Talk - Listen - Collectivise
I want to tell you
more. The other conversations I had, the follow-ups, the mystery
chef, the Polish supervisor who felt so humiliated by her work that
she'd stopped telling her friends and family back home what she was
doing, still cleaning, still below the London Living Wage, five years
on..
More about sitting
alone in the canteen and withdrawing, feeling the silence and
isolation and being too exhausted to speak.
Falling asleep out with
friends at pub tables. Turbo coffee in the morning followed by too
much sugar....How hand cream is vital, how you can never change any
bedsheets or clean anything at home without having flashbacks of what
you've been doing over a dozen times a day and slipping into
automatic...getting thin..getting out of touch with news..unable to
read...sleeping on the tube...backache....dreaming about getting out
of this...
I know how to organise.
But it's difficult. There are some easy aspects to remember though,
for all of you reading this and wanting to change your situation at
work.
Organising is about
relationships. Organising is about building trust. Organising
requires patience and perseverance. Get used to failure. But prepare
for success. And the need for movement-building and solidarity
outside the workplace.
But above all, the
first steps are this:
Talk – You
need to talk to people. You need to break the ice, break the
isolation. There is a misguided view that we can organise through
social media. Social media is an amplifier rather than an instigator.
Most of us, as we know, are not on twitter! It's a privileged medium
for those with smartphones and the time to look at them. I know we
don't when we're rushing all over rooms, often with no reception or
wifi. To be 'plugged in' to that speed-network, you need the time and
tools to scan it, work it and benefit from it. You can strike up a
conversation at reception (carefully), in the kitchen, on break, in the smoking
area, in the locker room, in the lift. Anywhere you have time to see
each other. Share a tea. Tea is one of the greatest social lubricants
of all time! Revolutions are plotted over cuppas...
Listen – This
is the big one. The most important part of any organising. After
striking up conversations, we need to listen to what people have to
say. It's common to want to vent, to go on and fill silence, but, we
need to hear from people. We know it's rare for us to really share
our feelings and our ideas about work and whether we can change our
situation. But that process starts with hearing each other out. How
are we doing?....And remember what people tell you, remember it
because you'll hear the same issues from many different people and we
need to recognise and reflect what we've got in common.
Collectivise –
Nine times out of ten if you're feeling it, someone else is too. If
it's your problem, it's a shared problem. The same problems repeat
themselves, because they are un-addressed, because they are products
of exploitation and oppressive behaviour, and unresolved they soon become
systemic and structural and cultural. Like bullying, stress,
pressure, low pay, self-cut as well as management cut breaks, unpaid
overtime. These unfair conditions become normalised. 'That's just how it
is' we tell ourselves and the intensity of our work exhausts and
isolates us. 'It'll never change' we think.
But it can. And it does
(remember New York). Especially when we work for some of the
wealthiest, most profitable and constant companies in the world. They
need us. Remember that. We make their money. We make the operation
tick over. It's common for people to focus on their own individual
issues and problems because our dominant culture teaches us we're
alone. Mass individualism means we've lost the ability to think and
act and take decisions collectively. We need to re-learn collective
action but it is natural, co-operation is the cornerstone of society,
and contrary to Thatcher's assertion that there is no such thing as
society, only the individual, we are social. Take a problem it, share
it. Got an individual grievance? Collectivise it. See and feel that
you're in it together. Act together. Support each other. Stick
together. That's a union.
So, as I keep on
cleaning, agitating, and organising (: I want to give this space over
to other people, working for the same hotel, as well as in the same hotel chain,
in Housekeeping as well as other departments to take up their voice.
This 'aint my last
word. I'm stepping back to let my
colleagues step in. Stay with us. We're stepping it up....
Absolutley!
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