Tavarisch_Mike
24th January 2011, 17:01
Explosive Situation:
Yeah i started reading that one like two years ago and for some reason i didnt finish it. Thanks for reminding me! :)
El Vagoneta:
Haha sound like when i worked in a storage and one day i had putting on some pamphlets for a organization called Union for Workers Solidarity in the break room, the bosses fucking raged.
But yeah they definetley need some new things, the text im postin down here is have been circuled among the swedish left for some years now and should fit in prole.info
Observe that i have used google translate on this and havent checked if evrything is correct, anyway just for your information 'OB' means the form of extra payment you get when you work on weekends, hoolidays and late nights as a compensation.
This is a text previously published in the Riff-Raff, and is written by a member of the "Enhancing"
My last job was at a privately owned fast food restaurant. It belonged not any multinational brand like McDonald's or Burger King. Nevertheless, the restaurant was relatively large and it was open almost around the clock seven days a week (closed only between 7 and 10). That it was privately owned with the rumor that the owner gave away money to the football team and charities made the site was considered to be "better" and less "exploitative" of us who worked there in comparison with the multinational giants. Most of those who worked there were girls in secondary school age. The majority worked part time while they attended school or had another job besides. It came and went, the people all the time, many could not stand the wages or working conditions and said simply resigned. I got about 62 crowns per hour, but of course no holiday allowance, weekend-OB, holiday pay and the like.
Most were black employees and between six months and one year was one probationer, which meant that you could get fired any day. Most chose to quit before they had made it through probation. Many people on the left thought it was good that I worked at the restaurant because it was owned by a multinational company and because of rumors about the owner's philanthropic characteristics. They saw no conflict between capital and labor are in every workplace: the hamburger restaurant that works local, small and large companies, private or government owned. As long as wage work is available, there are capital and so long as there is capital, there is class struggle. And this struggle shows itself not only in dramatic forms of resistance such as strikes, occupations and riots, but also in small attempt to escape from work and the hidden attacks against value like slowdowns, sabotage and theft.
These little hidden assault on salaried work has been described as termites that slowly but surely eating break capitalism's basic. We call this the Fight Together! the faceless the resistance as these struggles are hidden and invisible in nature. Something that makes them even sadly missed and misunderstood by the revolutionaries.
Communism as a movement
Paid work is always exploitation. Of course, working conditions much better for a Swedish hamburger workers than for example, child workers in an Indian shoe factory. The problem is that we live in a world where living conditions and exploitation of the workers in Sweden and India are linked. If you want to bring about a radical change must address the capital which is based on the fact wage labor.
The heart of the capital is to put people to work on ways to get them to create value. The work is separated from the man and we are forced to sell our labor in order to survive. Our task is kidnapped by the economy, it is turned against us and it is separated from us. This makes us lose faith in the fact we humans by our relationships with one another, by our own actions, creates the world as it looks.
The widespread feeling that people can not change the world just come out of here. The feeling of futility and boredom can also be derived from our task turned against us as an alien force. Marx thought that human beings realize themselves through work has become so alien that it belongs to another world!
The world - communism - turns out in all the struggles that are hidden or open occurs in workplaces, schools, streets and homes. Not as a society, of course, but as a trend as a movement for a future community.
If communism is a movement that appears before our eyes. Then we have to look out for it and as long as we do not see the everyday class struggle, which is right in front of us, so we will never be able to understand that communism is the scenario of the ongoing struggles. This is because the class struggle and communism come from the proletariat's position and the needs, desires and interests that this position creates.
The everyday struggle of resistance is considered, at worst, even unattractive. For those who have this perspective, it is just the big strike, riots, sit-ins and similar glamorous and heroic struggles that are interesting. The fact that the "faceless resistance" which goes on day by day and sometimes even more effective than large open struggles that strikes is something that unfortunately is foreign to them. That communism hides his face behind these struggles is something that they never even could dream of. For them, communism is an economic system that you build. Not a movement born from the womb of the old society.
Escape from work
As I said before, people came and went all the time at the restaurant. Most worked there only a few months until they had either found other jobs or simply tired. When I worked there, only the owner, his son and his closest comrades who had worked in the restaurant more than two years. Very early, I could feel the conflict between the "new" (the majority of those who worked there) and those who had worked a long time. This was clearly partly because it was the boss's son and his friend sat schedule and always had the best times. While the rest of us (not just those who just become servants, but also people who worked there in months) mainly had to work weekend nights and partly because they gossiped the boss about everything you did and said. There were also those that explained all the rules in force at the workplace such that you could not discuss salary with each other (which inevitably led to the first thing we asked when we met a new colleague was how much he or she served).
The "new" (with the new I mean the majority of us who had worked there and who had worked there for more than a year approximately) had almost absolutely no faith in the work and identified himself not with it but was simply there for To supplement their income. None of us wanted to be there, we were there to earn cash. This led us to new, more open to one another as we tried to get away from work.
I and two colleagues formed almost unconsciously, a little context to work, something that perhaps can be compared with a group of friends. The first thing we did together was that when we worked so stamped on who came first in, even to the other two. I remember not really sure how we started doing this, it was not me but one of the other two who stamped us in two other once and then we collectively with these little escapes from work. Of course we did just that on the sly. We had to be very careful with this to ensure that the boss or colleagues that we did not notice it. »Instämplingen" of each other led us did not have to be afraid of being late to work when the three of us worked together. In addition, there was almost never anything to do the first hour on all shifts so that was not the case that those who came first got a lot more to do. After that we began taking money from the till to play pinball or listen to music on the jukebox, which was at the restaurant. In the meantime we worked was of course not do this, which we obviously did not care in. Did you not too much money from the till, it was no boss cared about because there was always a small margin of error. Otherwise, we could enter the wrong amount of cash machines so that it would not be noticed that there was money.
We did however make sure not to neglect the guests too much as it was often the regulars that hung in the restaurant who knew the boss.
On the night shift would work three when I was a beginner, but when the boss thought you had learned all the routines would only be two, which of course would mean that we would have much more to do. This led us to try to make small "mistake" because the boss would still believe that we have not yet had enough experience to work for two. It was obviously important to ensure that the mistakes we have not got too serious. Which of course had simply meant that we got fired. This masking shape, we actually on, we had a lot to do one evening. We could simply not enough to fix the things to do for the second shift, for example fix mashed potatoes, filling over the food, take care of the last disk. When the boss and the others who would work with him came to the night shift, we had to work overtime for a while to fix the last things. This was repeated a few times, which meant we had to go home fourth, twenty minutes later in the parcel. But we were still apprentices and therefore we are still working on three days and evening shifts.
All these little ways to make working more fun and more satisfying was something we tried to spread to other colleagues when we have not worked with each other. Not since we first talked openly about that now shall we escape work. Without by letting actions speak first then we talked about it openly with one another. I saw for example that a few others I occasionally worked with latched onto this way of delaying the shift so that they could continue to be three days and evenings. It seemed that most agreed that it was better to just one quarter later and have a calmer during the day, than having to rush during the shift. These masking struggles circulated and spread from each other and all had their own little tricks to make working more fun and bearable. One of the great weaknesses of our escape from work was that we did not dare try to include those who had worked there longer than us, we took it easy for the difficult and assumed they were loyal to the boss and the workplace.
Communications, Community and pastimes
Call and communication was of course important means to get it better in the workplace. All the more important it became for me personally when the two guys in my "friend group" ended, when my work situation changed drastically since I did not really know who I could trust. One of the best ways to learn about this was understood by talking about what was forbidden. Most commonly, by comparing how much we had to pay and even if we were working black and if so, how much of the workday, which was black. When they had spoken to each other about it so got it on the "side" you were on. Those who gossiped to the Director and whole time trying to discipline us, of course, obeyed orders and tricks jaw about it. Once someone had shown that it was the "right" side, so you could go to the next step. Examples so I ventured to take money from the till to turn the music I made before only to those of my so-called "Affinity group". Another form of resistance that often took place about the question of who would decide how the work would be organized. The head would always tell us the beginning of one shift and about who should do what. He wanted to divide up the work, for example by one would take care of the kitchen, another counter, and a third would fry the burgers. This would mean that we were on opposite ends of the room isolated from each other.
These orders were of course no one that said, we organized the working day so that we helped and avoided the specialization process. We helped with things so it was more fun and easier to work. This might seem unimportant, and in worst cases even seen as a seed for a future self-management of the capital, that is a form of self-exploitation. Then it is important to understand that the struggle over who would organize the work was a means to make it more fun and easy to work. It was not an end in itself, no one among us had the desire or willingness to take over the restaurant and manage it themselves. Everyone was looking for new jobs or other ways to support themselves, and had an overall rise in class struggle has been actually challenged the capital we would have chosen to leave the restaurant does not try to take over. These struggles for decision-making was simply important that we could get to know each other and to create a strong sense of community and cohesion amongst us who worked there.
All we had different ways of trying to create a community that was not only an internal cohesion, but also can be seen as a kind of indirect attack on the workplace. People did things that did not seem at first to have a different meaning than they were a pastime, which they of course were, but also largely a matter of messing with the job. For example, used a few young guys amuse themselves by frying cut food that really would not be fried just because they thought it was funny. Sometimes they fill the fryer are with food and harvest them just before they would stop to see what happened with the food. A girl amused himself by juggling and playing with your food. Another bad habit was to experiment with plenty of fresh seasoning in the dressing and the cake (to be owned should perhaps that when the boss finally came to him he was not very happy). Any attempted use of goods and working to have fun on their own and often rather strange way.
The struggle against value
In capitalist society is a burger just like all other goods are not valuable because out how it managed so that it can be sold. A hamburger is not worth anything because you can eat it but because it can be sold to someone who is hungry. Under capitalism, things have not only a use value (like a hamburger can be eaten) but also an exchange value (the hamburger could be sold like any other goods). This is not a "natural" or "law-bound" that capitalism would have us believe, in fact, there is a conflict in the society around these two conditions.
Communism is a movement that tries to destroy the exchange value. As a "society" means communism creation of the community in which our activities belong to her. Which among other things, will involve the production of use values instead of changing values under capitalism. This is something which is reflected in workers' struggles.
Class struggle, disguised as an open attack namely exchange value. At the restaurant, this was a clear example where we worked there tried to make use of the goods that were on the restaurant directly and for ourselves. As the young guys who thought it was fun to fry food and break the girl who amused himself by juggling with the goods. Perhaps the most explicit attempts to deal with goods that use values and not exchange values were the times that my colleagues stole food from the restaurant. This was quite risky because the boss was damn hard track of how much food was available and knew about how much food was eaten per day, but the thefts occurred, however, from time to time. Another case when we destroyed exchange values (and in that case also use values) was when I had got a big telling off because the boss said that I did not make a dressing properly. This had me and a guy going into the freezer and ruin a lot of food in revenge. We put it into a food in the back of the freezer because it would take several weeks before it noticed and then no one could know who had done it. It was not enough with this but the rest of the day, we gave people off now and then on food (hit the wrong price on insurance funds). To favor the customer was certainly something that often happened, friends got food cheaper or free, and sometimes gave us food to strangers who could not afford. Again, we see acts that negatively focused on trying to destroy the exchange value and positively to deal with goods that use values.
The fight against the value is something that can be seen in all parts of society. From when people steal from work or steal from shops to home-and factory occupations. The dynamics behind this fight is communism, a task that is ultimately about such a powerful document that value is destroyed, namely that humans acquire their work and the means of production which is separated from her.
Knowing their manager
Although most people who worked at the restaurant disturbed in the head and his constant attempts to discipline us and make us work harder, we could not help occasionally feeling sorry for him. Sometimes it happened that he could calm down and have a normal conversation with one of us. In addition, he worked every night during the week all year round (except holidays now and then) so we were all forced to work with him sometimes and for some, unfortunately, this created a motivation to work harder and to obey his orders.
The restaurant was not very good and he was really that worked well and usually the hardest. We asked ourselves how often he stood out to work so often. We wished he calmed down and hung out more with his family as he often talked about. In the beginning I only saw this as an obstacle, which is obviously the way it was, we band of course all emotional for him. But gradually I realized that this probably only affected the struggle against work very marginally. What happened instead was that our unwillingness to work was directed primarily against the actual workplace. The conflict came out of our situation as workers.
Thus the class struggle was born out of the fact that we were forced to work at the restaurant when we instead wanted to be on the beach, hanging out with our friends or do something else. No direct hatred toward the head was not, or in this case, just right after he asked for with no or scolded someone but then disappeared. Obviously the boss was not popular among us employees, but the conflict was never "us" against "him" but it was "we" in the relationship that forced us to work there. Because he was our boss and that he owned the restaurant was, of course, an inevitable consequence of our struggle, to work to become more tolerable and more exciting, both confronted and influenced him. But they were never to mess with the boss, but they were struggles of the proletarians who were tired to be proletarians. The struggles were thus rarely directly targeted at him but rather to wage work and the workplace itself. There was simply no winners at the restaurant.
A capital in miniature
One can see the restaurant as a capital in miniature. The conflict in capitalism is about more fundamental things than the difference between those who own and those who do not own, or between rich and poor. Of course there are conflicts between rich and poor and between managers and workers in capitalism. All the struggles, open that hidden, leading to the proletarians into conflict with their managers and other functionaries of the capital, but it is not the capitalists who control the capital, but it is capital that controls the capitalists. To therefore say that the struggle is between "rich and poor" gives false solutions to capitalism, namely the rich annihilation and hiding the real contradiction namely between communism and capital.
There is a problem that is at the head, it is not the rich who create capitalism without the exact opposite, it is capitalism that creates wealth and poverty. We get rid of the gap between rich and poor when we get rid of capitalism. At the restaurant led our personal relationship with the manager that the fight was directed more towards the workplace than to the head. For a few did so because they worked harder, but for the majority who continued to fight for their needs and interests of strengthening this relationship in an astonishing way the communist perspective.
It is the law of value that govern capitalism and forced everyone, rich and poor, into a quest for more and more money. This "law" can not be tamed, all experiments with this have failed or been crushed. The value must be destroyed if not all must dance to its tune.
This was clearly evident at the restaurant. The chef served of course more money than us who worked there (and we would obviously like more pay), but he was as forced as the rest of us to follow the law of value and small businesses, it happens even to the owner actually have to work harder than their employees. The fact that he owned the restaurant and made more money than us, of course, created a conflict between him and us. But if for example the government took over the restaurant, or even if we started managing the restaurant such as a cooperative, we would still be under the tyranny of cost and therefore be forced to follow economic and market laws. Which in turn would make the most of the problems that existed when the restaurant was privately owned, would remain.
Condition for capital is basically to human activity separated from her and that through our social relations to maintain this separation. If it is we who created the capital so we can destroy it. It survives mainly through our inaction, but also by representatives and institutions that protect the items. managers, police, military, hierarchical thinking, morality and even, sadly, much of the Left and labor movement. The left's program focuses on how the workers will manage production. Social democrats and Leninists want state ownership while the libertarians and the Council of the Socialists want it to be managed by workers themselves, and both want to try to distribute the profits fairly. Communism is, of course on self-determination but focuses on WHAT to be and can be determined.
If capital is passivity in which man's actions do not belong to her and she did not believe they can influence their own or others' situations. Where does communism activity and movement, an activity that gives her back control of their own actions.
An activity that marks the end of separations and therefore also the annihilation of the law of value, market and economy and the suspension of work as just a separation. This is a world without money and profit. This will not mean anything earthly paradise where people have become angels. Without a world where human activity as belonging to herself something that is sure to involve the creation of new problems, conflicts and contradictions. If this means that there will no longer be any fast food restaurants is far too early to answer.
The author is a member of Fight together!
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Tavarisch_Mike
1st February 2011, 21:26
This text is taken frome a similar, swedish, site which have some material in english
http://www.polkagris.nu/?page_id=33
Faceless Resistance (http://www.polkagris.nu/?p=62)
Everyday resistance at a Swedish bakery
For almost two years I was employed at a bakery in southern Sweden, together with about 160 others; bakers, cleaners and mechanics included. From the first day of work, I was told that the bakery was under the threat to be closed down, and, indeed, with time, we got dismissed and the bakery shut down. Of course this affected the mood and ways of struggle at the bakery, and may be worth to keep in mind while reading the text. For example, it meant that the turnover of employees was rather big, and that many of the older people went looking for new jobs.
Several of my work pals were also involved in the autonomous movement, or acquaint left-wing activists from other groups. In addition to that, we were engaged in trying to get more comrades inside the bakery. We also arranged lectures with a comrade who was working at a bakery in Stockholm, and one who had been active in a large nucleus several years ago. Together, we constituted a group of friends, which, in a more or less active and regular manner, exchanged experiences and information between the different sections of the bakery. It could be added that there existed similar groupings of other employees acting in a similar way.
The methods of struggle that we used were in most case things that we had learned in other jobs, or from other employees. It was methods of struggle that is seldom written about, since it doesn’t appear in such a “big” way as a strike or an occupation. However, I hold that the direct, non-unionist, everyday resistance is the fundamental struggle, and that unionist or representative “struggle” don’t have the ability to be successful without it. Through small, disrespectful steps you can transform the general mood on your workplace, from a place without hope to a place with a fighting spirit. This everyday struggle we, in Kämpa Tillsammans!, has chosen to call “the faceless resistance”.
Faceless Resistance
We chose this name because it describes the hidden mass militancy that is so widely spread in the workers struggles. It is faceless because it is digging itself underground just like a mole, only to reveal its face on the surface from time to time. It is faceless because there are no official leaders or representatives who can be blamed or take the credit. It is faceless and insidious - you are nodding and listening to the instructions of your boss, only to do as you self please in the end. A prerequisite for making the faceless resistance an important factor is that there are solidarity between the workers. It can sometimes be found on workplaces or sections of workplaces but for the most time it isn’t there. And then it has to be created.
The “group of friends” often plays an important part in this effort. Some buddies begin show solidarity with each other. They set a general standard with an element of class struggle, which slowly affects others who eventually, joins up. You back each other up, you take extra breaks in turns and when the boss ask for someone that has taken a extra break, you say that she has gone to fetch a new ear protection to replace her broken pair. In the process of creating this kind of solidarity, the breaks are really essential, but not because you sit down to discuss the “ways to Struggle!” as because the simple fact that you are getting to know each other.
What is to be done?
As everybody else I started at the place with numerous short-time temporary employment’s as a “stand in”, which all in all lasted for about a year. These were located in very different stations and sections, a fact that soon resulted in a lot of contacts inside the bakery. You quickly got an overview about which section was involving heavier work than others did or which one that had good work pals. A thing that the Left always kept on about was that you should handle all conflicts in a brave and direct manner, and that you always should protest if something is wrong. Maybe it works for someone who has a none-time limited contract but as a “stand in” it is pure fantasy. If you argued too much with the bosses (or the union-representative for that matter) and didn’t behave, you had been forced to search for new jobs on the moon. Furthermore, new girls were forced to work extra hard on the sections of the bakery that were dominated by men, in order to be recognised. In this situation the thing is to find methods of struggle that makes the boring and monotonous labour bearable. Then, longer breaks are important. Not only to regain one’s forces, but maybe more important, to be able to talk with your work pals.
Breaks
The first day on job you got instructions that all breaks should be timed. These instructions were quickly demented by the bakers who’d been working there for a longer time than we had been. All in all, we had one hour break a day, and if you didn’t punch out your break on the clock, the salary-office would take one hour from your paycheque. If you punched out during your break, but stayed longer than one hour, they would take more from your salary, but if you didn’t punch out at all they took the hour anyway. In that way, you could only loose if punching out. Instead, we took longer breaks in turns. It worked well and everything was just fine. The boss couldn’t argue much, because no one was punching out. If anyone was asked why he or she didn’t punch out during the breaks, that person answered that he or she had forgotten it, or that “somebody” had told him or her that it wasn’t needed. Then the boss would say that you should punch out in future, and you would say “Yes” and then keep on don’t giving a shit about it.
Aikido
This way of pretending getting along with the ideas of the boss, only to do what you want in reality, can be resembled by Aikido. If it isn’t really necessary to stand up and argue an opposite view with the boss, you just simply slip away, doing totally different than what he instructed you to do. If it was important for the boss to go around believing that he was in charge, we let him do that – as long as we were in charge in reality.
The idea was that it should be as short time between different kinds of bread as possible. But because we all realised that all our arguments, about this being more stressful and hard for us by the troughs and ovens, and especially in packing, wouldn’t change anything at all, we pretended we really tried to do everything as fast as possible. In practice we were saying that there were problems with the old machines, that it was a “wheat stoppage” (something that were impossible for them to investigate), which was sorted out after a while, or we just lagged behind and pretended that we were lousier than we really were. It is always positive not to put a full effort on the job, so that you have some reserves left for an occasion when they are needed.
“Someone” - The Usage of Mythology
For the bread to come out as good as possible it was necessary to set the machines on a mode on which they had to be constantly supervised, something we were supposed to do. Since we, in addition to this, were placed on several lines at the same time, the working conditions became absurd – if the dough got stuck on one line you had to fix it, while the dough on the other line could get stuck as well. Which it mostly got, according to the law of “Everything gets fucked up”. Naturally, the solution was to run the machine on a totally different mode on which the dough never got stuck. When the foreman discovered it, we always pretended to be really surprised and complained about the machines: they were probably malfunctioning. Or maybe some ”bastard” had changed the settings: there were so many people who had been working at this post earlier on, and when they passed by perhaps they taught they could change the settings the way they wanted them. Of course, no one was pointed out for these misdeeds, but it went so far that the foreman himself went around mumbling about it, trying to figure out who was responsible for running around changing the settings all the time.
We used our knowledge of the labour process in a two-edged way. When there were bosses who knew more or as much as us, we referred to our lack of knowledge. At the same time, we were making up reasons about things they knew nothing of (“the dough was too sticky”), when explaining why the settings were changed for the bosses who lacked the right knowledge. And because they were the bosses they wouldn’t ask us further. We also made usage of terms the bosses wouldn’t understand. We, for example, called coffee breaks “to pencil”. When they asked us how much work there was to be done, we would say that we just had some pencilling left, and then they were tricked to believe that this was the name of some important task.
Other, alien, factors of usage were bosses from other parts of the bakery. The fact was that our boss never spoke too some of the other bosses, whom he was in disagreements with, while we claimed that they had given us other instructions, and that we didn’t know better than to obey them, because we were new.
The State Health Department was another great authority. I don’t know if they would have said anything, but we said that they had some remarks on the way the bosses said us to do the cleaning up anyway (you got a lot of wheat in your lungs using their procedure). And because the law and the Health Department reasonably stood over the authority of our bosses we couldn’t take responsibility for this way of cleaning up.
Solidarity-lacking work pals
As in many other workplaces there was a little traitor and ass licking bastard in our section of the bakery. He refused to show solidarity with the work pals by skipping work himself while the others got more work to do. While we had a common effort for less control and a lesser work burden, him running away from work affected us all. Furthermore, he was licking the boss’s arse and got the best working hours and holidays, and at a few occasions he was even acting as an informer for the boss when people took longer breaks than they were supposed too. Especially he had an interest of trying to boss around the newcomers.
There were many ways trying to deal with him; somebody threatened him, we told all new ones not to let him play the chief of and we refused to help him out when he had problems. He was almost totally isolated in the workplace and was disliked by everyone. He was a constant problem, that didn’t end before he quit the job, but at a certain point we had developed a kind of balance. For example, he stopped snitching, and then we stopped controlling his acting and when he took his breaks. In a kind of way, we had a use for him, as an intimidating example for the newcomers: in him, they saw what consequence disloyalties to ones work pals brought with itself. Namely, to get mocked, ridiculed and totally frozen out.
Not being on the level (or “No pure wheat in the bag”)
At the same time as our work team produced about 3000 breads a hour, that was sold for 15-20 crowns (about 1,5-2,0 Euro or US-Dollar) a piece, the bosses were walking around with the misconception that we should have to pay for the bread we brought home. Kindly enough, we were only obliged to pay half the price. But luckily enough, the people on the floor saw it with a bit clearer perspective. Everyone improved their economy by bringing bread and cookies to their families, friends, neighbours, collectives and people’s kitchens, or to sale/exchange with the small stores. In theory we were supposed to write everything down in a book, but this was forgotten when you were on your way home. Anyway, you could just get a key to open the box yourself and take whatever bag of bread you wanted, when you were supposed to buy something. After a while, it went so far that we even provided ourselves with bread when a boss was around. This was motivated with the notion that labour itself was something that were depriving us workers, and anyway, the bosses were probably also stealing. When an angry placard appeared, with the announcement that something big and expensive was missing, and that the boss of that part of the bakery demanded it to be returned, it wasn’t a long matter of time before somebody had written “You could always check in your own garage!”
”Stop making a mess, ooooooooooor else the Boss will come!” – To communicate and to ridicule
For those who didn’t have a permanent contract it was, as I mentioned earlier, somewhat hard to protest. Then a more anonymous form of communication got an important function, especially scribble on the toilets. There were some brilliant examples of working class culture, for example in the form of poetry, limericks and drawings. Following is a poem, written by Aspes:
Blank lottery ticket
When I got a job I was happy
But probably couldn’t have been unluckier at all
For as soon as the next day
The boss came and said
“Toil on, you big bastard,you have to make more profits”
Yes, the owners get rich and fat
Without being obliged to work themselves
But when the business go back
Then the General Manager attacks
Cuts a couple of thousands of jobs
Just like a fucking snob
And you can hardly trust the employment office
When we at the bakery is forced to quit
No, when we got sacked
Our sole chance is a bingo lottery ticket!
This poem was so popular that other bakers printed it and spread it in the bakery. Another pearl was a drawing showing the bakery as a concentration camp, with foremen sitting in machine gun turrets. After a while, I started to go too different toilets, just for the fun of looking at the writings on the walls, the mock drawings and the political debates that went on.
Another important aspect of the scribbling on the toilets was how they made fun of the bosses. With the help of this, their authority was undermined and our mood was improved. Instead of asking if the boss had done his daily inspection route, you were instead saying things like: “Has the old bastard shown his fat arse yet?” Once, when I was called down to the boss’s office for some reason to have a yelling, some anonymous hero had put in a screen saver that said “The Boss and the foremen = Suckers!” (The boss was no ace in computers and couldn’t change it.) This ruined the grave mood that was meant too be prevalent in this particular yelling.
Work morals – a two-edged sword
For keeping your job you better had to learn as much in the shortest time possible. At the same time, it was hard keeping the balance between “showing your feet” and pure arse licking. No sane person wanted to smile his way in to the bosses heart, increase the work pace or to get work assignments that you barley mastered. But at the same time, the older employees were better listeners, when you were talking about your opinions, the better you were (if you weren’t cocky that is). Many of those who presented themselves as loyal too the management, and preached themselves warm about work morals, still acted in a totally opposite way. The confession of the lips can be used as a defence mechanism, a smoke curtain and facade for saving one’s own skin, making it easier with getting away with things and to be spared from getting shit from those on top. The bosses encouraged the “work morals” and were talking about almost mythological former bakers, who could feel the difference between dough 28,5 degrees Celsius and dough 29 degrees, with their bare hands. The answer was simply to try to show that you could do your job without it affecting anyone else through an increased work pace. If we youngsters would have worked hard, we could have made others unemployed, by opening up the “sacking people”-alternative for the management or the one where they wouldn’t have to hire stand ins.
Like a fucking kindergarten…
The labour itself was rather boring and also, in many instances, quite physical demanding. You could be standing on the same spot, packing bread or laying tins on a production line, all day long. Too stand this there was a brutal sense of humour and several kind of pranks. You were warmly poking fun with each other and in a not as warm manner with the bosses (“Let’s call the customs and tell them that he has half a kilo amphetamine in his arse!”). Once, when we had many people on learning, we cleared away the dough pots, made a ball out of tape and then had a soccer game with three players in each team. Sometimes we had daily battles with dough as projectiles (of course, we didn’t use that dough for bread). Besides being fun, it was hard for the boss to put his foot down, when you are just fooling around and playing all the time.
Nontenured employees as shields
After a while, the comrades that had a nontenured employment or that was educated with a fixed assignment were given the task to act as “shields” for the others. They had too take demands too the boss and could argue more openly against him, because they couldn’t get sacked just like that.
When new persons came, the foremen liked to say to them that we were their “bosses”, because we had been on the bakery longer than they had. We tried to take this notion out of them, with the quite good argument: we had the same salary as them. The fact that the foremen called us the newcomers’ bosses could easily be turned against the management. When they new employees were assigned to do meaningless shit-jobs, we told them that they could do something else, funnier, or take a coffee break instead. And if the foremen complained the new workers could just refer to us – the bosses.
Collective strength
In the final days of the bakery there were not very much to do there, so we wanted leave with a full paycheque before the working day had ended. The boss refused, and told us to do the cleaning up in an extremely minute way instead. Most would think that it would get a proper cleaning when the whole building would be turned down… Some days after they had told us that we couldn’t go home before the working day had ended, there was an big breakdown on an other bakery, and the whole of southern Sweden were risking a stoppage on some types of our bread. When the boss declared this, he said that it probably would mean five-hour overtime for us workers. We just nodded in reply, while we all agreed afterwards, to go home by the end of the regular working hours. Soon people began titling-tattling about that we shouldn’t finish all the bread, because we had told them in packing, that it would be no overtime when they asked us for how long we should work. Grown-up men, twice as old as us, ran around looking either worried (the bosses) or giggly (the bakers). When the boss of our section of the bakery called to ask us what was happening we just told him that we had quit working for the day and just had do the cleaning to go home. We were expecting the yelling of the year, but instead he got all worked up and all he said was “Ok”. It was a wonderful feeling going home that day.
At one occasion the management wanted to change the working hours for some of us, adding three more hours, a three hours earlier working day once a week – something we were absolutely opposed to. The union wanted us to have more salary during that time, the company wanted us to have the same salary as we had, while we demanded extra paid vacancy if we were to accept this at all. When we arrived at work one day we found out that the union representative-bastard had signed papers without our approval (they could and can do that legally – he had right to negotiate even if we didn’t want it). When he came to work we went to the room were we had our coffee (were else…) and confronted him. He told us that he had accepted the new working hours, but that he and management wasn’t in an agreement (hmm…). All this grew too an argument of gigantic proportions and we got so excited that we didn’t notice that more and more workers came along. Anyway, we told him that we refused to show up before our regular working day began - something another worker happily remarked was a wildcat strike. In answer, he suggested that we perhaps were in the wrong business if we couldn’t handle this kind of working hours. Others, newly arrived listeners, half-joking began to nominate a new union representative. Finally we left him with the words that he could approve whatever hours he wanted to, but that we would come and go in accordance with our regular hours. It never came any instructions on new hours, so I guess he ran to the boss and that they agreed not to carry it through. Well, then we agreed not to carry trough the project of painting his car in the yellow colour of the class traitor.
Closing down
Finally the decision to close down the bakery came. It came, as a relief for many who had been walking around waiting and who just wanted to know. Because of the fact that the same company had closed down so many other bakeries in other places without meeting any resistance, there was no one who was ready to pick up the fight for keeping the place. In general we thought that it was a shitty job, and it that case, we could take any shitty job.
Some conclusions
The faceless resistance is very much about small everyday conflicts, and is a form of struggle that anyone can be involved in. Because of this, this way of struggle can also combat the hierarchies within the working class – it gives practical possibilities for struggling together. Instead of waiting an eternity for some big red union guy that will fix everything, you can just get it started yourself. It could be a question of you gaining from it, of acting in solidarity with one’s work mates or other workers (for example the workers who bought the bread we were producing), of being driven by a burning political conviction, of wanting to have a vengeance on the management or individual bosses, of simplifying the labour process, or simply because it is fun!
Varg I Veum, a member of Kämpa Tillsammans! (http://kampatillsammans.wordpress.com/)
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