write individually to our team leader on the morning of the storm to tell him that we were going to work from home (and if he or she refused, that we were going to take a day off). We were going to use the Signal group to share the messages we sent and their responses., to help us keep our spirits up and to prevent any of us from feeling isolated.

Four of my five colleagues were on board; the other refused to participate. I was excited about this little collective action and went to bed with a shiver of excitement.

But the next morning, things started to go wrong.

Colin is the first to enter the office: he arrives around 6:30, then the others arrive between 7:30 a.m. and 8:30 a.m., and i start at 9am. By shifting our schedules in this way, we make sure that there is at least one person on site for a good part of the day, while allowing us to work as a team for a few hours. Due to his schedule, Colin was going to be the first to write to our team leader.

On the other hand, he wrote to us around 6:30 a.m. to tell us that the road conditions were really bad. Another colleague, Danielle, asked him if he had arrived at the office and he replied that yes. I wrote to the group to tell them that I was planning to call our team leader and tell him that I was going to work from home (and take a day off if he refuses). That's what I did, just like another colleague (Roger). Danielle did not answer, but when I contacted her at the end of the morning, she told me that she had decided to go to the office since Colin, the big mouth of the team, had flinched. My last colleague, Jackie, was opposed to the action from the start and she returned to the office as planned.

I must admit that I was a little disappointed with my colleagues: only two of us did not return (me and roger), while the others (Colin, Danielle and Jackie) went∙I work. From what I understood, It happened much the same way in the other teams. Ultimately, we have not been punished for our actions, but our absence did not really hinder the work in our company and we did not manage to make any concrete gains.

I was mostly frustrated with Colin's attitude, who encouraged the team to take action and who capitulated first. I decided to let this irritation dissipate before going to talk to him and tried to be empathetic and understanding.. I approached him a few days after the events and asked him for his views on the action: « Hey, Colin, How are you doing? I would like to understand what happened on your side. I had the impression that you were enthusiastic about not coming back to the office? ».

Colin was clearly uncomfortable. I reassured him by telling him that I was not angry and that I did not blame him, but that I wanted to understand what had happened. He then told me that he and our team leader were practically neighbors, and that he was afraid of looking bad to him if he decided not to return. I told him that I understood his concern and that we were going to have other opportunities to take action.. I did a similar follow up with Danielle and Roger, and I told them that other opportunities were coming.

What do I take away from all this??

First, even if the action was overall a failure (fewer 50% colleagues participated and we did not achieve our objectives), we have made some gains in terms of communication: the trust and honesty we have in each other has helped us organize, and the Signal discussion group allowed us to coordinate while helping us build a sense of togetherness outside of our workplace.

Secondly, this action taught me a good lesson on the leaders. Colin was indeed a leader within our team, but I absolutely did not expect him to bow to our team leader, and I had not done any inoculation to prevent this.

Thirdly, I remember that it is essential to carefully plan our actions and to plan all the steps in chronological order: who will act first? Who is likely to get reprimanded first? How to make our colleagues feel that we will support them if they take action? Can I anticipate obstacles (p. ex. relations, vulnerabilities) that could prevent a leader from acting as intended?

Fourth, this action taught me that all actions, as minor as they are, must be organized carefully. The action in question took place at the very beginning of the campaign and even though we agreed on the issues we wanted to address, we were not organized enough to act in a coordinated way. Short, "to be angry" and "to be able to take concrete actions to improve the situation" are not synonymous; it is not for nothing that agitation is the first step of AEIOU, while the formation of a union is the last.

fifth, I remember that our actions must be based on a solid organization and not on flukes: the course of our action depended on the road conditions, which are unpredictable. The weather forecast predicted a snowstorm, but it turned out to be much less intense than expected. The risk that employees would chicken out and decide to go to the office anyway was very present, which introduced some uncertainty among our colleagues.

Finally, I am happy to have participated in this action. I obviously would have preferred that we win, but we have a lot to learn from our failure and I will keep those lessons in mind in the future.

*All names are fictitious.

Article original de Organizing Work