Work Overload: Time for a Union Strategy
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- Published on Saturday, 05 September 2015 22:15
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A Socialist Project e-bulletin .... No. 1158 .... September 6, 2015
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Work Overload: Time for a Union Strategy
Michael Hurley and Sam Gindin
Talk to workers in any sector, in any workplace and sooner or later they'll get to their frustrations with their ever-increasing workloads: 'I'm struggling', they'll lament to fellow workers or anyone ready to listen, 'to just do the job, never mind do it well'. And yet even though few work-related issues seem to generate more passion, the relentless intensification of every-day work life rarely surfaces as a union priority. Why?
To be clear, it's not that the pressures of work never surface at conventions or during bargaining. Rather, it's that they are never given any primacy. Delegates speeches on this from the floor, animated as they are, seldom go beyond exasperated workers... letting off steam. The resolutions introduced from the platform and duly passed are not connected to actually doing something effective about the problem (a cynic might say they are actually intended to be only symbolic). And even when the issue of workloads reaches the bargaining table, accompanying mobilizations and public campaigns are at best lukewarm. Usually the demands are quickly and quietly dropped; when they are addressed, it is in a collective bargaining language which leads directly to bureaucratizing workload complaints without solving the underlying problem.
If unions can't affect something as basic as the daily oppression of overwork and its link to injuries and constant physical and mental exhaustion, it's all the less likely that they can develop member confidence in broader collective action. In fact, giving the workload issue the priority it deserves and dealing with it effectively presents great strategic opportunities for renewing the labour movement as a whole, including by linking up with precarious and unemployed workers, and mobilizing working-class communities more broadly around the fundamental questions that increased workloads raises for our whole society.