The committee in action - Phinneas Gage | | |
In this article Phinneas Gage describes how workers at Canada Post have organized themselves, and the ups and downs and risks of organizing. | | |
“So let’s talk about what happened in the last month or so”. I said looking over the room full of the usual suspects. Harjit told the story like this: “the supervisors came out on to the floor to talk to everyone about taking forceback (forced overtime), they didn’t think anything was up when they asked the first person and they refused. They just nodded made a note and moved down the row”. He was grinning like a maniac. “The supervisor then asked if it was a group decision, and everyone said no”. Pete continued the story beaming with pride “then the next one refused, and the next one, and the next one until the entire depot had refused forced overtime”. A sister in the back of the room asked what the supervisors did next “they ran back into their office and called upper management in the plant”. All of the workers simply said that mail was heavy, it had been a long day and they didn’t feel that doing overtime that day was a safe decision. This was when Harjit had sent the text out across the city and everyone heard about what had happened at Depot 9. | | |
The workers at Depot 9 built their job action around a core group of workers who had staged a march on the boss action before Christmas. The action was a textbook example of what we taught in our “Taking Back the Workfloor Course”. The course was a single day of workplace mapping, basic strategy and a series of role plays designed to teach workers how to plan and execute job actions. The centre piece was a role play march on the boss where the workers take on a facilitator pretending to be a boss. The carriers were upset because the supervisors were being sloppy in assigning jobs to the workers who cover absences known as relief carriers. Usually this is done based on seniority (how long someone has been at the corporation) but often management will cut corners, either out of laziness or favourtism and assign the jobs based on their own whims. The relief carriers demanded that management respect the seniority list. After this action the supervisors were careful to assign relief positions properly. This gave the carriers the confidence to be more ambitious when the time came for them to stand together again. They were also smart about it, they claimed the victory for what it was and told the other workers on the floor about what they got by standing together and taking action. | | |
