Wednesday, January 07, 2009
On strike: day 61
Today I arrived at the picket line in the afternoon, expecting lunch, but there was a single slice of pizza left. I had resisted eating pizza over the holidays, knowing it would be standard picket line lunch once we resumed the strike. I needn't have bothered: warm, fresh pizza is actually quite tasty. This cold, hard slab of dough cracked in a few places, unwillingly, until I grew fearful for my temporary crowns and pitched the rest of it in the fire barrel. Anyhow, the pizza slice had accomplished its purpose: to remove my appetite.
The rest of the day continued wet and slushy. The line was smallish, 15 people at its height. We endured our penance, marked by the daily 2:30pm arrival of a young man in a silver Volkswagen Golf who told us to get a job and then sped off, and the rare pleasure of a yellow school bus driven by a prune-faced, white haired bus driver woman. In the past she's told us, "I bet you're all NDP voters!" - which as a Marxist I take as the height of insult, presumably how it was meant. Today she made the sign of a cross, and told us we need to stay on strike till April, when our jobs are finished and we can be replaced.
The line dwindled to eight by 4:15pm, until a few hardy souls felt the onset of frostbite and left. Five of us hung on for another half hour and I took up car-talking duty: explaining to the waiting cars that they're going to be held up for a couple of minutes, because we're on strike against the employer and this is our workplace.
This was just enough time for me to be admonished by one driver for holding him up, and yelled at by a couple of young women in a jeep. The man couldn't understand why he should wait, since he has "nothing to do with the strike": I explained that the road he wanted to take cut through my workplace and therefore he was involved: had he just remained quiet he would've gotten through faster.
The young women, in their nice red Suzuki jeep, were in the way of an exiting truck. When I asked them to shift to the side, the driver took a stand and declared, "I've been through three times today, and I'm not moving again!" I could see she really felt she was making her annoyance clear, though risking her paint job is an odd way to do it.
"We live here! Why are you doing this? We don't picket your house!" her well-manicured blonde companion moaned.
"This is my workplace," I told her.
"This is where I live!" she yelled.
"You're stealing our education!" the driver added.
The point that neither would be here unless they were getting an education - which we provide for sub-poverty line wages and no job security - was apparently lost on them. Pragmatically, the six minutes out of their day that their three picket-line crossings cost them was more important.
Yesterday it was a woman in a black Jaguar telling me that she couldn't be held up, because she was a senior, seniors' hours in the pool went from 11am-12pm, and after noon "the rowdies come". I resisted the temptation to tell her to leave the house earlier; "You have no right to be here!" she opined, and I had to walk away with her in mid-yell. The best story I've heard is the SUV-mom who came to our line and said she was on her way to the pool with her kids, and she couldn't be stopped "because there are future Olympians in the back." And she wasn't trying to be funny.
As I sloughed off the day's insults listening to Bad Brains on the way home, it struck me that the Dead Kennedys were right: Give Me Convenience or Give Me Death. Mention global warming or the invasion of Gaza, and people throw up their hands and say they're powerless - which, to be fair, many of them (including me) are. Make them wait for two minutes, and they explode. I'd be tempted to say it's alienation: the lack of control over big things in one's life leads to hanging on to small things very, very tightly. Except that these people have lots of control. They have expensive cars and good hair. They're used to getting things their way, and anything that gets... er, in the way of that very important way is an affront.
The socialist in me knows this isn't true, but it sure feels that way sometimes
We also got plenty of sympathetic talk from drivers, and one young Afro-Caribbean delivery driver waved and wished us good luck. If you're near your local picket line, do come out and wish the strikers well. It means a lot.
Drawing conclusions
There was an excellent post a couple weeks ago on the Socialist Unity blog about negotiating: you can read it here. It seems the author has had some hard experience navigating the lines between political principle and working class consciousness:
But sometimes we have to
It got me thinking that, while we've had plenty of strategies to win, we now need a strategy in case we lose. I still hope for a good deal, and I'll be on the lines till the cold, bitter, windswept end. I don't mean to sound defeatist (and indeed, claiming that talking about a loss is 'defeatist' is part of the problem.) But if we don't unite, the employer can wait us out, or offer us small change and force our wavering members to accept. If this happens - and I think it's likely - then I see it going one of two ways:
a) Mutual recrimination. The 'radicals' blame the 'reactionaries' and vice versa (heavy, heavy air quotes around those terms.) Leftist strategy being associated with a discredited leadership, we either get a truly right-wing union leadership, or we fall apart and go into trusteeship. Unlike Woolworths, there won't be any deep discounted sales to make that bittersweet.
b) a political balance-sheet. Cooler heads prevail and suggest a sober account-taking of what we did right and what we did wrong. There's a re-assertion of democratic process. We take pride in the weeks we stuck together and emerge in a new spirit of togetherness.
I'm a happy trade unionist!
I don't know how b) would happen, but it bears thinking about. Like any relationship, getting closure that allows you to move on is important, and this strike has been an incredibly intense affair.
I'm not going to step into the breach. After this strike is over I'm going to have a long, hot shower, sit down with a cup of cocoa laced with Chartreuse and watch The Tripods.
The rest of the day continued wet and slushy. The line was smallish, 15 people at its height. We endured our penance, marked by the daily 2:30pm arrival of a young man in a silver Volkswagen Golf who told us to get a job and then sped off, and the rare pleasure of a yellow school bus driven by a prune-faced, white haired bus driver woman. In the past she's told us, "I bet you're all NDP voters!" - which as a Marxist I take as the height of insult, presumably how it was meant. Today she made the sign of a cross, and told us we need to stay on strike till April, when our jobs are finished and we can be replaced.
The line dwindled to eight by 4:15pm, until a few hardy souls felt the onset of frostbite and left. Five of us hung on for another half hour and I took up car-talking duty: explaining to the waiting cars that they're going to be held up for a couple of minutes, because we're on strike against the employer and this is our workplace.
This was just enough time for me to be admonished by one driver for holding him up, and yelled at by a couple of young women in a jeep. The man couldn't understand why he should wait, since he has "nothing to do with the strike": I explained that the road he wanted to take cut through my workplace and therefore he was involved: had he just remained quiet he would've gotten through faster.
The young women, in their nice red Suzuki jeep, were in the way of an exiting truck. When I asked them to shift to the side, the driver took a stand and declared, "I've been through three times today, and I'm not moving again!" I could see she really felt she was making her annoyance clear, though risking her paint job is an odd way to do it.
"We live here! Why are you doing this? We don't picket your house!" her well-manicured blonde companion moaned.
"This is my workplace," I told her.
"This is where I live!" she yelled.
"You're stealing our education!" the driver added.
The point that neither would be here unless they were getting an education - which we provide for sub-poverty line wages and no job security - was apparently lost on them. Pragmatically, the six minutes out of their day that their three picket-line crossings cost them was more important.
Yesterday it was a woman in a black Jaguar telling me that she couldn't be held up, because she was a senior, seniors' hours in the pool went from 11am-12pm, and after noon "the rowdies come". I resisted the temptation to tell her to leave the house earlier; "You have no right to be here!" she opined, and I had to walk away with her in mid-yell. The best story I've heard is the SUV-mom who came to our line and said she was on her way to the pool with her kids, and she couldn't be stopped "because there are future Olympians in the back." And she wasn't trying to be funny.
As I sloughed off the day's insults listening to Bad Brains on the way home, it struck me that the Dead Kennedys were right: Give Me Convenience or Give Me Death. Mention global warming or the invasion of Gaza, and people throw up their hands and say they're powerless - which, to be fair, many of them (including me) are. Make them wait for two minutes, and they explode. I'd be tempted to say it's alienation: the lack of control over big things in one's life leads to hanging on to small things very, very tightly. Except that these people have lots of control. They have expensive cars and good hair. They're used to getting things their way, and anything that gets... er, in the way of that very important way is an affront.
The socialist in me knows this isn't true, but it sure feels that way sometimes
We also got plenty of sympathetic talk from drivers, and one young Afro-Caribbean delivery driver waved and wished us good luck. If you're near your local picket line, do come out and wish the strikers well. It means a lot.
Drawing conclusions
There was an excellent post a couple weeks ago on the Socialist Unity blog about negotiating: you can read it here. It seems the author has had some hard experience navigating the lines between political principle and working class consciousness:
for the vast majority of trade union members, including most activists, what they want from their union is collective strength to redress the in-built power advantage that the employer has, and they want representation, and expertise...Sage advice. Our strike goals weren't clearly and narrowly defined at the beginning, and the membership couldn't unite around it. The longer the strike goes, the worse this dynamic gets. Today for the first time I heard we couldn't hold two of our key lines because there weren't enough picketers - this in a strike where only a quarter of the membership has participated at all.
if you are going to take action it needs to be over something as clearly and narrowly defined as possible, and bring to bear the maximum pressure on management that you can. I learned this the hard way... I always used to argue that we should widen the list of demands while we were already out...I never managed to convince a single soul that I was right in this approach, which should have told me something. I was an excitable lad, and wiser heads knew that clear cut small victories were the way to build confidence and organisation.
But sometimes we have to
It got me thinking that, while we've had plenty of strategies to win, we now need a strategy in case we lose. I still hope for a good deal, and I'll be on the lines till the cold, bitter, windswept end. I don't mean to sound defeatist (and indeed, claiming that talking about a loss is 'defeatist' is part of the problem.) But if we don't unite, the employer can wait us out, or offer us small change and force our wavering members to accept. If this happens - and I think it's likely - then I see it going one of two ways:
a) Mutual recrimination. The 'radicals' blame the 'reactionaries' and vice versa (heavy, heavy air quotes around those terms.) Leftist strategy being associated with a discredited leadership, we either get a truly right-wing union leadership, or we fall apart and go into trusteeship. Unlike Woolworths, there won't be any deep discounted sales to make that bittersweet.
b) a political balance-sheet. Cooler heads prevail and suggest a sober account-taking of what we did right and what we did wrong. There's a re-assertion of democratic process. We take pride in the weeks we stuck together and emerge in a new spirit of togetherness.
I'm a happy trade unionist!
I don't know how b) would happen, but it bears thinking about. Like any relationship, getting closure that allows you to move on is important, and this strike has been an incredibly intense affair.
I'm not going to step into the breach. After this strike is over I'm going to have a long, hot shower, sit down with a cup of cocoa laced with Chartreuse and watch The Tripods.
Labels: strike
