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I guess the point to the last couple of posts was that the pain is beginning to be felt here. Last Friday I went out for drinks with the other two techs and soon enough the problems at work came out.
I had already tried talking about unionizing, back a year or more ago when there was still hope the company would survive. Pay equity is real issue in my trade because the sales reps make three times what the techs make and every company tries to hire non-experienced techs on the cheap... blah, blah, blah.
But talking about how to unionize scared everybody I approached. I had stop. These people were scared and really wouldn't engage at all...
So Friday night I started talking about capital, exploitation, using myself as an example of a working class life that is near the end of its working days, and I have nothing, thanks to the neoliberal reforms from the mid-70s. I described the shop at UCB, its union, its merit pay increases built in to the job description, etc. When the university administration started to dismantle that program, it started on the service component first, meaning the shop....
In other words I painted a picture of what could be, and what was, and why it was lost. These guys are in their early thirties. When I was your age, I told them, I had a house, a wife, a kid, a studio and well paid job.... You guys are living with roomates, can't afford to get married, or were married lost it all, kids somewhere else, and are strapped for cash every pay check. Get it?
C, the guy I was leaning on most said. that it's different now, you have to get used to it. No. You have to fight it to survive, I said. Back and forth we went. But I could tell, a lot of the story struck home. It well sit there and brew. C's girlfriend showed up and I continued for awhile longer.
So, people are scared and are just hoping they can get out of the crunch.
This reminds me. The real trick is you have to offer something, protection, support, something concrete. Obviously, I can't offer anything. But under an organization, to get more members, you have to offer what I think of as protection. In the old anti-war days, that protection was free legal support. You can see the same sort of thing going on in the middle east, with Hamas. They offer schools, some kind of physical security against the Israelis, and that's why they are popular. The old PLO did the same thing back in the 70s.
Unions here offer protection in the form of collective bargining, strike pay, and healthcare benefits.
So the point, (getting back to Reed) is that the intellectual left in isolation, say me for example, can only advocate and bring awareness up. After that concrete political organizing needs to follow up, but such organizations have to offer some sort of refuge, support, protection, call whatever you want.
CG