#ATTACH b-h-bossbusters-how-to-fire-your-boss-en-1.pdf
#title How to Fire Your Boss
#subtitle A Workers’ Guide to Direct Action
#author BossBusters
#SORTauthors Anonymous
#SORTtopics direct action, pamphlet, translation
#date 2022
#uid How to Fire Your Boss
#lang en
#pubdate 2022-02-27T07:42:09
#cover b-p-bossbusters-paano-sisantehin-si-bossing-tl-1.jpg
“I don’t know of anything that can be applied that will bring as much
satisfaction to you, and as much anguish to the boss, as a little
sabotage in the right place at the right time.”
— “Big” Bill Haywood, Industrial Workers of the World.
The indignity of working-for-a-living is well-known to anyone who ever
has. Democracy, the great principle on which Philippine society is
supposedly founded, is thrown out the window as soon as we punch the
time clock at work. With no say over what we produce, or how that
production is organized, and with only a small portion of that product’s
value finding its way into our paychecks, we have every right to be
pissed off at our bosses.
Ultimately, of course, we need to create a society in which working
people make all the decisions about the production and distribution of
goods and services. Harmful or useless industries, such as arms and
chemical manufacturing, or the banking and insurance scams, would be
eliminated. The real essentials, like food, shelter, and clothing, could
be produced by everyone working just a few hours each week.
In the meantime, however, we need to develop strategies that both
prefigure this utopia AND counteract the day to day drudgery of
contemporary wage-slavery. BossBusters, a project of the Bay Area
Wobblies, believes that direct action in the workplace is the key to
achieving both these goals. But what do we mean by direct action?
Direct action is any form of guerrilla warfare that cripples the boss’
ability to make a profit and makes them cave in to the workers’ demands.
The best-known form of direct action is the strike, in which workers
simply walk off their jobs and refuse to produce profits for the boss
until they get what they want. This is the preferred tactic of the
“business unions” like the AFL-CIO in the USA or TUCP in the
Philippines, but is one of the least effective ways of confronting the
boss.
The bosses, with their large financial reserves, are better able to
withstand a long drawn-out strike than the workers. In many cases, court
injunctions will freeze or confiscate the union’s strike funds. And
worst of all, a long walk-out only gives the boss a chance to replace
striking workers with a scab (replacement) workforce.
Workers are far more effective when they take direct action while still
on the job. By deliberately reducing the boss’ profits while continuing
to collect wages, you can cripple the boss without giving some scab the
opportunity to take your job. Direct action, by definition, means those
tactics workers can undertake themselves, without the help of government
agencies, union bureaucrats, or high-priced lawyers. Running to the
Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE) and their National Labor
Relations Commission (NLRC) for help may be appropriate in some cases,
but it is NOT a form of direct action.
What follows are some of the most popular forms of direct action that
workers have used to get what they wanted. Yet nearly every one of these
tactics is, technically speaking, illegal. Every major victory won by
Labor over the years was achieved with militant direct actions that
were, in their time, illegal and subject to police repression. After
all, until the 1930’s, the laws surrounding labor unions were simple —
there were none. Most courts held labor unions to be illegal
conspiracies in restraint of “free trade,” and strikers were routinely
beaten and shot by police, CAFGU state militias, AFP troops, and private
security goons.
The legal right of workers to organize is now officially recognized in
the Philippines, yet so many restrictions exist that effective action is
as difficult as ever. For this reason, any worker contemplating direct
action on the job—bypassing the legal system and hitting the boss where
they are weakest—should be fully aware of labor law, how it is applied,
and how it may be used against labor activists. At the same time,
workers must realize that the struggle between the bosses and the
workers is not a game of *patintero*—it is war. Under these
circumstances, workers must use what works, whether the bosses (and
their courts) like it or not.
Here, then, are the most useful forms of direct action:
** Slowdown
The Slowdown has a long and honorable history. In 1899, the organized
dock workers of Glasgow, Scotland, demanded a 10% increase in wages, but
met with refusal by the bosses and went on strike. Strike-breakers were
brought in from among the agricultural workers, and the dockers had to
acknowledge defeat and return to work under the old wages. But before
they went back to work, they heard this from the secretary of their
union:
“You are going back to work at the old wage. The employers have repeated
time and again that they were delighted with the work of the
agricultural laborers who have taken our place for several weeks during
the strike. But we have seen them at work. We have seen that they could
not even walk a vessel and that they dropped half the merchandise they
carried; in short, that two of them could hardly do the work of one of
us. Nevertheless, the employers have declared themselves enchanted with
the work of these fellows. Well, then, there is nothing for us to do but
the same. Work as the agricultural laborers worked.”
This order was obeyed to the letter. After a few days the contractors
sent for the union secretary and begged him to tell the dockworkers to
work as before, and that they were willing to grant the 10% pay
increase.
At the turn of the century, a gang of section men working on a railroad
in Indiana were notified of a cut in their wages. The workers
immediately took their shovels to the blacksmith shop and cut two inches
from the scoops. Returning to work they told the boss “short pay, short
shovels.”
Or imagine this. San Francisco Bay Area Rapid Transit train operators
are allowed to ask for “10-501s” (bathroom breaks) anywhere along the
mainline, and Central Control cannot deny them. In reality, this rarely
happens. But what would management do if suddenly every train operator
began taking extended 10-50ls on each trip they made across the Bay?
** Work-to-Rule
Almost every job is covered by a maze of rules, regulations, standing
orders, and so on, many of them completely unworkable and generally
ignored. Workers often violate orders, resort to their own techniques of
doing things, and disregard lines of authority simply to meet the goals
of the company. There is often a tacit understanding, even by the
managers whose job it is to enforce the rules, that these shortcuts must
be taken in order to meet production quotas on time.
But what would happen if each of these rules and regulations were
followed to the letter? Confusion would result—production and morale
would plummet. And best of all, the workers can’t get in trouble with
this tactic because they are, after all, “just following the rules.”
Under nationalization, French railroad strikes were forbidden.
Nonetheless, railroad workers found other ways of expressing their
grievances. One French law requires the engineer to assure the safety of
any bridge over which the train must pass. If after a personal
examination he is still doubtful, then he must consult other members of
the train crew. Of course, every bridge was so inspected, every crew was
so consulted, and none of the trains ran on time.
In order to gain certain demands without losing their jobs, the Austrian
postal workers strictly observed the rule that all mail must be weighed
to see if the proper postage was affixed. Formerly they had passed
without weighing all those letters and parcels which were clearly
underweight, thus living up to the spirit of the regulation but not to
its exact wording. By taking each separate piece of mail to the scales,
carefully weighing it, and then returning it to its proper place, the
postal workers had the office congested with unweighed mail on the
second day.
** Good Work Strike
One of the biggest problems for service industry workers is that many
forms of direct action, such as Slowdowns, end up hurting the consumer
(mostly fellow workers) more than the boss. One way around this is to
provide better or cheaper service—at the boss’ expense, of course.
Workers at Mercy Hospital in France, who were afraid that patients would
go untreated if they went on strike, instead refused to file the billing
slips for drugs, lab tests, treatments, and therapy. As a result, the
patients got better care (since time was being spent caring for them
instead of doing paperwork), for free. The hospital’s income was cut in
half, and panic-stricken administrators gave in to all of the workers’
demands after three days.
In 1968, Lisbon bus and train workers gave free rides to all passengers
to protest a denial of wage increases. Conductors and drivers arrived
for work as usual, but the conductors did not pick up their money
satchels. Needless to say, public support was solidly behind these
take-no-fare strikers.
In New York City, IWW restaurant workers, after losing a strike, won
some of their demands by heeding the advice of IWW organizers to “pile
up the plates, give ’em double helpings, and figure the checks on the
low side.”
** Sitdown Strikes
A strike doesn’t have to be long to be effective. Timed and executed
right, a strike can be won in minutes. Such strikes are “sitdowns” when
everyone just stops work and sits tight, or “mass grievances” when
everybody leaves work to go to the boss’ office to discuss some matter
of importance.
The Detroit IWW employed the Sitdown to good effect at the Hudson Motor
Car Company between 1932 and 1934. “Sit down and watch your pay go up”
was the message that rolled down the assembly line on stickers that had
been fastened to pieces of work. The steady practice of the sitdown
raised wages 100% (from $.75 an hour to $1.50) in the middle of a
depression [*editor’s note*: from ₱1290 an hour to ₱2580 an hour in 2022
Philippine Peso, adjusted for inflation].
IWW theater extras, facing a 50% pay cut, waited for the right time to
strike. The play had 150 extras dressed as Roman soldiers to carry the
Queen on and off the stage. When the cue for the Queen’s entrance came,
the extras surrounded the Queen and refused to budge until the pay was
not only restored, but tripled.
Sitdown occupations are still powerful weapons. In 1980, the KKR
Corporation announced that it was going to close its Houdaille plant in
Ontario and move it to South Carolina The workers responded by occupying
the plant for two weeks KKR was forced to negotiate fair terms for the
plant closing, including full pensions, severance pay, and payment
towards health insurance premiums
** Selective Strikes
Unpredictability is a great weapon in the hands of the workers.
Pennsylvania teachers used the Selective Strike to great effect in 1991,
when they walked a picketline on Monday and Tuesday, reported for work
on Wednesday, struck again on Thursday, and reported for work on Friday
and Monday.
This on-again, off-again tactic not only prevented the administrators
from hiring scabs to replace the teachers, but also forced
administrators who hadn’t been in a classroom for years to staff the
schools while the teachers were out. The tactic was so effective that
the Pennsylvania legislature promptly introduced bills that would outlaw
selective strikes.
** Whistle Blowing (The Open Mouth)
Sometimes simply telling people the truth about what goes on at work can
put a lot of pressure on the boss. Consumer industries like restaurants
and packing plants are the most vulnerable. And again, as in the case of
the Good Work Strike, you’ll be gaining the support of the public, whose
patronage can make or break a business.
Whistle Blowing can be as simple as a face-to-face conversation with a
customer, or it can be as dramatic as the PG&E engineer who revealed
that the blueprints to the Diablo Canyon nuclear reactor had been
reversed. Upton Sinclair’s novel *The Jungle* blew the lid off the
scandalous health standards and working conditions of the meatpacking
industry when it was published in 1906.
Waiters can tell their restaurant clients about the various shortcuts
and substitutions that go into creating the faux-haute cuisine being
served to them. Just as Work to Rule puts an end to the usual relaxation
of standards, Whistle Blowing reveals it for all to know.
** Sick-In
The Sick-In is a good way to strike without striking. The idea is to
cripple your workplace by having all or most of the workers call in sick
on the same day or days. Unlike the formal walkout, it can be used
effectively by single departments and work areas, and can often be
successfully used even without a formal union organization. It is the
traditional method of direct action for public employee unions, which
are legally prevented from striking.
At a New England mental hospital, just the thought of a Sick-In got
results. A shop steward, talking to a supervisor about a fired union
member, casually mentioned that there was a lot of flu going around, and
wouldn’t it be too bad if there weren’t enough healthy people to staff
the wards. At the same time—completely by coincidence, of course—dozens
of people were calling the personnel office to see how much sick time
they had left. The supervisor got the message, and the union member was
rehired.
** Dual Power (Ignoring the Boss)
The best way to get something done is to simply organize and do it
ourselves. Rather than wait for the boss to give in to our demands and
institute long-sought change, we often have the power to institute those
changes on our own, without the boss’ approval.
The owner of a San Francisco coffeehouse was a poor money manager, and
one week the paychecks didn’t arrive. The manager kept assuring the
workers that the checks would be coming soon, but eventually the workers
took things into their own hands. They began to pay themselves on a
day-to-day basis straight out of the cash register, leaving receipts for
the amounts advanced so that everything was on the up-and-up. An uproar
ensued, but the checks always arrived on time after that.
In a small printing shop in San Francisco’s financial district, an old
decrepit offset press was finally removed from service and pushed to the
side of the press room. It was replaced with a brand new machine, and
the manager stated his intention to use the old press “for envelopes
only.” It began to be cannibalized for spare parts by the press
operators, though, just to keep some of the other presses running. Soon
enough, it was obvious to everyone but the manager that this press would
never see service again.
The printers asked the manager to move it upstairs to the storage room,
since by now it merely took up valuable space in an already crowded
press room. He hemmed and hawed and never seemed to get around to it.
Finally, one afternoon after the printers had punched out for the day,
they got a moving dolly and wrestled the press onto the elevator to take
it upstairs. The manager found them just as they got it into the
elevator, and though he turned livid at this blatant usurpation of his
authority, he never mentioned the incident to them. The space where the
press had been was converted to an “employee lounge,” with several
chairs and a magazine rack.
** Monkey-Wrenching
Monkey-wrenching is the generic term for a whole host of tricks,
deviltry, and assorted nastiness that can remind the boss how much he
needs his workers (and how little the workers need bosses). While all
these monkey-wrenching tactics are non-violent, most of them are major
social no-nos. They should be used only in the most heated of battles,
where it is open wholesale class warfare between the workers and the
bosses.
Disrupting magnetically-stored information (such as cassette tapes,
floppy discs and poorly-shielded hard drives) can be done by exposing
them to a strong magnetic field. Of course, it would be just as simple
to “misplace” the discs and tapes that contain such vital information.
Restaurant workers can buy a bunch of live crickets or mice at the
neighborhood pet shop, and liberate them in a convenient place. For
bigger laughs, give your local sanitation office an anonymous tip.
One thing that always haunts a strike call is the question of scabs and
strike breakers. In a railroad strike in 1886, the scab problem was
solved by strikers who took “souvenirs” from work home with them. Oddly
enough, the trains wouldn’t run without these small, crucial pieces, and
the scabs found themselves with nothing to do. Of course, nowadays, it
may be safer for workers to simply hide these pieces in a secure place
at the jobsite, rather than trying to smuggle them out of the plant.
Use the boss’ letterhead to order a ton of unwanted office supplies and
have it delivered to the office. If your company has a toll-free
telephone number, have all your friends jam the phone lines with angry
calls about the current situation. Be creative with your use of
superglue. The possibilities are endless.
** Solidarity
The best weapon is, of course, organization. If one worker stands up and
protests, the bosses will squash them like a bug. Squashed bugs are
obviously of little use to their families, friends, and social movements
in general. But if all the workers stand up together, the boss will have
no choice but to take you seriously. Bosses can fire any individual
worker who makes a fuss, but they might find it difficult to fire their
entire workforce.
All of the tactics discussed here depend for their success on
solidarity, on the coordinated actions of a large number of workers.
Individual acts of sabotage offer little more than a fleeting sense of
revenge, which may admittedly be all that keeps you sane on a bad day at
work. But for a real feeling of collective empowerment, there’s nothing
quite like direct action by a large number of disgruntled workers to
make your day.
** Afterword: Self-Directed Militancy
This pamphlet is an old manual circulated among workers belonging to the
Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) in North America. In the original,
there included instructions to contact the IWW for newly organized
workers to receive support and solidarity. The IWW does not operate in
the Philippines (yet), so this is not possible. There are other unions
in the Philippines, but some Filipino unions are not worker-controlled
and are rather controlled by a bureaucracy or a party. A bureaucratic or
cadre-run union may not work in the interests of workers.
Instead of following leaders approved by the state, parties, or bureaus,
what workers can do instead to to work among yourselves and direct your
own militancy towards your own aims and goals. This is the theory of
self-directed militancy where it is workers themselves who conduct their
direct actions. Where no sympathetic union exists you can organize among
yourselves to build your own militancy. You can organize the tactics and
strategies outlined in this pamphlet without going through union
bureaucracy which may work to frustrate your efforts.
In many countries workers’ militancy is channeled through bureaucratic
means such as arbitration courts or convoluted legal procedures that
classifies strikes as legal or illegal. These procedures are purposeful
in that it diverts militancy away from the workers’ control towards
legal courts, lawyers, and union bureaucrats. The history of workers’
organizations throughout the world has shown that unions can have an
effect of mitigating rather than agitating for workers’ interests by
divesting power from workers themselves onto union bureaucrats or some
other power.
Remember that the tactics outline in this pamphlet may be illegal. To
fight for a better world is never a legal task. The laws of the land are
the laws of the state and capital who funds it. But, the only illegal
strike is the strike that loses. Striking itself was once illegal along
with unions, but through struggle these were forced to be recognized by
the state and capital. If you struggle and win, you may achieve similar
gains.
In lieu of contacting the IWW which does not exists in this country,
reach out instead to fellow workers both in this country and in
neighboring ones. It is through solidarity that you gain allies and
comrades. You may also try to contact the International Confederation of
Labor (ICL-CIT), which the IWW is a part, to receive public and
clandestine support.
----
**Editor’s Note**: This pamphlet was initially published by BossBusters,
a project of the Bay Area IWW (Industrial Workers of the World, or
Wobblies). This pamphlet has been localized for a Filipino audience.
**Disclaimer**: None of the tactics outlined are guaranteed to achieve
their intended results. There are many variables to any given situation
and it is best for you and your fellow workers to carefully and
thoroughly assess each possible tactic before using it. None of these
tactics are particularly useful in the long run without stable
organization to support them. Direct Action without organization may
yield short term gains, but long term results tend to be negligible. It
is essential that you and your fellow workers join and/or form stable
organizations before using any of these tactics.