Sabotage, As American As Apple Pie

This Monday, on the public radio program Marketplace, host Kai Ryssdal mentioned that U.S. businesses will lose $1 billion over the next few weeks because of employees doing their holiday shopping on the internet at work instead of doing their jobs.

The OWS movement might learn something from this.

Their calls for people to stay home on Black Friday were not only ignored, but this past Friday ended up being one of the busiest retail shopping days ever.

My guess is that people have recession fatigue and desperately want to celebrate the holidays like they used to, whether or not they have jobs or economic certainty. They want this so badly that they are willing to risk their jobs by doing their shopping on the boss’ dime.

While most are not doing this deliberately to undermine the profitability of their employers, it is a consequence of their behavior. Workers do this all the time in other subtle and not so subtle ways and for various reasons including dissatisfaction with the job, boredom and revenge. They do things like taking home office supplies, extending their lunches, surfing the internet and corresponding with friends via email. People sometimes pad their time cards or prolong their time in the toilet or at the coffee machine.

All of these are forms of sabotage and it is as commonplace as work itself.

The IWW (Wobblies) promoted sabotage as a tactic to help workers win their grievances at work, by slowing down efficiency and profit-making. Their propaganda often included the image of a sabot, the Dutch shoe that workers often threw into the looms during the 19^th century to slow down production. In fact, the word sabotage comes from sabot. The Wobblies used the word sabotage to include any tactic that slowed down efficiency, including deliberately slowing down production, working to rule, bungling duties.

Considering that the majority of Americans do not seem ready to join the OWS movement in the streets and encampments, nor do they seem ready to boycott holiday shopping, perhaps a better tact for the movement would be to follow the example of the IWW and call for mass acts of sabotage in the workplace.

For those who are lucky enough to have jobs and who can’t afford to lose them by playing hooky to join an OWS protest, there are plenty of things that can be done at work to gum up the machinery of capital and cut into profits with minimal risk. The options are virtually infinite with a little creativity and caution. Numerous examples can be found in Martin Sprouse’s book, “Sabotage in the American Workplace.”

Scab Teachers Undermining Their Own Colleagues

Huck/Konopacki Labor Cartoons

Teachers, like all other workers, must sell their labor to earn a living. Like all workers, they must make considerable compromises and sacrifices in order to ensure that they get a paycheck each month. The primary difference between teachers and other workers is that the public (and many teachers themselves) believe that teachers’ rights and working conditions should be subordinate to the needs of their students.

Image from Teamster.net

Workers who cross the picket line, thus undermining their coworkers’ solidarity and their struggle to improve working conditions, are known as scabs. The term could accurately describe any worker who deliberately undermines working conditions or solidarity. An example would be teachers who relinquish their contractual rights by volunteering to work longer hours (see here, here and here). They are scabs because they weaken the standing of their coworkers who still want their hard won protections. They are scabs because they are giving away their labor to the bosses for free or at a discounted rate compared to their peers. They are scabs because they deliberately aligning themselves with the bosses and against their own interests and those of their coworkers.

Unfortunately, in education, such behavior is relatively common. This is due, in part, to the fact that many teachers are willing to try anything, regardless of how much extra work is required if they are told it will help their students. Ed Deformers exploit this weakness by bombarding teachers and the public with a plethora of ill-conceived reforms that lack credible evidence of efficacy, (but which show strong likelihood of increasing their profits) under the guise of improving student outcomes.

One way the Ed Deformers do this is through astroturf organizations that masquerade as real grassroots organizations (see here, here and here), creating the illusion that regular people are empowering themselves to create change. The New York City-based Educators 4 Excellence (E4E) is an example of this. Ostensibly a grassroots movement made up of innovative young teachers willing to challenge the orthodoxy of the stodgy old unions, E4E has been funded by The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, to the tune of $1 million, according to the Wall Street Journal.

E4E has now opened shop in Los Angeles teachers, calling for the linking of teacher evaluations to student test scores and ending seniority protections. Because the group is made up mostly of young teachers, it could be argued that their demands to end seniority have more to do with creating job security for themselves at the expense of their veteran colleagues, than serving the interests of their students.

Today in Labor History—December 2

The Last Moments of John Brown, by Thomas Hovenden (1840–1895)

December 2, 1859 – Abolitionist John Brown was hanged on this date in Charleston, Virginia for his leadership of a plot to incite slave rebellion. (From the Daily Bleed)

The Very Hungry Caterpillar Corporation Preparing to Eat Its Workers (image from Flickr, ozmafan)

 December 2, 1995 – UAW members rejected an offer from Caterpillar, but their central bargaining committee ignored their vote and ended the strike. (From the Daily Bleed)

Atheists More Mistrusted Than Rapists

Image from Flickr, by Markhillary

I recently posted the following statistic: 67% of Americans said they would vote for a homosexual candidate for president, but only 49% said they'd vote for an atheist. Americans like or trust homosexuals more than atheists, which is good news for gays (our society seems to be getting a little less homophobic), but terrible news for atheists, who must continue to congregate in dark alleyways and seedy bars.

Tom Rees writes that “atheists are a pretty disliked bunch of people in North America. Most atheists will be aware of polling data that puts them at the bottom of the loathing pile.” He goes on to describe an interesting experiment by Will Gervais (University of British Columbia, Canada), in which test subjects were told about “Richard,” who got into an accident, but only pretended to leave his actual address and then later found a wallet and took out the money, throwing the wallet in the garbage.  Test subjects were most likely to presume he was also an Atheist, with Rapist being a close second, while few believed he was also a Christian or a Moslem.

In another version of the experiment, Richard was described as a disgusting person rather than, untrustworthy. This time test subjects did not associate Richard with atheism, suggesting that people’s negative perception of atheists stems from distrust, and not disgust.

According to Rees, Gervais found that the level of distrust is correlated with the strength of belief that supernatural monitoring helps to enforce good behavior. Therefore, the greater one’s belief in God, the more likely they are to distrust atheists. So the statistic that only 49% of Americans would vote for an atheist should not be so surprisingly, considering how religious our society is.

Today in Labor History—December 1

December 1, 1904 – W. A. "Tony" Boyle, future president of the United Mine Workers (UMW) was born on this date. (From the Daily Bleed)

December 1, 1908 – As Brazil and Argentina prepared for war, workers on both sides of the border protested. (From the Daily Bleed)

December 1, 1912 – The rustling card system was put into place by the Anaconda Mining and Smelter Company. Agitators were identified by spies and refused cards and jobs. (From the Daily Bleed)

Ralph Chaplin (public domain)

 December 1, 1914 – The famous labor song, "Solidarity Forever," was written on this date by IWW songwriter Ralph Chaplin. He wrote the song for a hunger march to be led by Lucy Parsons in Chicago (on January 17, 1915).

Solidarity Forever

(To the tune of Glory Glory Hallelijah)

When the union's inspiration through worker's blood shall run,
There can be no power greater anywhere beneath the sun;
Yet what force on earth is weaker than the feeble strength of one,
For the union makes us strong.
[Chorus]
Is there aught we hold in common with the greedy parasite
Who would lash us into serfdom & would crush us with his might?
is there anything left to us but to organize & fight?
For the union makes us strong
[Chorus]
In our hands is placed a power greater than their hoarded gold,
Greater than the might of armies magnified a thousand fold;
We can bring to birth a new world from the ashes of the old,
For the union makes us strong.
[Chorus]: Solidarity forever, Solidarity forever, Solidarity forever,
For the union makes us strong
(From the Daily Bleed)

Rust Bucket UST Buford Carrying Its "Christmas Present" of Reds to Lenin and Trotsky

December 1, 1919 -- US: Alexander Berkman, Emma Goldman and 200 other anarchists, labor militants and radicals were deported to Russia on the Buford. (From the Daily Bleed)

December 1, 1955 - Rosa Parks, a 43-year-old African-American seamstress, boarded a bus in downtown Montgomery, Alabama, and refused to move to the back. She was arrested, triggering a year-long boycott of the city bus system and legal actions which ended racial segregation on municipal buses throughout the southern United States (From Workday Minnesota)

December 1, 1966 – The Youngstown General Duty Nurses Association (YGDNA) became the first nurses in Ohio to engage in a mass resignation or "strike." According to the American Nurses Association, it may have been the first concerted action by nurses in a labor dispute in the nation. (From the Daily Bleed)