Every year, my employer (I know there's no reason to be coy about who it is but at this point it's a habit) picks a day in mid November to give away free plastic red cups to customers who purchase holiday drinks, and every year it's an absolute disaster of a day, even for old hands like me who are fully entrenched in the "embrace the chaos" mindset. Last year, the union launched a surprise strike action on the day of, and while we weren't yet unionized it was all customers could talk about as they came in by the dozens. This year, the element of surprise has been foregone for trying to hit them as hard as we possibly can, and this year my store is unionized, so maybe we can join in?
That's what I figured, anyways. We've been unionized for almost a year now, and it's been like pulling teeth to get any direct action going. I made a big post whining about that awhile back, so I won't bore you with the long version, but suffice it to say the last time a strike vote came up we had like four people vote, total, and three of them were for "I'll do what the majority wants", so that's not great. This time I had another organizer contact me to ask about the prospect of striking for this year's red cup day, and I expressed my frustrations with the difficulties of trying to effectively organize without an organizing committee. While sympathetic, they then offered me advice that seemed so obvious in hindsight I don't understand why I couldn't figure it out myself - Just go back to the basics, and organize this thing the same way I got the election done: On the individual level, person by person, conversation by conversation.
And wouldn't you know it, that was far more effective than tossing up a google form link in our store chat and hoping that people would do the right thing. By selectively talking to the right people at the right times, and then figuring out which ones I could nudge to talk to a few others that I wouldn't be able to get in touch with physically, votes started to come in. But not enough. Turnout was still a problem, in stark contrast to our election vote itself, which was 100%. By bugging folks higher up in the foodchain I could get access to the vote totals but not know who voted or how (yknow, obviously), and yesterday morning the total was 4 in favor, 3 against, and 4 saying they'd go with the majority. With 15 votes available in total, that's not something I could push forward with a pledge to strike in good conscience.
The fact that there were three no votes was also troubling - In all my mental math I'd accounted for one, maybe two tops, but three already saying no with four more still up for grabs, there's no telling how it could play out. I sat down on my lunch and grabbed a piece of paper, scribbling out everyone's initials and sussing out who I knew for sure had voted, and who I was unsure about - then, I simply texted those people to remind them about voting. What surprised me is that people who I hadn't talked to at all directly responded telling me they'd already voted, and people who I had already sent the link to and spoken with about voting before hadn't. In the span of thirty minutes I'd bumped us up to seven in favor, with no additional votes against, a clear majority for the fence-sitting voters to side with. A lot of ink gets spilled about how hard organizing is, but there's something to be said for how much you can accomplish with a cell phone and a lunch break.
So just like that, I've gone and done it - I officially pledged our store to strike and spent the day texting people who are scheduled that day telling them that we'll be on strike and that they shouldn't report to work that day, providing them with the info for our strike fund so they can still get paid. That's my main priority right now but there's still a whole lotta work left I've gotta put in to make this go off properly. There's a non-zero chance we get scabbed, and not even necessarily from them bringing in workers, which is a bummer, but there's enough people who seem genuinely enthusiastic for it and so I just gotta try to make it work for them.
