Union organising: A referendum on collectivity

January 11, 2023 by Leave a Comment
Nurses protest | DO’Neill – Wikimedia Commons

By EMILY ROSENTHAL. Written for Fightback’s magazine issue on Organisation. Subscribe to our magazine, or e-publication here.

Aotearoa has joined the global trend of high-profile union wins with the passing of Fair Pay Agreements and a precedent-setting judgment for Uber drivers.[1] [2] Now, how do we keep the momentum going?

For working people across the motu, the issues being raised about the cost-of-living crisis are nothing new. We have struggled with the price of food, housing, and transport since the radical de-regulation of the labour market.[3] Things are worse, but they are not novel.

And our response has remained the same for a generation – we must organise.

Our ability to meet and connect with people has been stymied through the pandemic. But it has given us an opportunity to reflect on our strategies.

The pandemic demonstrated the ability of Kiwis to hold collective, intrinsic values. It demonstrated how eager we all were to practice solidarity when our basic needs were being met.

Best-practise progressive campaigning – the foundation which our current labour wins sit upon – believes transformational systems change cannot rely on the previously relied-upon politics of fear.[4]

So, how do we organise?

The principles of organising remain the same, and key values of solidarity and whanaungatanga continue underpin the movement.

Working people are organising in companies and industries that were previously thought to be un-unionisable.

Amazon, Starbucks, and Apple continue to become organised despite concerted, expensive anti-union lobbying. [5] [6] [7]

The methodology of organising continues to shift with technological and social movements, and the unions who are least resistant to change are the ones experiencing novel wins.[8]

Technology is a prosthetic for organising, and is most effective when applied to our most recent understandings of heuristics and cognition.[9]

Heuristics are the neural pathways humans develop to make decisions. The more we understand how people make decisions, the greater our ability to organise.

Fundamentally, we have shifted in our understanding of how we communicate the importance of organising. In the most basic terms, this shift can be described as understanding the chasm between what we say, and what people hear.[10]

As a result, most organising resources have moved from reports, statistics, and basic facts. Previously these were touted as indisputable evidence for the benefits of organising. We thought that if people read and agreed with these, organising was the next logical step.

This belief operated on a flawed principle of the information deficit model, which assumes the gap between organisers and working people are a result of a lack of information or knowledge.[11]

In the wake of the pandemic and the most recent behavioural cognition analysis, advocates of leftist tactics and strategies realised that facts and reports did not change peoples’ minds.[12]

Storytelling and values

In order to shift the mindset of a worker or industry, we needed to organise with a more nuanced approach. This approach must comprise two key elements: storytelling and values-based messaging.

Values-based messaging engages working people’s deeply-held values to motivate concern and action. This involves leading with a trade union vision of the society we wish to inhabit, before stating the barrier to this vision, and ending with solutions of how to solve that barrier.

To organise, a greater effort must be made to develop resources and messaging that activates the intrinsic values of working people. For a lot of organisers, values-based messaging is still a largely under-used and misunderstood framework that is passed over for directives and myth-busting.

Story-based campaigning helps to create a narrative for people struggling to engage with a complicated concept, like collective bargaining.[13] Facets of the trade union movement are also applying this understanding to build rank and file power.[14]

The results of this approach speak to the efficacy of this method. Within the wider progressive movement, transformational change has been achieved through the crafting of a coherent narrative.

In Ireland, abortion rights activists had a resounding victory in a society with deeply entrenched Catholic values and restrictive laws.[15] The victory of this movement was largely attributed to the storytelling campaign used by abortion rights campaigners.[16]

Relational change, as theorised in the Water of Systems Change framework, is the category most relevant to building transformative union power.[17]

Crucially, this methodology must also be applied to internal organising within different wings of the trade union movement.

Internal power structures within the union movement obey similar dynamics to political parties. A deeper understanding has to be forged when building union power – a win for one union is a win for all unions.

Trade union movements will only continue to build power by utilising best-practice, evidence-based methods to organise. For the Left to fight back against rising fascism, we must build on these opportunities, demonstrating the power of collectivity.

[1] https://www.beehive.govt.nz/release/historic-day-everyday-workers-fair-pay-agreements-bill-passes-third-reading

[2] https://www.employmentcourt.govt.nz/assets/Documents/Decisions/2022-NZEmpC-192-E-Tu-Inc-Anor-v-Rasier-Op-BV-Ors-Media-Release-25.10.22.pdf

[3] https://www.buildingabetterfuture.org.nz/decent_work_and_greater_work_life_balance

[4] https://academic.oup.com/bjc/article/62/5/1270/6702072

[5] https://www.amazonlaborunion.org/

[6] https://sbworkersunited.org/

[7] https://sbworkersunited.org/

[8] https://libguides.rutgers.edu/c.php?g=336780&p=2271927

[9] https://conceptually.org/concepts/heuristics

[10] https://www.theworkshop.org.nz/publications/how-to-talk-about-government-and-its-work-for-the-long-term-public-good-2022

[11] https://www.scidev.net/global/editorials/the-case-for-a-deficit-model-of-science-communic/

[12] https://ojs.victoria.ac.nz/pq/article/view/5296

[13] https://commonslibrary.org/reimagining-change-how-to-use-story-based-strategy-to-win-campaigns-build-movements-and-change-the-world/

[14] https://www.ei-ie.org/en/workarea/1326:building-union-power

[15] https://mobilisationlab.org/stories/how-powerful-conversations-yes-ireland/

[16] https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3173574.3173931

[17] https://www.fsg.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/The-Water-of-Systems-Change_rc.pdf

Filed Under: Workers in Struggle

“I’m a Wobbly through-and-through”: Interview with Australian RAFFWU/IWW unionist Tilde Joy

February 1, 2021 by
May Day 2018, so-called Melbourne (image via RAFFWU).

Tilde Joy is an anarchist, activist, trade unionist, and formerly the President of the Retail and Fast Food Workers Union (RAFFWU). Based in Melbourne, she is also a gamer, and does Twitch gaming streams under the name ULTROS_PROFESSIONAL.

  1. What were your first jobs and first experiences in the workforce? How did this shape your views on work?

My first job was at Hungry Jack’s, I was actually somehow hired illegally as a 14 year-old. The minimum age was supposed to be 14 and 9 months at the time, but they took me on 2 months after my 14th birthday. I was paid $6.15/hour at the time (2004), under an awful SDA agreement. Eventually there was a Fair Work decision which got me some backpay, but nothing near what I would have been owed. It was an awful workplace, no breaks – I took up smoking as a kid so I’d be allowed to have a sit down every now and then on my shift. Flat pay, no penalty rates whatsoever. The money being so underwhelming I’d try to take on extra responsibilities, doing the high-risk oil changing roles, passing all my tests making x-amount of whoppers in a minute. They gave me a gold badge! By the time I left that job I was making $7.50/hour. We’d start work as early as 6:30am, sometimes we’d get held back as late as 3am if the store was super messy at closing time. My managers were terrible people, one in particular was fond of showing me awful videos on his phone; beheadings, snuff films, really graphic porn. Terrible place for a child to be on a school night. We all joined the SDA during induction, we had no idea how bad we were being exploited. I quit when I was 16, forever embittered. I hated my bosses and knew we all deserved better, but the idea that the union could change that was not quite an idea that ever crossed our minds. We thought all the union was there for was movie vouchers and discounts at the other fastfood joints.

The main thing that I take away from that experience is that all forms of child labour should be abolished, and the first step towards that is the abolition of junior wages. That won’t stop people from hiring children – kids are inherently exploitable, and therefore desirable as workers – but we have to build the friction here, make it socially unacceptable for children to have jobs ultimately.

  1. When did you first come across a trade union, and were they a relevant force or not in your workplace?

Yeah, the SDA. We saw them on day 1, at induction, something something about how they made sure we were being treated well at work. Even back then they’d emphasise how they worked with the company to achieve that. But after the first day they were gone. We’d get the coupon booklet every year, that’s all. They certainly were a force in the workplace though, they were absolutely complicit in our exploitation. That’s their business model, offering ways for companies to save money on wages and placating an unorganised and fairly oblivious workforce with “perks”.

3. Can you explain what the Shop, Distributive and Allied Employees Association (SDA) is, and the undue organisational and financial influence it wields over its official political representation, the Australian Labor Party (ALP)? Why is the SDA so socially conservative and right-wing, and where does the tendency they represent come from historically? Besides the SDA itself, does this political current have much strength in other labour organisations?

It would be my pleasure. The SDA claims to be the biggest private-sector union in so-called Australia. They cover the retail and fastfood industries, as well as supposedly representing workers in warehousing. They are aligned to the right wing of the ALP and represent the legacy of the grouper movement, which dates back to the 1940’s. Conservative unionists, largely Catholics, organised to combat the influence of the Communist Party within the unions at that time. The National Civic Council ended up being one of the results of this, and the SDA finds its origins there, in anti-communism, social conservatism and political lobbying. In more recent memory the SDA has made submissions to the senate arguing against abortions, stem cell research and same-sex marriage. They were fairly well muzzled during the plebiscite campaign, and seem to have stepped away from openly stating their views, but we can’t forget that Julia Gillard’s alliance with the SDA in the 2010 leadership spill was precipitated upon Gillard towing their conservative line on same-sex marriage. It’s an obscene affair, making millions on yellow unionism, and using workers’ dues to lobby the ALP into withholding rights from women and queers, who are massively over-represented in retail and fast food. I’m sure reactionary elements such as this exist in other unions, and the alliance between the AWU and the SDA in northern QLD is of note here, but I think the depth of the rot in the SDA is somewhat unique.

  1. What relationship should unions have with political parties? In Australia, most unions are part of the Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU) and affiliated to the ALP. Do you think unions should disaffiliate from the ALP, and what purpose would that serve? Would you favour a union like RAFFWU affiliating with a radical political party?

Well, being a dues-paying member of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) I think that any foray into electoralism is a losing strategy. Seeing the resounding failure of the Change the Rules campaign – the ACTU couldn’t even convince the ALP to adopt the right to strike as a policy – I think all the ALP does for the union movement is tamp down any semblance of class consciousness. The blind loyalty to the parliamentary party is absolutely to our detriment, and an active union movement that was willing to put ALP feet to the fire would undoubtedly be more effective. It’s hard to imagine how it could be worse. Certainly, if there are unions that still value the class struggle, they should disaffiliate and start holding parliamentarians to account.

As far as RAFFWU affiliating with a radical party, I wouldn’t be in favour. I’m a fan of big-tent leftism, I think we achieve more focussing on the specifics of class struggle – in RAFFWU’s case building grassroots industrial power – in a non-denominational formation. I mean, I’m a wobbly through and through, and what I love about the idea of the IWW is that we unite in the struggle and synthesise the best of all kinds of radical traditions. I guess I fear the prescriptivism of any given party. People don’t often come to the union movement with super developed politics and I reckon the friction and autonomy of the rank-and-file is the key to keeping the upper echelons honest. That’s the most beautiful thing in the world I think, people coming to radical conclusions through the struggle itself, and keeping the labour aristocracy in check.

  1. What was the reasoning behind the formation of RAFFWU? How do you regard rank-and-file attempts of SDA members to transform the organisation from the inside – is that a viable approach?

Well I wasn’t there on day 1, but the key aim was to challenge the SDA and get our penalty rates back. For decades workers under SDA deals earned substantially less than the minimum wage, and people had tried and tried to reform the SDA. Truth is the SDA punished delegates who tried to do shopfloor organising, one of RAFFWU’s organisers was in that situation before RAFFWU showed up. They were a delegate in a supermarket and their SDA organiser not only took their position away from them but argued to their boss that they should be sacked! They’re fundamentally opposed to even the most basic of workplace organising campaigns. They maintain anti-communist clauses in their rules, odds are that none of the people reading this right now would even be allowed to run for office. It’s a losing game.

But for me personally, why shouldn’t I attack the SDA from the outside? They have harmed me, starved me, gone to the parliament and argued I don’t deserve to exist. I owe them no loyalty, and no retail or fastfood worker on this continent does either. They are equally as implicated in our oppression as our bosses, I’m not here to rehabilitate them, I’m here to burn the house down.

  1. Please tell our readers about some of the activities RAFFWU has been involved in. To take one example – legal challenges have been an important part of RAFFWU strategy. How can legal victories win immediate gains while advancing workers’ rights and workers’ struggle as a whole?

Well the biggest example would have to be the redefinition of the Better Off Overall Test (BOOT). The SDA had sailed by on dodgy EBA’s since 2010, because they were compared to even worse deals from the WorkChoices era. They argued that their deals passed the BOOT because every worker was better off than the old agreement, even if they received less than the award minimums. The bosses didn’t complain about that and the Fair Work Commission (FWC) signed off on all of these atrocious deals. RAFFWU’s biggest innovation here was winning the argument that the BOOT test needed to be applied to the award wage as well. This lifted tens of thousands of workers’ wages to what should have been the minimum wage that whole time.

Other examples are the class action against Domino’s franchises that have attempted to pay workers under substandard SDA agreements without approval by the FWC. Or taking the biggest McDonald’s franchise in the southern hemisphere to court for denying workers toilet breaks and water and their paid 10-minute breaks (hopefully the zoomers won’t take up smoking or vaping or whatever like I did!).

Obviously these campaigns are not the direct result of rank-and-file organising, but the wins are phenomenal, and only possible because someone decided to take a stand against the SDA, who created and fostered these conditions.

  1. Unlike the SDA, RAFFWU takes a strong stance on social issues. You were yourself the first leader of an Australian trade union who is a trans woman. What has RAFFWU practically done when it comes to defending LGBTQIA+ rights, and are there any lessons there for the labour movement as a whole?

I’d like to push back on that question, the SDA does take a strong stance on social issues, and it’s a misogynistic, queerphobic, theocratic and Christian-supremacist stance. They’ve been forced to shut up for the past couple of years, but the rationale remains the same. Check out which parliamentarians came out of the SDA and check their influence on the ALP.

As far as how we enact our stances? RAFFWU is possibly the first union in so-called Australia to make paid transition leave a bargaining claim. We’ve got transphobic supervisors sacked from workplaces. We’ve run campaigns about sexual harassment in McDonald’s and JB-HiFi. We’ve demanded unlimited leave for family and domestic violence. We reject discriminatory parental leave policies which see fathers and queer parents locked out of sharing reproductive labour. We’ve established autonomous caucuses for queer workers and women to direct the union (full disclosure: I’ve just been offered a job facilitating and expanding these caucuses). We show up for International Working Women’s Day to keep transphobes and sex-worker-exclusionists confined to the marginal position they barely deserve. We bring workers out in support of the Kurdish struggle for autonomy in Rojava. We’ve shown up to defend sacred land from Djab Wurrung women’s country to Deebing Creek. We get out there for Invasion Day. And we do these things because they are working class issues. Touch One Touch All.

Insofar as lessons go, I can speak to RAFFWU’s strong emphasis on queer rights and queer unionism. When I first started meeting with my fellow RAFFWU activists from other shops it turned out we were all queers, and mostly women. And that’s because we’re the people who build the backbone of these industries. And because too often these are the only jobs that we can get, whether due to reproductive injustice or queerphobia and discrimination. And we’re not the only feminised/queer industry out there. Unions need to go and have a look at what their industries look like, because the movement has fallen prey to a weird version of identity politics in many cases. White blokes in utes and hi-vis is not where the action is at anymore, but that’s a lot of people’s only idea of what the working class is.

The lockdown here in so-called Melbourne shows that there are only maybe five or six jobs that matter: nurses, couriers, wharfies, truckers, chefs and shelf stackers. Everyone else can take a year off and the world keeps turning. Some of the people with the most industrial power at the moment are migrants, women and queers. The union movement needs to come to terms with that, drop the white-bloke identity stuff and get real. And I don’t mean “this is what a unionist looks like” posters.

  1. What kind of relationship does RAFFWU have to the other trade unions? Has the organisation been welcomed or sidelined by the existing trade unions since its foundation in 2016?

When we first got started we had some amazing support from the ETU, who weren’t affiliated with the ALP at the time (read into that what you will). Outside of that we’ve had brilliant support from the rank-and-file wherever we go, and so long as the union brass is at arm’s length from the parliament then other unions are happy to get behind us. The May 1 Movement in Warrang (so-called Sydney) is a good example.

  1. Among the organisations RAFFWU has collaborated with are the various Anti-Poverty Networks around Australia. What can RAFFWU and other unions do to assist the struggles of the unemployed, underemployed, and those living in poverty?

The way I see it unemployment is a major component of the precarity that characterises the industrial landscape right now. The fact that the coronavirus supplement was perceived as such a threat to employers demonstrates that our wages are intimately tied to the state’s administration of poverty. This should be core, the idea of the reserve army of labour is nothing new.

RAFFWU, and other unions, need to get behind campaigns to raise the rate and end the scam that is the JobActive scheme. For retail in particular, outfits like the salvos use forced labour (work-for-the-dole) in places where they could be actually giving people paid employment. We should also be putting effort into mutual aid schemes, like the ACP’s CUDL programmes for example. If we can defang the threats of homelessness and destitution we can start to destabilise the idea of work’s necessity. At some point automation and productivity gains are supposed to make life easier right? The 30-hour workweek is not even on the map it seems, because we’re all so desperate for whatever we can get.

  1. What are your views on current ACTU leader Sally McManus? Do you think she has offered any alternative to past ACTU leaders and policy in recent years, or does she represent more of the same?

I ran into Sally in the airport once, I was wearing my RAFFWU hoodie, she kinda gave me a glare and kept walking. I’m not a fan. For all the bluster at the start about breaking unjust laws I haven’t seen anything change. The pandemic gave us a once-in-a-generation opportunity to take action – even protected action, under WorkSafe legislation – the opportunity to demonstrate some industrial muscle. We could have seen workers walking off on safety grounds, keeping communities safe from transmission. It was no secret that the place the virus spreads is work. The union movement could have shown their relevance, shown some leadership. Instead we had McManus palling around with Christian Porter to subsidise bosses’ wage bills. They dressed it up as saving jobs, but I’m not sure that played out, they’re cutting the subsidy now and sackings are soaring. We could have had a play at an actual functional welfare state.

But ultimately that kind of mass action is unlikely because the culture isn’t there. The union establishment doesn’t seem to care about class consciousness or militancy anymore, it’s just superannuation funds setting out to regulate the price of labour on behalf of their capitalist mates. I see McManus as part of that trajectory.

  1. How would you describe your own politics, and do you have any thoughts as to the best way forward for left-wing forces and the wider labour and progressive social movements?

I’m an anarcha-communist, perhaps not the best read leftist in the world, but I like to think I take after a lot of Kropotkin’s ideas. I’m down with syndicalism as far as workplace organising goes, but I think the establishment of communism can’t rest solely in the hands of able-bodied “productive” workers. Social ecology, democratic confederalism, that has a lot going for it, but I’ve only read Bookchin’s earlier stuff so I’m not confident in using that to describe myself.

I reckon the massive unrest we’ve seen in places like the so-called United States in 2020 could have gone a lot further if the labour movement had been in a position to strike on a mass scale. The best way forward? Christ help me. I don’t think we have the time on the clock to build the movement we need, but I think we do have to be on the lookout for the next insurrection. Who could have known that George Floyd would be the big one in 2020? Who could have picked that bus fares would have kicked off the uprising in Chile? A fuel tax started the Gilet Jaunes?! All of these movements have benefitted massively from the robustness that decentralised anarchist organising can facilitate in the face of modern militarised policing. The individualist anarchists drive me wild with some of the more deontological stuff, I’ll never be that pure I suppose, but they sure know how to handle the pigs and their chemical weapons. That mode of organising being practiced, being just picked up as the default way to do street-based actions, that’s mighty important. We don’t have that on this continent. Not by a long stretch.

The ability for people to take action in the 2020 uprisings was due in large part to mass-unemployment; i.e. more free time. The union movement can make that real too, if we picked up the old ideas of the 4-day week and things like that. If we fought to make the welfare state reliable, if we prioritised anti-poverty work. I dunno, a girl can dream.

Filed Under: The Workplace, Workers in Struggle

Essential Workers: Essentially Expendable?

December 16, 2020 by
Image via GETTY/gpointstudio.

Originally published by the Health Sector Workers Network of Aotearoa on hswn.org.nz.

Also reprinted in the Pandemic issue of Fightback Magazine. Subscribe here.

Leading into the rāhui/lockdown in Aotearoa on the 25 March 2020, The Health Sector Workers Network of Aotearoa (HSWN) asked essential service workers about the issues they were facing. Receiving 134 responses in the final 10 days of March. They paint a consistent picture of stress and anxiety, safety concerns not being heard, fear of contracting Covid-19 or infecting loved ones and colleagues. The responses strongly called for immediate lockdown, adequate PPE and crucial financial support at a time when these essential measures were still being debated by government leaders. 

Due to the efforts of essential workers and the solidarity by the wider public in staying at home, Aotearoa has been able to relax the strictest social distancing and avoid the catastrophe faced in many other countries. However, the issues that essential workers identified are not new ones. Short-staffing, unsafe workplaces, low pay, work-related distress and frontline workers being excluded from decision-making are all long term problems that Covid-19 brought to the surface. The fact that workers doing the mahi that society depends on are treated as if their own well-being is expendable cannot continue.

HSWN members are essential workers too and we tautoko these responses. The delay in getting our survey out is testament to the high emotions, stress and long hours we experienced working on the Covid-19 frontline. Thank you to all the essential workers who answered our survey. See below the unedited responses to the following questions: 

 1) Where do you work and what is your role/area of essential work (paid on unpaid)?

 2) How is Covid-19 affecting your personal life and/or work as an essential service worker? (e.g. health and safety concerns, management response, mental health, financial concerns etc).

 3) What, in your opinion as a frontline worker, needs to be done? (e.g. community or official responses).

 LMC midwife, working the community, Canterbury

  • NO PPE!! WE HAVE ABSOLUTELY NO PPE! Please help us. I have a limited volume of hand sanitiser, disinfectant and gloves. No masks, no gowns, no glasses, only if a confirmed case of covid-19. Don’t feel safe. Worried about passing illness to my family or pregnant women. Worried I won’t be able to continue working and there are not enough midwives to care for my clients. Why do bank staff have PPE but I don’t???
  • I need PPE. I need clear guidelines from the ministry of health and NZCOM. We have been told to use ‘clinical judgement’ when choosing who to see face to face. Lots of different interpretations of this.
  •  Grocery worker, New World, Wellington
  • Bosses have pushed for maximum overtime from staff, while taking very few precautions and offering nothing in return. Social distancing + ban on indoor gatherings is totally ignored. No protection at all for the staff, aside from disposable gloves, but it is not enforced strongly enough
  • Provide food boxes to those struggling with bills and isolation. Provide hand sanitiser + gloves to customers, Strict limit on entry into store, strictly limit distance between customers + staff. Offer hazard pay/bonuses to staff who continue to work.
  •  Registered Nurse, Waikato DHB
  • I feel our hospital is totally unprepared. Managers from women’s health were excluded from planning meetings due to the area being low risk. Adequate precautions not being taken and staff put at risk due to responses.
  • Close schools and stop lying to people about our policy being based on best scientific evidence and the Singapore/Taiwan response. Taiwan closed schools for extended breaks and delivered 81000 gallons of sanitiser to educational facilities, millions of masks, 25000 forehead thermometers, and has 95% of parents notifying schools of their children’s temperature every school morning prior to arriving.
  •  Freezing Works worker, Taranaki
  • We work with no distance restrictionswe are in close contact everyday, on dayshift at one time there may be 500 employees, on night shift 300 employees
  • Be provided with face masks.  Regular testing of all employees for Coronavirus.
  • Checkout operator
  • Concerned that customers are not staying away when they are unwell, I have an at risk mother who is on her own and if I get sick I can’t help her. We are understaffed most days and now have team members who refuse to serve customers which doubles the level of stress for the rest of us.
  • Clear direction to businesses on what qualifies as pre existing medical conditions and for my company to make a decision on how to keep stores safe for us. At the moment they seem to be more interested in profit and being seen to be doing the right thing
  •  Elderly support worker for Vision West
  • Personally accessing food and using public facilities like the local library. As a service I am dealing with aggressive N.O.K [next of kin] that are scared.
  • I think my employer needs to be timely with their PPE plan and also clients that do not have essential care should be put on hold. Also to minimise risk small teams of 6 need to only see 8- 10 clients. Primary care practice nurse
  • Work has been hectic since Monday. We have been one of the testing stations and our normal workload has been overrun by covid-19 enquiries from both pts and other health services. This has taken a major toll on all our staff.
  • Separate covid-19 clinics keeping potential risk away from our genuinely sick pts who need to be seen. Perhaps we could shut down any non-essential parts of our service and spare staff for the covid 19 centres.
  •  Registered Nurse, ICU
  •  I just got exposed to a covid positive co worker (doctor) who worked 4 days ago.
  •  Provide PPEs, strict social distancing policies. 
  •  New World grocery worker
  • My manager tried to force me to come into work even though I was sick. Not only a violation of my contract, but I’m sure that’s illegal at the moment
  •  Managers to respect the right to sick leave
  •  Petrol Station worker
  • Anxiety level increased
  • More health measures in place to serve customers 
  •  Clinical Specialty Nurse, CMDHB
  • My husband and I work in the same unit. If one is exposed then other will be affected as well. This will have financial burden on both of us as both need to isolate. Personal experience: after husband got flu like symptoms, I was still allowed to work as I had no symptoms. Husband was to isolate until results were up. Difficulty in getting healthline to answer phone calls. GPs are busy. Different advice from management and GPs. A lot of mental exhaustion felt during this period. Being in a leadership role I have to ensure that all my staff is prepared and able to deal with acute demands as well as COVID-19 patients. ICU/HDU trying to save beds for COVID-19 patients therefore other acute cases needing 1:1  deferred or kept at our unit until further notice. Our unit is not a ward therefore patients staying longer than 2 hours causes backlog of other cases needing space. Lack of staff due to specialty cares.
  • More funds for APPROPRIATE diagnosis. Husband had to get tested twice as first ones came up negative and due to busy GP clinic swabs got mixed up/too many people with flu-like symptoms. Standardized gold standard diagnosis. 
  •  Medical Centre receptionist/admin
  • Worried re being exposed and potentially taking home to family. Have had pneumonia previously.
  • Better safety from sick people (which we are trying to fast track at my work) supermarkets etc are very exposed all the time with no preventative measures
  •  Support worker for IDEA Services
  • Health and safety, infection control, not enough protective equipment is being supplied, no masks whatsoever, extra basic stuff like wipes sprays etc is having to come out if the normal provision money for housekeeping etc etc.
  • More protection for workers.
  •  Pizza delivery driver
  • Safety concerns especially if people don’t let us know beforehand on their orders if they are sick
  • All persons ordering anything MUST let us know if they are sick. 
  •  Hospital Admin, Dundedin
  • Would prefer to work from home, but not possible as there is no IT support available.
  •  Admin and Clerical staff in the hospital need to be kept advised about the situation in the hospital, just as doctors and nurses are!! 
  • Registered nurse youth health, West Auckland
  • Increased social distancing, considering decreasing appointments to essential only, potential shift forced by DHB to turn our clinic into a testing area which will greatly impact our current essential services.
  • Increased support on Primary Health Care side of management and containment, including paying RNs more, and providing proper funding for or directly providing essential PPE supplies.Registered Nurse, Nelson Hospital
  • Safety of family and friends, if I’m infected at work, will managers (also health professionals) be available to work on the wards? Will we have PPE? If not what is recommended by health and safety?
  • Managers need to involve staff, who will be front line in what the plan is, clear direction

Security, Southern District Health Board

  • Am very concerned for my health at work, no protection been given so far! Also very disappointed testing is not wide spread! How do we know it’s not already community spread if the government puts protocols in place to NOT TEST people who have all the symptoms? How do we not know that someone who has all the symptoms, has tried to get themselves tested but can not! How do we know they didn’t catch it from the person coughing in front of them at the supermarket! So pissed at our government right now! Too little, too late!
  • Ease of mind! Test people for crying out loud! Lock the country down like in China! You know in China they put a metal bar across the entrances to houses where people were infected! We are doing bugger all! No safety measures at supermarkets, no protection at work! 
  •  Registered Nurse, Ōpōtiki
  • Working 6-7 days a week. Partner in the higher risk category (male, diabetic on ACE inhibitor), he has had to close his business as he works in events and they are all cancelled/postponed.
  • Ensure sufficient PPE, encourage additional staff to work if possible to ensure more normal hours are being kept, otherwise working 7 days a week for a long time will end up with more staff off sickCheckout operator, New World, Thorndon
  • Putting my life at risk to serve others, not being able to stay 2 meters away from other people and not much precautions in place for staff. Uni courses are going online now.
  • More health and safety precautions for staffHome support worker for the elderly and people with disabilities
  • My agency has not provided PPE for some years. Now we can’t get any ourselves. Management won’t answer any questions about this – clients are cancelling care – less hours for us – as we move from house to house we fear transmitting the virus; however management have said we are no more at risk than any flu season. All our clients are extra vulnerable – we have five days a year sick leave and are expected to use it, and then apply for annual leave. There is no talk of special leave. – we already work erratic hours with cancelled cares and changes in guaranteed hours being a problem – Many of us are elderly ourselves or have respiratory problems. When on Friday Geneva told its workers over 70 and immunocompromised workers they couldn’t work, that meant many workers downed tools – some workers are leaving their jobs because their own health is poor. They are worried about getting infected. – management from my agency seems to treat the situation as business as usual. We’re just asked to watch the government website. We still get texts every day asking us to do jobs – there is nothing communicated about the free flu vaccine.
  • Clarity of communication. If they don’t know, tell us. Acknowledging our value as care workers. 

 Māori midwife in the community, Manawatū 

  • I am an asthmatic so is my son. Likewise my brother and my mother who is 67. I have made the choice to keep my son home. I can no longer support wāhine hapū to birth. I am lucky my husband can still work and I have another form of income at the moment.
  • There needs to be an action plan set for kaimahi Māori to make sure we as frontline staff are looked after in a culturally responsive way, as well as the whanau we support.

Security officer at supermarket

  • Scared, feeling helpless. Accepting probably going to get sick
  • Free public transport and other benefits for low wage essential workers.

Radiology, Mid Central Health

  • Have to work, shared child care, solo Mum. Who looks after my kids when I have to work? Or do I not work and not get paid?
  • Being told we don’t have enough protective gear at the hospital is very worrying. Produce more hand sanitizer, people are worried because it ran out.
  •  Caregiver for mother and uncle, one with dementia one with lung cancer
  • I am concerned I may carry virus to them as I’m their only contact to outside world at the moment. I’m the only one to do their shopping, cooking and personal cares. Very worried.
  • Level 4 needs to be put in place

 Forensic psychiatry, Mason Clinic

  • Rest of family at home. Onus on me not to bring the virus home-or take it to work!
  • A robust  barrier in place both at home and at work, a sort of firewall each end. Simple, but consistent. I will carry my ID, to prove that I am a health worker, and legitimately out of my house. Public information needs to be everywhere. Clear and simple guidelines, and repeated. People need to understand what is essential and what is useless. I saw quite a few people wearing disposable gloves at a supermarket yesterday, and touching everything with those gloved hands, as if they would somehow not transfer infection. I guess advice needs to be dynamic as we observe behaviours and see what the salient gaps in our defences are.

 Longline assistant, Countdown

  • Really concerned with the number of people rushing stores and no safety equipment provided for the workers.
  • People coming in and out of the store should be tested by their temperature and safety equipment such as gloves and masks should be provided to the workers.

Front Reception, DHB hospital

  • I’m not getting information given to me from my management or above as to what is happening so I am unable to put things in place and am not prepared for situations and questions I get asked at work by the public. I don’t know what’s happening with my job. This is affecting me getting to work as I depend on public transport. Health and safety hasn’t been covered efficiently for my area, the front of the hospital. This has been shown by an incident that occured due to the sanitiser and how everyone passed the buck to wanting to be accountable for it and wanting to prevent it, so I took it upon myself. Financially it’s beginning to cripple me as I was meant to be starting more hours this week because of financial struggle, now this will impact on me mentally and financially. Lack of team morale within the workplace has been a huge impact on me, no communication or compassion. No rallying together to care about one another at this time of need but this behaviour ripples from the top.
  • Supervisors and management’s needs to find out what is planned for our department for the next four weeks and let us know ASAP so we can plan our lives. There needs to be firm leaders in each team chosen my management to take the wheel during this time. Communication is the key. We also should be getting financial support for this especially people in my types of positions that have close proximity of contact with people in case we get ill as we are sacrificing our well being for the people or Aotearoa. 

 Nurse, ICU

  • Family separation. Young children and elderly parents so to protect them while being available to care for patients I have isolated myself from them. Although utilising PPE there are still concerns of transmission to healthcare workers as had happened in China & Italy. So while many are worried about being crowded at home many of us health carers are looking at a lonely time when we are at home. And frustrated I can’t help them with the everyday business and worry about the stress on my parents. And their worry for me. Once it gets busy then it’ll be very different as we will all have a hyper focus at work and we all anticipate working a lot of extras. Getting tired and needing to maximise our own immunity too is a concern.
  • Nutritional Meals/drinks supplied and perhaps accommodation for some….. not everyone can isolate as easily from loved ones as others can. Maybe some simple immune supplemental support for staff. And emotional support early to aid staff resilience.Maybe DHB only shopping times at supermarkets…to reduce public interaction but also free up supplies for essential workers. And supermarkets need to count customers and limit numbers of people going in and out of the stores. Lock down to limit spread of disease is important and we all need to adhere to it. 

 LMC Midwife

  • Isolated at home as my husband is immunocompromised and I have an underlying health condition as well. This means I have to pay a backup midwife out of my own pocket, to cover my caseload. Not sure how we are going to manage financially. Also have concerns about lack of PPE provisions for midwives working closely with people, particularly as there is no other profession that is at higher risk of exposure to body fluids. 

 District Nurse

  • Afraid of bringing the virus home to loved ones.
  • Provide health care workers who are working during a community outbreak with paid accommodation to help to contain the spread. There are many nurses out there for who it is impossible to isolate from family members within one household. 

 LMC Midwife

  • I’m concerned about lack of guidance from the MOH and NZCOM.. I’m worried for my health and risk of exposure. I’m currently unable to access any PPE or cleaning/disinfectant supplies.
  • More guidance, more support, more ppe and disinfectant supplies.

 Public transport bus driver

  • Financial concerns, health & safety concerns, implications of social distancing on single households
  • More emphasis on workplace cleaning for non-public areas; transfers of covid in car surfaces 

Self employed midwife

  • Expected to carry on seeing women with currently limited guidance and NP provision so far of PPE. 
  • Urgent provision of PPE and no expectations of us to work without them. And for midwives appreciate pay provision. It is shocking what we are expected to do for little pay and no pay 

 LMC Midwife, West Community

  • Very stressed. Have been given no PPE equipment, no guidance from the midwifery council or MOH and expected to still see women with no safety or information. Huge health and safety concerns, this has been poorly managed especially since it was obvious this would happen. Very worried about money. Rent should stop.
  • Rent and mortgage and bills need to be stopped. A ban on more than 2 products in supermarkets should have been implemented earlier. Should have been better control on stockpiling infection control equipment. The airport should have done better control and screening. We need answers from the MOH, we need PPE equipment and to not have accountability if something goes wrong because we weren’t allowed to see our patients. We need direction.

 Paramedic, Christchurch

  • Anxiety increased and a more stressful workload.
  • Promises for the future (both short and long term), practical and demonstrative assurances.

Ward clerk, Surgical wards

  • Mental health. Clinical depression diagnosed. No support groups – shut down at mo. Being at hospital I’m overly anxious, depressed and worried.Would rather be home but I can’t – I’m not 70 plus, pregnant etc. Clinical depression. Is not deemed unsafe.
  • Transparency. For staff at home and rostered days off, no work emails coming to home emails. So very much in the dark. 

Frontline Mental Health Crisis Respite 

  • My staff over half team at my site dropped off because of fear of taking COVID19 home. We that are working skeleton think we should be Compensated above our normal rate. The flak I’m getting from home because a partner has a Respiratory disease has caused our home stress. No assurances from our NGO or Capital Coast Health that they will give us Priority healthcare in the event of CV19. No danger money no promised time down when the Pandemic for all who are frontline Health on ordinary wages. Thanks guys.
  • All people before contact with Health workers, including my site in Mental Health Crisis respite, tested for Covid 19 before working with them. DHB to pick up.our Client Bedding done at Hospital to stop spread of germs. we only have a small home brand 5kg machine doesn’t ever seem up to standard yet they’re willing to risk clients beds not sanitized properly.

Practice Nurse

  • Very very upset today as both myself and husband who is working at another hospital in another region 6 hrs away, are front line medical workers. Kids very scared that we are both going to die! Management have been excellent in getting PPE, but I feel it’s been largely up to us if we wear it when dealing with the general public. Feeling very very torn between my children and my duty to my patients, very very stressful. Extremely worried about bringing virus home to my children.
  • Need to make general Public aware of how serious this Covid 19 is and how deadly it is! Proper policing of “lockdown” NO ONE out socialising ! Front line workers need to be protected from public who might see their needs as more important and get aggressive and abusive (this happens now let alone when there is this heightened stress)  There needs to be Adequate alternative services for counselling/mental health services e.g. phone consult.  this has finished just No Leave at this time. We are stressed.  It means washing clothing daily, no scrubs available and no booties or head covers either, so the power Bill’s at work skyrocket from showering before work and after. We Want to be compensated with higher rates of pay like Hospitals pay – time and half double time and unlimited sick leave during the pandemic.
Filed Under: COVID-19, The Workplace, Work rights, Workers in Struggle, Workplace Health and Safety

No Concessions: Australian tertiary education workers fight back

April 29, 2020 by

By Ani White, NTEU member and casual tutor.

In Australia’s National Tertiary Education Union (NTEU), my union, a rank and file rebellion is challenging officials’ defeatist response to the COVID-19 crisis. This piece will begin by outlining the background situation, before outlining the No Concessions campaign led by members.

Background
Many university workers are not covered by JobKeeper, a payment for businesses significantly affected by COVID-19. The NTEU has therefore campaigned for JobKeeper, and full Federal funding. Over this period casuals have been sacked en masse, including 200 staff at my university RMIT. Universities are also seeking to implement a pay freeze, and to restructure Enterprise Bargaining Agreements.

However, the NTEU National Executive has been drawn into a managerial logic of helping balance the books, and a defeatist view of the crisis. A common idea, expressed both by the National Executive and those academics who support them, is that a sacrifice in pay is needed to protect job security. There is a liberal notion here of solidarity as self-sacrifice by privileged academics, rather than solidarity as a rising tide lifting all ships. Additionally, as highlighted by Kaye Broadbent in the Campus Morning Mail:

[N]ot everyone in the university sector is a highly paid academic. Universities are kept afloat by thousands of casual academics, fixed term research academics and casual and contract professional staff.

For the insecurely employed and low paid staff employed in universities reducing pay by any amount will create hardship – our rent and bills still need to be paid. For many university workers, their income is the only one in the household – especially since the crisis hit. And there’s no guarantee even with a pay cut that one more person will keep their job as a result.

Although negotiations are being conducted in secret, union militants have released information about the National Executive’s plans. According to an open letter by Katie Wood, a unionist at University of Melbourne:

On April 3, the National Executive of the NTEU unanimously approved a framework of negotiations that included the possibility of “general reductions in Agreement rates”. NTEU members were unaware of this decision until a Guardian article, published on April 17. Despite various denials from senior leadership that a reduction in rates is under discussion, a survey circulated in some branches asks members if they would be willing to take a reduction in hourly rates of up to 10%”

A document prepared for [the 25th of April’s] briefing of the NTEU National Council… states that the aim of the [National Executive] strategy is to secure “a strong Union role in managing the introduction of any cost saving measures” (emphasis mine).

In a more recent article for Red Flag, after the unconstitutional National Council meeting of April 25th, Wood reported the following:

This week, a hastily called national council “briefing” was rebadged as a “meeting of national councillors” to ram through a vote backing the national executive’s strategy of collaborating with management. The meeting approved the national executive’s motion by a vote of 89 to 13. That’s been touted as a vote of confidence in the strategy, but it has no standing in the union’s official rules – there was no procedure to propose motions beforehand, amendments were explicitly ruled out and procedural motions were repeatedly ignored.

Fightback
The No Concessions campaign began with a motion censuring the National Executive, passed on April 12th at a University of Sydney members’ meeting, by 117 votes to 2. Supporting motions have been passed at members’ meetings across the country. Over 800 members, including myself, signed a statement calling for no concessions by the NTEU National Executive.

Union meetings on Zoom have attracted hundreds of members. However, union officials often run these more like one-way seminars than democratic meetings. The managerial tone became apparent to me personally at a snap ‘rally’ of the Victorian NTEU, just before the No Concessions campaign kicked off: officials claimed that the state government was sympathetic, and members had no opportunity to speak. Members have used the chat function to challenge the official line, alongside establishing independent channels for communication between rank and file members.

After motions and statements being passed in various places, core activists are itching to translate this into action. Strikes are illegal outside of collective bargaining, with a risk of significant fines. However, refusal of unpaid work is under discussion as an industrial tactic. Alongside enforcing the Enterprise Bargaining Agreement, this would double as a statement of solidarity with casuals who should be performing that work – a vastly preferable tactic to trading wage freezes for job security.

This week RMIT Casuals, my own section, passed a motion calling on staff to refuse unpaid work. Members are also campaigning for a National Day of Action on the 21st of May.

Filed Under: COVID-19, Education, Workers in Struggle

Freelancing isn’t free: precarity and self-organization in the “gig economy”

December 16, 2019 by
Agitprop from the Freelancer’s Union (USA)

by DAPHNE LAWLESS. From the new issue of FIGHTBACK magazine, “Trade Unions for the 21st Century”. To order a print copy for $NZ10 + postage, or to subscribe in electronic or print format, see here.

Under capitalism, we’re all supposed to dream of being “the boss” – as opposed to an exploited worker obeying the bosses’ orders. Obviously we can’t all be bosses – who would we order around and exploit? – but the next best thing, in modern “neoliberal” capitalism, is to be your own boss. Hence the appeal of those scam ads for “EARN BIG MONEY AT HOME”, which turns out to be selling cosmetics or bogus diet aids to your friends.

Capitalism is defined by the division between those who own capital – the tools, machines and resources – and those who have to work for a living for the owners of capital. “Self-employed” people are generally seen as being part of a “middle-class” between these two layers. In essence, they own just enough capital to make it possible to employ and exploit the labour of only one worker – themselves. The willingness of a self-employed person to “exploit their own labour” is one reason why small contractors are often more productive than waged or salaried workers – at a proportionate cost to their own health and personal lives.

The idea of self-employed people (often known as “freelancers”, especially when they are writers or other creative workers) as middle-class is an old-fashioned one. Increasingly, neoliberalism has made the idea of a full-time job, especially one “for life”, a thing of the past. Buzzwords like “downsizing” and “labour market flexibility” just boil down to more power for bosses to hire and fire, to drive down wages and conditions. In this situation, there is a whole new class of freelancers who can just be seen as casualised workers who own their own tools.

Freedom is a two-edged sword

A freelancer is only paid for the job. There is no guarantee of future employment, no sick leave and no holiday pay. In these situations, freelancing can even be seen as a form of “disguised unemployment”. Often, having several “clients” rather than a single employer paying you offers no escape from exploitation and mismanagement; the website clientsfromhell.com provides a regular supply of hilarious, depressing and true stories of freelancers suffering at the hands of bigoted, fraudulent, miserly, or simply ignorant employers. Freelance journalist Jacob Silverman complains:

Every generation has its comeuppance. Ours lies in the vast field of disappointment that you land in after you run the gauntlet of privatized education, unpaid internships, and other markers of the prestige economy. There you find that writing ability or general intelligence mean nothing if you don’t have the right connections, or the ability to flatter those in authority, or a father who once held the same job. Those who have mastered these forms of soft power succeed while the rest learn the meaning of “precariat” and debate joining the Democratic Socialists of America.[1]

However, there is another side of the story. Neoliberal ideology talks about the “freedom” of the freelance, be-your-own-boss lifestyle. And it really is freedom, of a sort. A freelance worker sets their own hours of work; they can often work from home, which gives opportunities to parents of small families.

Crucially, a freelance worker also has control over the conditions of their work – when your client/boss is only paying you for what you produce, you can produce it in any way you see fit, without a manager hovering over you. And a freelancer can also reject any job or any client which they consider repugnant, for whatever reason – if they can afford to. (The present author once rejected an opportunity to index the biography of a senior New Zealand politician – not for political reasons, but because the pay they were offering for it was negligible!)

But this is the same freedom that a stray cat has – the freedom to starve. The situation is even more dire in the United States, where the only affordable medical care for many workers is employer-provided health insurance. Being excluded from the “full-time” job market might mean a death sentence if you have needs which can’t be covered out of your own resources.

The author of this article became a freelancer when her employer went out of business; she simply purchased her work computer and kept doing the same job, often for the same international clients. I can testify to both the aspects of the equation above. The precarity and anxiety of sometimes not knowing where your next work (and pay) is coming from contrasts with other times when there is far too much work coming on tight deadlines and you have to choose between giving up a job and giving up your health. But all this is balanced by being able to work how I want, from where I want, producing work of which I can feel proud (that is, if I’m paid adequately to do so.) I can even just ditch work for the day to look after my preschool child, when necessary and deadlines permitting.

The freelance job-advertising website Upwork reports that

nearly half (46%) of Generation Z [those born after 1997] workers are freelancers, a number that is only projected to grow in the next five years …not only are more Gen Zers freelancing, but 73% are doing so by choice rather than necessity, while only 66% of Baby Boomers and 64% of Millennials can say the same, according to the report.[2]

Similarly the British Association of Independent Professionals and the Self-Employed reports that in the UK:

the number of female freelancers has grown by 55% since 2008. New mothers choosing to take up freelance work rather than return to full-time office employment post-baby has shot up by 79%. Comparatively, the number of men freelancing has grown by 36% in the same time frame.[3]

This new form of employment relationship is thus dominated by younger people and by women, two of the most vulnerable sections of the working class. In these situations, the kneejerk reaction of the traditional workers’ movement that freelancing is just a way for employers to drive wages down, and should be discouraged or even abolished, looks as out as touch as those who say the same things about migrant workers. Many of us choose to freelance, and prefer the conditions of work to clocking in every day under a manager’s supervision. What we don’t like is the insecurity attached to it.

Ideology and organization

The point now should be not whether freelance work should exist, but how the position of freelance workers can be improved. And in the Marxist tradition, the answer to that has always been “the self-organization of the workers themselves”. But the current labour union movement has enough trouble organizing workers on small, geographically dispersed sites. How can we possibly organize workers who work from home, online, with a different “boss” every week or maybe even multiple bosses on the same day?

Another major problem with organizing freelancers is the strong influence of ruling-class ideas that freelancers should see themselves as “entrepreneurs” rather than workers – even when living in precarity at the whim of millionaire clients. According to Tom Cassauwers writing for Equal Times website:

Freelancers often see themselves as free-wheeling entrepreneurs, with little need for collective power or forming alliances with employees. On the other hand, some unions have a history of mistrusting freelancers, seeing them as a way for employers to undermine working conditions.

Freelancer Sarah Grey adds that corporate lobbyists invest a lot in trying to get freelancers to see law changes and union organization which would actually benefit them as a threat to their “freedom”:

Aligning freelancers ideologically with the goals of the petit-bourgeoisie (which some Marxists also do…), even though most have far more in common with the working class, erects yet another barrier to prevent them from organizing and demanding rights as workers.[4]

This tactic was used to gruesome effect by Peter Jackson and Warner Brothers in the dispute around the filming of the Hobbit films in New Zealand in 2010. When Actors’ Equity demanded a union contract, a slick PR operation by the employers whipped up fear that this would lead to the major studios abandoning film-making in New Zealand altogether. This led to film workers actually demonstrating in favour of law changes which deprived them of rights (one memorable sign said “EXPLOIT ME, PETER!”) and union spokesperson Robyn Malcolm faced vicious harassment.[5]

Another crucial question is how to distinguish between actual freelance workers and “fake freelancers” – workers who are actually working in traditional jobs but have been pushed into declaring themselves to be freelance or “independent contractors” so that their employers can deprive them of rights. The most familiar example of this in Aotearoa is workers at Chorus who maintain our telecommunications infrastructure.[6] Traditional unions or NGOs have to be careful to defend the rights of actual freelancers while also defending the rights of full-time workers to have all their appropriate rights and conditions of labour.[7]

What kind of organization?

Freelancer organization is currently most advanced in the United States, precisely because of the issue of health insurance mentioned above. The Freelancers’ Union (https://www.freelancersunion.org/), founded in 2001 by former labour lawyer and union organizer Sara Horowitz, concentrates mostly on advocacy and getting good deals on health insurance from its members. Their biggest victory in advocacy came with New York City enacting a “Freelance Isn’t Free” law, which requires that all freelancers be paid within 30 days alongside other legal protections.[8]

However, the Freelancers’ Union is not actually a “union” in the way we would understand it, in that it does not engage in collective bargaining on behalf of its members. It is in fact more similar a non-profit organization which provides services and advocacy in return for membership fees; a “top-down” organization, rather than an expression of workers’ power. It works for freelancers “within the system” rather than trying to change that system.[9]

One major issue in the United States is that the labour laws left over from the Franklin Roosevelt “New Deal” era specifically exclude many categories of workers (originally to make the law acceptable to racist Southern agriculture bosses). Thus, many freelancers and other “gig economy” workers couldn’t join a union if they wanted to. This is where NGO advocacy organizations play an important role, like the Freelancers’ Union, or like the organizations who have lobbied for improved conditions for Uber and Lyft drivers – even organizing successful strikes in Los Angeles.[10]

That said, there are successful models of union organization among freelance industries – the most famous being unions in the entertainment industry (which existed before the US labour laws mentioned above). The US television industry was brought to a near-halt by the Writers’ Guild of America strike of 2007-8,[11] and the same union is currently taking legal action against talent agencies who they say are exploiting their monopoly position against writers.[12]

The entertainment industry is one of the economic pillars of the US economy and – in that country, at least, can’t be easily outsourced to more desperate overseas workers (the threat of which proved so effective in the defeat of the actors’ unions in New Zealand during the Hobbit dispute). So it’s perhaps not surprising that “old-style” union power still has a foothold there. But what models are available for those of us in less “trendy” freelance jobs – for example, writing or editing jobs, where there is continuous downward pressure on pay, deadlines, and the quality of work deemed acceptable?

One recent answer comes from a very venerable source – the anarcho-syndicalist Industrial Workers of the World (IWW, or “Wobblies”) have recently started organizing among freelance journalists. An article from a member-organizer tells a story which is very familiar to freelancers in other industries:

Many new to the industry are expected to work “for exposure” (that is, for free or unliveable rates); writers covering sensitive topics are forced to shoulder the burden of legal liability and harassment from angry subjects and readers; health insurance is either a clusterfuck to obtain or simply out of reach. All of these problems follow the same dynamic: because freelancers are individually outgunned by the publications that they rely on for their livelihoods, they are forced to work under extremely exploitative conditions…

[S]taffers’ unions are only useful insofar as there are staffers; after being sold, [the website] Mic was relaunched without staffers — relying almost entirely on freelancers instead. If freelancers are not to be made de facto scabs, then they must be organized. And because staffers’ unions, bound by red tape and budgets, are not organizing freelancers, freelancers must organize themselves.[13]

The article goes on to discuss the question raised above, how to “map the workplace” (create ties between freelancers who might never meet each other in person) through one-on-one contacts through existing personal and professional networks. Crucially, the Wobbly organizers have worked on an international basis – just as feasible as local and national organizing when the community is globalised through the Internet – and has made no distinctions between print journalists, website journalists or bloggers. They have already announced a small victory: a Twitter campaign forcing the website Vox to rescind their rule prohibiting freelance writers from publicly discussing how much Vox pays them.

Other, more “traditional” labour unions have also had victories. In the US, the National Writers Union won a major battle for back-pay for freelance journalists in 2018.[14] The Dutch trade union FNV, the German union ver.di and the British trade union Community have all made serious efforts to organize freelancers – the latter, similarly to the American NWU, aims to concentrate mainly on problems with late payments.[15]

Andrew Pakes of the British union Prospect toured New Zealand last year, giving talks on the question of organizing freelance workers. In a website article, he explains:

Our approach is based on the premise of empowering freelancers (“what can freelancers do together for themselves?”) and our organizing strategy, communications and services are designed around supporting that.

We help freelance workers to organize themselves and treat the union as a source of experience, advice and administrative assistance – one that helps to create a sense of identity and pools knowledge to tackle shared concerns. This combines the best of union organizing with new ways of working and extending our reach into growing gig areas, in the creative industries, communication and digital sectors. This approach is not without its challenges and adaptability is key.[16]

The question is clearly not whether organizing freelance workers is possible, because it is being done. The question of whether traditional unionism, the “Wobbly shop” or an NGO advocacy-and-service model is the most effective is one which can only be established by experience. But time is long since due for freelance workers and their allies in Aotearoa/New Zealand to start making experiments.

Sarah Grey gives an excellent final word:

freelancers can no longer be written off as aligning ideologically with the petit-bourgeoisie. Freelancers increasingly come from working-class backgrounds, work for low wages, and share the primary interests — and the precarity — of the wider working class. We are not a precari-bourgeoisie — we are the future of class struggle.

[1] https://newrepublic.com/article/153744/gig-economy

[2] https://www.techrepublic.com/article/growth-of-the-gig-economy-46-of-gen-z-workers-are-freelancers/

[3] https://www.ceotodaymagazine.com/2018/07/the-rise-of-the-freelancer/

[4] https://www.jacobinmag.com/2015/05/freelance-independent-contractor-union-precariat/

[5] See our predecessor organization’s article at https://fightback.org.nz/2010/10/25/workers-party-statement-on-the-hobbit-dispute/, complete with comments from anti-union members of the entertainment industry

[6] https://www.stuff.co.nz/business/110473768/action-widens-against-chorus-subcontractors-accused-of-migrant-exploitation

[7] https://www.equaltimes.org/unions-should-push-for-the-rights

[8] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/12/07/for-freelancers-getting-stiffed-is-part-of-the-job-some-in-new-york-city-want-to-fix-it/

[9] A good account of the positive and negatives of the Freelancers’ Union is provided here: https://www.jacobinmag.com/2014/10/freelancers-union/

[10] https://www.teenvogue.com/story/freelancers-want-to-join-unions-but-labor-laws-wont-let-them

[11] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2007%E2%80%9308_Writers_Guild_of_America_strike

[12] https://www.businessinsider.com/tv-writers-union-says-agents-are-violating-antitrust-law-2019-8/

[13] https://organizing.work/2019/08/a-year-of-organizing-freelance-journalists/

[14] https://www.equaltimes.org/unions-should-push-for-the-rights

[15] https://community-tu.org/who-we-help/freelancers-and-self-employed/

[16] http://unions21.org.uk/news/lessons-for-a-collective-voice-in-a-freelance-world

Filed Under: Uncategorized, Union movement, Work rights, Workers in Struggle
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