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In Part 3, we argue for three principles to guide our organizing. First, we need action. In taking action we change the world, but this struggle also changes us. Action should furthermore be a core part of what we do rather than a last resort. Second, we need to find ways to build a rank and file that keeps union bureaucracy in check, developing methods and skills to apply pressure inside unions as well as the confidence to act for ourselves. Third, enacting democracy means understanding organizing as a process. We want to win, and this necessitates having as many co-workers involved in our struggle as possible. This might mean decisions not going our way or having to learn hard lessons. Struggle is not only about winning, it is also a process that builds new leaders and a confident rank and file. It is through struggle that we become a force capable of changing the world. We also introduce the idea of workers’ inquiry. This builds upon the idea that we, as workers, are best placed to both understand and change our own work.
At the heart of it, organizing and winning is a simple game of maths. Can you apply enough pressure that maintaining the current arrangement is more costly to the employer (whether in finances, disruption or reputation) than making the change that you want? [...]
In the early 2000s in Cochabamba, Bolivia, the community struggled over their access to water. Privatization had been creeping further into public services from the 1980s, but what took place in Cochabamba was much more forceful. The World Bank and the International Monetary Fund were forcing changes – so-called ‘structural adjustment’ – on many countries in the Global South. Much of this was about pushing the claim that privatization is more efficient, introducing economic incentives. Despite widespread evidence that privatization has not delivered this – you only need to look at transport or healthcare in the UK, US and elsewhere – water provision was privatised in Bolivia. It is an example of ‘accumulation by dispossession’, which David Harvey identifies as a key part of neoliberalism. This is a process that involves taking wealth from the many (whether held in public institutions or public goods) and centralizing it in the hands of private interests. Put simply: it is a process of theft.
Cochabamba had been suffering from a chronic water shortage. Many people did not have access to the water network and there were many state subsidies. The Bolivian government auctioned the Cochabamba water system, with only one bidder responding – the Aguas del Tunari consortium of private and foreign interests, including the American Bechtel Corporation, won the forty-year deal for $2.5 billion. However, ‘won’ may be too strong a word, as they were not competing against anyone else. The contract gave them rights to meter the entire water network, including all water in the districts and aquifers. The deal also guaranteed the consortium a 15 per cent annual return on investment. They had been given this legal right to expropriate water after the Bolivian parliament rushed through new legislation.8
While unions come in all shapes and sizes, there are distinctions that are useful to make. There are, broadly speaking, four kinds of unions. First, craft unions. These organize with workers based on the skill involved or the kind of work they do – for example, carpenters being part of a woodworkers’ union. Craft unions may organize workers across different industries but tend to be smaller and concerned with setting boundaries around who can do their kind of work. Controlling this can be part of developing bargaining power. It also means they might work alongside workers who are not eligible to join the same union. Second, industrial unions organize with workers across one industry, regardless of the level or job of the worker. The strength of this model comes from the ability to strike to shut down the whole supply chain. The IWW is one example of radical industrial unionism. While they accept all members, they focus on organizing whole industries, like factories, mining, utilities and transportation. Third, professional unions are like craft unions, but they have grown in so-called white-collar professions. For example, academic workers in the UCU (University and College Union) in the UK is only open to academic or academic-related workers in universities and colleges, not to the wider workforce. Fourth are the general unions that recruit workers from any industry or sector. Most unions today are closer to this kind of model, and many of them are the result of mergers. For example, the SEIU (Service Employees International Union) in the US or Unite in the UK. These unions can grow to be very large, with many having membership in the millions. They may have a blend of craft, professional and industrial unionism within them, depending on their history.
[...] Belfort explains to workers before a shift:
So you listen to me and you listen well. Are you behind on your credit card bills? Good, pick up the phone and start dialling! Is your landlord ready to evict you? Good! Pick up the phone and start dialling! Does your girlfriend think you’re a fucking worthless loser? Good! Pick up the phone and start dialling! I want you to deal with your problems by becoming rich!
This highlights the individualist subjectivity of sales, the responsibility of the worker to close the sale, and in doing so get rich and solve their own problems.
from wolf of wall street.
In sales call centres, particularly those engaged in cold calling, it is relatively easy to calculate the performance of each worker. The computer-enabled telephone system can log each sale and note how long is taken between calls. The extraction of surplus value in the labour process is far more straightforward than in the other types of call centre. This is significant as the worker in cold-calling sales faces sharper pressures and is susceptible to the more aggressive forms of surveillance and control. [...]
on tech as a way of fairly accurately assessing ROI for workers
[...] As Marx argues in Capital, the ‘worker emerges from the process of production looking different from when he entered it’. Starting as a seller of their own labour power, the workers come to the conclusion that they ‘have to put their head together . . . as a class’ so ‘they can be prevented from selling themselves and their families into slavery and death by voluntary contract with capital’. For Tronti this is ‘a political leap’, and ‘it is the leap that the passage through production provokes in what we can call the composition of the working class or even the composition of the class of workers’.
[...] Call centres have become emblematic of the shift towards a post-industrial service economy and the growth of a neoliberal orthodoxy with widespread programmes of ‘deregulation, privatization, and withdrawal of the state from many areas of social provision’. This transformation of work has not been accompanied by a new wave of worker self-organisation or the development of successful trade union initiatives. It is in this economic environment – and one that is very favourable to capital – that call centres have flourished. However, on the other hand, the rise of call centres also represents the desperation of capital. This relentless drive to sell is a reflection of the struggle for companies to remain profitable, which often involves shifting the burden of selling onto workers who rely on commission.
reminiscent of other gig economy-like forms of work
While these introductory talks were going on, I noticed that expressions of the obligatory company values were plastered on the walls: ‘focused, dynamic, pro-active, and committed’. Although these four terms appeared throughout the office in various fonts, they did not seem to mean anything in practice. The trainer pointed up at them and said, ‘We want a culture with these! This is not like other places where they are stuck up on the walls – I mean they are stuck on the walls here too – but we also have them run through everything we do!’ Bizarrely this extended to demanding that workers dressed in a smart/casual uniform in the call centre. Considering none of the customers would ever see a call-centre worker, the stipulation to wear black trousers and smart shoes appeared punitive and not clearly related to any of the four values.
hahaha
The start of each shift at the call centre begins in the break room. The supervisors lead a ‘buzz session’, which is essentially an opportunity for the company to remind workers of the different rules, stress the importance of quality, and then attempt to encourage some kind of enthusiasm for the upcoming shift. The content of these sessions varied, but most involved playing some sort of game. These range from competitions testing product knowledge (perhaps not the most exciting) to word games – for example, each person in turn shouting out the name of a country, following alphabetical order with no repetition, eliminating those who fail to do so until only the winner remains. Although being made to play children’s games was somewhat demeaning, it did offer the benefit of stretching out the time before we had to be on the call-centre floor. Some workers tried to extend these sessions by asking lots of questions and pretending they needed more help than they actually did.
holy shit