![E105: [TEASER] Fireside Chat – Organising in the public sector - podcast episode cover](https://assets.metacast.app/images/episode/artwork/urIik2u3)
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As we come margin Martin and the Beauty of the Day a million dark in kegeens one thousand mil last grade are branden by the beauty. His sun Sun discloses on the papers red and roses, Red and roses.
You know, I was friendly with the fellow Tempts and things, so we just kind of would chat about this, that and the other, and so kind of started asking questions about our working conditions and pay and that sort of thing. And it turned out that even though we were all tempts, all in the same kind of job, doing the same level of work, kind of admin clerical work. Basically, we were all getting completely different race of pay. So we kind of thought, well, obviously, why don't we try and
do something about this. So we all got together and said, well, whoever gets the most pay, let's say, well, let's talk to our agencies and accounts and be like, we should all be paid this because we were all doing the same work, so we should get the paid the same thing. So we did that, got back to our agencies and that was successful. So it was a really small thing, but it was great for us because out of the five or six of us, all of except one got to decent pay rise out of it. So it was
like a good start. And then beyond that, while I was there, there was a big national public sector strike about pens and cuts. This was in two thousand and six, and so, like as I said, I couldn't do much to support the strike generally other than you know, I
was saying, I wasn't going to go in. But although my manager, who was permanent, I was talking to her before the strike and she was a Unison member as well, But as we were talking about it, she was saying, oh, I don't think I'm allowed to strike because I'm a manager, So I had to be like, I mean a I mean, okay, you're normally a manager, but you only manage me.
You know, let's let's not get too big for your boots, mate, Exactly.
It's like you're not the queen or something like maybe the queen, maybe she's not supposed to go on strike. But also even if you are a manager, like, yeah, what do you think this is? Like, yeah, you can
go on strike, that's fine. And so again, like I tried to talk to my fellow tempts about it, because when the talk of the strike started, the building I was in wasn't a particularly the union wasn't strong in that building, as you can probably get, you know, from the manager not knowing that they could, and the only union rep there not really being interested in building a union at work, but being more interested in building a left wing political party outside of work, you can say.
So the other temps kind of were talking about the strike in a bit like you know, I think you've spoken about them before about media images of what unions are like, thinking it would be kind of like images of the nineteen seventies, these people trying to stop you at the picket line and shout mean things at you as you go in. So they were kind of talking
about how they wouldn't care about a picket line. They would come, you know, they would defy it, as if that was like the rebellious thing to do would be to defy a picket line. So you know, I'd to talk to him about that and be like like really no, like you know, I mean, also, all of the tempts wanted permanent jobs in this place. They all wanted because you know, we were doing the same work as permanent people on less than half the money, with no holiday pay,
no sick pay, no pension or any of that. So it's like, we all want one of these jobs in the future. So if their pension is better, that means that our pension will be better when we get one. So we should try and help them improve their conditions. And also like, if you actually want to be like rebellious and define anyone, then you should be defined the government and the employers.
Yeah, exactly, you should be defy your employer and defy the government rather than your workmate.
So yeah, I mean on the day when when the strike actually happened, I didn't go I went to join picket lines, but not at my building because I was a temp and I I lost a temptal previously for not crossing a picket line, so I went to a different building. So on the day, I don't actually know what happened with the other temps that went in, and also is quite a long time ago, but I would be hopeful that some of them maybe didn't.
Go or either that or they're all like, I know you're ship about John. I'm not going to let him bully me into not crossing the picket line, but yeah, like you.
Know, it's so it's not the most inspiring ending. Maybe it would be better to make something up and be like, yes, and they flipped a police car outside the office and set it on fire.
Yeah.
Yeah. And then and then they carried me on their shoulders and they went yes, John, Yeah.
Like it was like that scene in June with Timothy Shabladoo.
Also, sorry, just I wouldn't because I didn't know there was the other story that you you just you mentioned that I didn't actually ever know about. But are you telling me that at a previous job that you had, there was a strike and you were a temp and you didn't cross the picket line, and you just stood outside the workplace, like you know, on the picket line
with the with the workers there. And then whatppened Like your employer just stuck their head out the window and was like that's John, I'm getting rid of that guy.
I mean basically, yeah, I was working at I was working as a temp at this Yeah, I was working as a temp in London at another office, and the union there started a wave of rolling strikes for like more maternity pay and like half day strikes once a week, and I kind of told my colleagues and my team that like I wouldn't sort of cross a picket line, and they were kind of like, I mean, yeah, like maybe you should do so you don't get fired. But I did. But I went and I joined the picket line.
And then and then I got fired, although like weirdly, like there was so basically like my immediate team and the manager my I had kind of two supervisors. They then went and complained to their like head of department and said because they were both joining the strike, and they went and complained, and so then they got me
like reinstated for like three days or something. And then like at the end of the week, They're like, okay, and now your contractors come to an end, you know, So it seemed like you're not being fired for not crossing a picket line this time, just your contract to come to an end. But it's like, I mean, I hadn't been told my contract was coming to an end, so I basically think they fired me again, like they just waited. But you know, I mean it was only a temp job.
Like, so you were fired twice for not crossing a picket line.
Exactly, I'm going.
To rehire him, just like can fire him again, that red son of a bitch.
Yeah, you know, you can't get rid of me firing me just on, yeah.
Exactly, fire me one me, no, no, the other way around, fire.
Me twice, yeah okay. Yeah.
But anyway, so like at some point you were taken on permanently and so yeah, so what what was that like? And how did that?
It was amazing? I got I got hired, and I'm like, right, I'm getting ill. All the illnesses I've been putting off for like seven six, seven, eight years or whatever, I'm having all those illnesses now.
Yeah.
Yeah. Licking door knobs for the Italian listeners. I'd open the window a crack when I'm in the car, you know, put the air conditioning on.
Yeah.
Yeah, oh man, that's the niche joke.
I'm sure how many Italian listeners we had. Yeah, that's too niche.
But yeah, So how how did that try to change your organizing and how did your organizing then sort of fit into the dynamics the demographics of your new workplace.
Yeah, so the place I was working, Yeah, basically it was a team of about eighty people. I was like the youngest person in the office on my first day when I arrived, Like because the office, the team, they work with young people, they work with clients. And I got there and then people spoke to me afterwards and they said when I arrived, they thought I was one of the clients, Like they thought I was one of the young people who maysaged to turn my life around
kind of thing, you know. So also, you know, I was the youngest in the office. Also I looked like I was twelve, So I did not start organizing immediately. And also I was on probation for the first like six months, so I kind of kept my head down and made sure that I did my job what especially as like I'm like not very good at being punctual. Like I was about forty five minutes late on my first day and pretty much after that, I was pretty much never on time a single day for the whole
rest of my career. I'm not a morning person.
I feel like you are exactly the kind of like the kind of figure that the right wing press talks about when they talk about public sector workers turning up late, you know, protected by union barons. Who are you know you can't sack them because yeah, they're protected by the union. But so you spent the first six months trying to grow facial hair so that your your your workmates wouldn't think that you were a young person.
Yeah, a young sort of client. And so I did. I joined the union. Well, I was already in the union as a temp, but as a as an employee at least got time off to go to union meetings. I mean there was only like big branch meetings, so I think it was only like one or two a year, But that was exciting to go to an actual kind of like union meeting with a bunch of other workers there. It was really exciting. The first time that I went.
Was it because I remember the first maybe also my first union branch meeting that I went to, and I remember similar to a feeling of being like, oh, this is going to be really exciting, but my union branch was a little bit an emic and there wasn't all
that much happening there. And also that feeling of so much of the branch activity not having to do with the workplace, you know, that was what I really kind of what really hit me, and it took me a long time to kind of to get my head around it, even at first that like, you know, I was going to like branch meetings, you know, because I was I was the shop steward at my workplace. But there was just this disconnect from between what was going on in my workplace and what was going on in my branch.
And I remember kind of being like, you know, am I just getting an afternoon off work here? You know what I mean? That was, yeah, but your your branch meetings were different.
Well, it was an AGM, so it was like an all members meeting, right, and there were some local issue at the time, and there was like a national pay thing, so there were like one hundred odd people there. That was just kind of exciting to see, you know, because before I'd only ever known like one other union person in the building, and yeah, and here.
There was I tried to get to hand out leaflets.
Exactly and sell papers, so and here there was like one hundred and the talk was about stuff at work primarily, So yeah, it was quite like exciting. I mean. Also another thing is having this like a job was a very big thing for me personally because I had been tendinged for so long with no sick pay and stuff, and one of my temp jobs, I got injured and had to go to the hospital and was off work for like months with no sick pay, and it was really bad. So I really wanted to make sure I
didn't lose the job. So I was, I mean, other than being timely, which is like, you know, I'll I'll do anything for love, but I won't do that kind of kind of thing, you know. You know, I was being like good other than that, And then after a while, basically my strategy was, well, I'll do this, I'll be late all the time, but then if it ever comes up, I'll just be like, oh I thought I was on
flexible stars. You know. That was my sort of strategyfe crime. Yeah, so I wanted to be very careful not to lose it. And also, yeah, like I said, I was the youngest person there, you know, young white bloke, and most of the people in my team were It was mostly women, mostly middle age, mostly parents, and about fifty percent people have mostly most of the people of color being black. So I wasn't like representative of the team as a whole.
They were all a lot older than me and more experienced and had more responsibility in life and that kind of thing. So, you know, it's not the kind of place where you can go in and then just start telling people what to do and be like, you know, like quote, well I don't like about some left you know, is when they talk about organizing people, you know, going and organized, like you're kind of lining up your sort of soldiers and telling them what to do whatever. You know,
you've got to pay your dues. So yeah, I was just sort of putting my head down, do my job, basically learning as much as you can, getting to know everyone and just talking and listening more, just listening to people, you know, understanding the connections between different people, Understanding like where power lies in the organization, and outside the connections between the team and other areas what managers to people like, what managers to people not like who are kind of
influential employees and who are people that keep themselves themselves and also go in team meetings see like which people are like ask challenging questions in team meetings and things like that, and just kind of making notes and just hearing things about gripes and what are the kind of
things people are complaining about. And at the same time, as a worker, trying to make yourself indispensable, like doing stuff to help out your colleagues so that you know, you become popular in the office, but also kind of trying to get as much knowledge as you can to make yourself kind of indispensable, which is good for any worker anyway, because that's kind of what you want to not get canned, is to make yourself indispensable and try
and monopolize all kinds of information. So that's kind of what I was doing. And the team I was in was quite it was quite a horrible atmosphere a lot of the time because the head of our department was a real bully. She was horrible and nobody liked her. Like as an example of how she was, like once she wanted to have a go at me for something which was nothing to do with me, but she literally stood next to me, stamped her feet and screamed, you know,
that kind of childish behavior. And also people in the team would just like disappear, so that people we work with for a long time and then they would just never be seen again because they'd been basically suspended secretly and then fired kind of in secrets. So there was
a lot of stuff people were unhappy with. And then I think it was probably after like a year and a half of being there that there was like a really key sort of incident in the team that everyone was totally up in arms about, and that's when it sort of changed things. So basically, the person I worked with most closely was a woman who had been there, like she'd been in the department ever since it was founded.
She'd been there over thirty years, and she was kind of like she was an admin clerical worker like me. She kind of did my onboarding, and she was really well respected and liked by everyone in the team. She was kind of like the Muma of the office, is how people thought of her and how she thought of herself, and one day the department head had her demoted from her general job as a kind of office manager, you know, administrator, to be her PA, which was a lower ranked job
in the council. Jobs have a job ranking system, so it was a lower ranked job. And she even like made this announcement in a team meeting because I think at the same time also, you know, someone was fired, someone someone was left, so she even made this announcement being like, well, bad news, like this person has left, this person has gone, because I don't say that this person who left, but in positive news for the team,
I've got a PA. And which is just so tone deaf because the woman this happened to like getting demotive because I tried to, you know, talk to her about opposing it because in a legal and contractual sense, it's not something they could actually do. And after it became a union rep. You know, this happened to various people, and I was able to stop it immediately just by writing an email because they can't actually do that. But
she was not a member of Unison. She was a member of the GMB, which in some places in the UK is a good union, especially amongst manual grades. But the way the GMB functioned in my counsel was it was mostly a union for people to join who wanted individual protection to work, but didn't want to have to take part in Unison stride because Unison regularly took strikes for things like pay and against pension cuts, whereas GMB didn't. So it was a way they could feel like they
got individual protection without having to take pine strikes. And that was the union she was part of, and they didn't do anything to give her any individual protection. And it was just so sad because she was just like she'd but she didn't even want to fight it because she just felt so totally demoralized by it. She was totally like broken by the whole that she was just devastated really, and everyone was really upset, and especially with this other person who'd been fired at the same time.
There was so much and I kind of at this point, you know, it had been there a year and a half, so I started to kind of be vocal about this sort of thing and ask, like ask really annoying difficult questions to cause problems for management, just because I don't know if you know this about me, but I'm kind of her dick.
Yeah I've noticed yeah, yeah, yeah.
A lot of the time. And I just quite liked just being dick, and so that's what I was kind of doing to management, but also in a way that they can't really get mad by just yeah, asking kind of difficult questions that will cause them problems.
Do you think you could give me an example of one of these dickish questions that you used to ask.
Well, yeah, okay, sure. He Like one example was our like our department head. Someone asked her in this team meeting, why is this person no longer with this you know, who'd basically been fired, And she said, well, it's not
appropriate to comment on staffing matters and team meetings. So I just put my hand up and then I was like, so, if you said it's not appropriate to talk about staffing matters in team meetings, then why was the whole section before this you talking about staffing matters when you were talking about this new member that's coming in and this person who's leaving, you know, a different member of staff. So you know that ditch question.
But I can imagine that she would have she would have been sitting there fuming at you.
Yeah, exactly. It was obviously, you know, it's awsome. I mean, it was also a dickish question because you can't give confidential staff information in a meeting, you know, but everyone based only yeah that's what she said. So yeah, yeah, people sort of snickered. And then you know, some people came and spoke to me afterwards, and that was a good opportunity to have some conversations and meet people who
also have issues with management and like challenging them. So a couple of people came to me after it and they were like, well, why don't you become like a
union rep for the team? And one of the people that came to me was like a mid fifties black woman who was one of the people that came, and I kind of said, well, I knew that you could become a shop steward on a job share basis, So I kind of say, well, it's too much for me to do on my own, and I don't feel that i'm like representative enough of the team and I haven't been here long enough. But you know, if you want to do it on a job share, I'll do it on a job share basis with you. And that was
actually a really great thing to do. And she agreed, and then we signed up and went from there basically.
As we come Martin, Martin and the Beauty of the day.
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