August 20, 2008

I WANT to share a recent experience at work that illustrates the way capitalism pushes workers into struggle, and how we can win if we stick together.

A lot of people on the left are frustrated with the relatively low level of working-class struggle that exists today, and many people I talk politics with think that "everyone is apathetic" or "nobody is doing anything."

Socialist Worker is a great antidote to this, because you report on grassroots struggle that the mainstream media ignores. In addition, there is always frustration and anger building beneath the surface, and so it can appear that nothing is happening until that last straw sparks a response from workers.

I work at an HIV clinic that serves a low-income community with very high rates of injection drug use. We're overworked and underpaid, the work can be very stressful and emotionally taxing, and because we have no union, we often get extra work piled on that isn't in our job descriptions.

Over the past year, we've had to start paying for parking, our health care costs increased more than our raises, and we've had to pick up more work to make up for staffing shortages. So frustration has been building, but nothing has happened in terms of organized fightback.

Once per year, we have a one-day Friday staff retreat that is meant to help us reduce stress and come together with other HIV prevention and treatment staff to give each other support. This year, the boss told us that if it rained (it was in the forecast and the retreat is at a park under a tent), we'd have to end the retreat and go back to work.

It was the last straw, and we reacted. We got together on the spot and said that this was ridiculous--with all we put up with, they should at least give us this day to relax.

One of my co-workers, who is not at all political, said that "they can't punish us all if none of us go back to work." We all agreed, and everyone together stood up for ourselves and told the bosses we didn't think it was fair to make us go back to work if it rained.

At the end of the day, one of the bosses told us they had "made a mistake" and that we could go home if it rained.

After work, I initiated a conversation about how, because we stuck together, we were able to get what we wanted, and there was enthusiastic agreement. One of my co-workers started singing "Get up, stand up, stand up for your rights." It's such an amazing feeling that I'm getting tears in my eyes just thinking about it.

It may seem small, but this is the first time in the almost three years that I've worked there that anything has gone our way. And it's significant that it took us all standing together in solidarity and making a demand. We're usually isolated and afraid to speak up because we need our jobs and we have no union to protect us. In the future, if and when a union drive happens, we can point to this as an example of how, with solidarity, we can win.

I'm sure stuff like this is happening all over the country, and will continue as the economic crisis worsens. It's up to socialists to help our coworkers draw lessons from things like this and help channel this frustration into a reinvigorated, fighting labor movement.

Anonymous, from the Internet