Organizing an "inside strike"

[the last donut of the night]

Source (http://socialistworker.org/2011/09/06/organizing-the-inside-strike)



The machine stops. The boss says, "What's wrong?" I say, "I don't know." He asks the job setter, who replies, ""I don't know."" He asks another co-worker, who replies, "I don't know." Then we all look at the boss, and he starts sweating because he knows that we know that he is the only one who really doesn't know.

Now who's boss?

Knowledge is power, and workers can wield it with a hilarious vengeance.

That's really all you have to do. Just shrug and say, "I don't know." That's why it's called The Inside Strike. Instead of withholding labor, workers withhold knowledge, and collect a paycheck just like the burdensome boss.

pretty funny read, thought it'd be an interesting article to discuss

[Ocean Seal]

Interesting, but can't the boss just bring in scabs who do know and fire the workers? I'd rather have the picket line.

[RedTrackWorker]

I agree with the new Joe Burns book on reviving the strike: "working to rule [an inside strike] has proven able to supplement, but not replace, a strike that stops production" (Burns, Joe, Reviving the Strike: How Working People Can Regain Power and Transform America, p. 74.)

The book on the Staley strike provides a great and detailed example of why this is so (essentially if I remember correctly, as soon as the "inside" strike started working, the bosses locked them out).

[Nothing Human Is Alien]

There are all sorts of tactics that can be used, from pickets to sit downs to occupations to inside strikes to slow downs to fink drives and more. The key is to be flexible. That flexibility can only really come from the workers themselves, when they are actually prepared to fight to win on their own terms. When it's left in the hands of the union bureaucrats, you get token pickets behind police barricades off to the side, where a handful of members can chant slogans and occasionally yell something or other while they watch people go in and out of the shop they're striking.