The Masses Editorial Board is re-publishing the following piece which we find unity with, was written by New Day at Amazon, and published by our comrades at the New Labor Press. This piece contains vital information on the taking up of mass work and labor organization.
In the course of organizing your coworkers, it is necessary to learn the proper strategy and tactics of talking to your coworkers. We should be very clear: there is a right way and a wrong way to talk to each other. We can start with the whole point of talking to each other: getting to know each other’s opinion and working together to have genuine workplace democracy by mobilizing people for action. We have to get the most people involved as possible!
The process outlined below does not have to be followed to a tee. The objective of this article is to lay out general principles of either getting someone involved or getting someone’s opinion. We should be strategic with who we talk to and tactical with how we talk with people. This means there are certain people we should or can talk to, and we should be ensuring we do it in the right way.
Finally, we want to thank the website firewithfire.blog for a lot of inspiration for this article! It simply would not be as good as it is without it!
Who to Talk to and Who Not to Talk To
- First and foremost, we talk with our friends and do not talk to our enemies. That, of course, raises an obvious question: who are our friends and our enemies in the workplace? It can be boiled down to our basic goal and how people relate to it: we are organizing a strong union and eventually an effective strike to win our demands! This is a class struggle. We are the working class, and we are fighting against the capitalist class. If someone works directly against this goal, they are supporting the other class and should be at least temporarily isolated. If someone works for or supports this goal, they are a friend of the working class and we should involve them.
- There are two basic types of people who you should directly approach with little hesitation: those whom you have an extremely high level of trust with, and almost anyone who is speaking directly in favor of unionization or something similar. Of course, take caution still and ask a question or two. But if they can be spoken to, speak to them!
- There are a couple of different kinds of questions you should ask yourself before approaching someone explicitly about our efforts. You should be investigating their connections, how they act within the workplace, and what their worldviews are:
- Understand the person’s connections to management and the company itself. If someone is close to management or defends the company often, they likely won’t want to actively or outright organize against the company.
- How does someone talk or interact with their coworkers? Do they help their coworkers when they can? Do they yell or degrade coworkers if they mess up? Do they want work to go well for everyone? Are they nice or mean? Does it seem like they have a shorter fuse for the migrant coworkers? If someone seems to have an attitude that uplifts the collective rather than just caring for themselves, they are much more likely to want a union or want to organize.
- What is the person’s world outlook? Do they think this society needs progressive/revolutionary change? Do they defend the current political system or even campaign for certain politicians? Are they racist or homophobic? How do they talk about women, their spouse, or their children? Do they view Amazon as a temporary place and want an extravagant life, or even think Amazon work is below them? A person with a backwards way of thinking is much less likely to want a union or care enough to support it. Someone who wants a better world will likely be down to support and even help, small or large, to make the union effort work.
- It might be obvious, but under no circumstances should we be talking to management about what is going on. They do not need to know, and they have significantly more power to harm us if they do know!
- It is okay to be selective with who you approach, but don’t let this handicap the amount of people you talk to. What we seek to do has to be an “all hands on deck” approach! But we have to have the right people helping out, not just anyone and everyone.
Talking to Your Coworkers
Now that we have some tools to identify who to speak to and who not to speak to, there are important tactics when actually talking to people. The tactics outlined below are not all-encompassing but have been synthesized through practice and study. Feel free to be creative, but do your best to weigh the tactics and use them in correspondence to the concrete situation!
- A slogan that is often used is: “politicize, mobilize, and organize.” Politicizing is exposing people to the problem at hand, mobilizing is getting them involved, and organizing is getting them to be a part of an organization or as close to the effort as possible. It should not be strictly thought of as a step-by-step process but as a general way to organize people. Some people are spontaneously mobilized but need to be politicized in a certain way. Others seek out organization for a variety of reasons but lack a direction when doing so.
- One of the first rules of organizing is to respect the opinion and autonomy of others. If someone says no, or if they don’t seem to care, do not make them feel bad. People will work best if they genuinely care. If we want people to care, we have to actually give them something to care for! In many instances, when we think about discussing anything political, we think of debates. That is not what we are seeking to do here. Our strength is in unity, not division. We should never tell people what to think, but rather guide them with questions or facts to the right ideas.
- A key part of solid organizing is having strong relationships with each other. What we aim to do takes a lot of calculated risk and high levels of trust. Trust is not born out of thin air; it is something that can only be built through the course of time. We are not just talking to people for the sake of organizing, we want to build strong and trustworthy relationships with as many people as possible. Again, we should seek unity and not division. We should drop arguments and disagreements that are petty or minor in nature so that we can work together to the maximum degree possible.
- As established earlier, we have to make people care, not from guilt, but from a genuine place of desire to contribute to the collective effort. In practice, this means we have to hear people out. Make sure they can express themselves. Furthermore, based on this, their needs and demands should be organized and systematized into a demands list. For example, if we are seeing a need for childcare, a demand of ours should be childcare covered by the company! On the other hand, if we have been going about it in the right way by investigating people’s basis and specific needs, we can propagate our demands to people immediately. If someone says they are pissed their pay is capped, then propagate the fact that we are for the abolition of pay caps!
- People are not wrong for fearing retaliation from the bosses for organizing. Inoculation is a way to prepare people for this and to get them involved even though there are risks. Every action has a reaction, and we should always prepare for how the bosses might react and how we can counter what the bosses do. The main way to do this is to share the fact that we have strength in numbers, and that the stronger and smarter we organize, the less the boss can do. We should also share exactly how we plan to ensure our safety and mitigate the risks of organizing.
- Always establish a basis of conversation with people. Tell them it is very important to keep this between you and them, and that plans leaking, or simply being told to others, can and likely will result in failure and even job loss. Be clear from the onset that secrecy is of high importance and is expected.
A Basic Formula to Follow
- Get to know the person, or go ahead and introduce the problem/solution. Depending on the situation/person, use your best judgment.
- Agitate by introducing the problem and figuring out how the problem makes them feel.
- Educate by discussing solutions.
- Pop the question of whether they would like to get involved or not.
- Inoculate (prepare the individual) against counter-arguments to getting involved or why something wouldn’t work.
- If they still don’t want to get involved, ask them if they would like to stay in the know.
- Set a task for something they can do to help address the issue, whether it be talking to others, passing something out, or coming to a meeting. Give them something to do, don’t leave them hanging!
- Get their contact info.
- Follow up later about the task and further involvement.
Conclusion
Again, nothing here is meant to serve as a step-by-step law or formula for organizing. So be creative in how this article is actually applied. Use it as inspiration, and feel free to skip any unnecessary steps or anything that doesn’t match up to your concrete reality or situation. Almost nothing is easy or simple, but organizing for a better workplace, country, and/or world is certainly worth the bumps that come along with it. We should be strategic in how we go about things, but know that failure is the mother of success. No one or organization will ever be perfect, but the hope is that this article can serve as a guide to action for how to talk to your coworkers, or to at least make this aspect of organizing easier. Now it is on the reader to take this and try their best to apply it to their workplace!
AMAZON WORKERS UNITE!
