Today I finished reading a book 'Wages So Low You'll Freak' by Mike
Pudd'nhead. It was really unusual reading for me since today there
exist successful examples of organising workers in fast food (e.g.
Burgerville and Starbucks). But actually, as a former McDonald's crew
member, I can't imagine that level of solidarity and sense of
self-dignity and power from the workers' side. So I surely understand
the author's feelings. And ultimately these were feelings expressions
that attracted me in the book most. It also was important to me to
have some overview of the lower cast workforce in the US since here
in Russia we usually have extremely biased expectations about life in
an American dream.
Other things worth mentioning are, of course, that organising with
your co-workers is absolutely not the same as political activism. The
more really active organisers you have, the better. People don't need
a strong leader (he could be fired in a blink of an eye), they just
need to be active themselves. And yes, when you're trying to build a
truly democratic union, you need to experiment. If everything is
voluntary (even paying dues and serving as an officer or committee
member), the turnover will be high. But if something is obligatory,
then we risk to build yet another controlling, commanding, oppressing
organisation _over_ workers, not a union _of_ workers.
The only question I didn't find an answer yet is whether there is
such a thing as a viable white collar/IT people organisation model or
not. Tech Workers Coalition and unionising attempts around it are
still too local and too young to decide on their relative success, in
my opinion.
