Getting organised… for workers’ control!

I’m hoping things are starting to pull together now at work. Myself and a couple of other more militant housekeepers are trying to get the ball rolling with organising our workmates in the union. There’s plenty going on at the moment in our hotel alone, let alone wider recession-stricken society.

As if being paid the piss-poor minimum wage hourly was some sort of privilege, our bosses have brought in this week (for room attendants) a pay-by-room policy. Room attendants (you know, the people that make a hotel what it is by making swanky rooms look swanky in the first place) are now paid £2.23 per room, and so are expected (i.e. ordered) to do at least 2.5 rooms in an hour – to make the minimum wage of £5.80. This policy as been dropped on the heads of barely-trained and inexperienced new workers, who cannot yet clean rooms this quickly. So it means that many are working 12 hour shifts, doing only one room per hour, giving them an hourly rate of pay of… £2.23! This scheme fits in totally with casualisation and suits the bosses fine. They tell you how many rooms to clean (could be 9 one day and 19 the next) and so determine whether you can pay the bills from one month to the next. The more casual and insecure they try to make us work, the less rights they know we are granted by law. A fleeting glance at our ‘contracts’ says more than enough: the employer reserves the right to give you work when there is work. Therefore, if the company cannot get enough customers, we suffer first with cuts in hours and then jobs. Yet the managers and their bosses get nice salaries and decide whether with have a right to eat and have a home.

This is why I have been posing the question of who runs the workplace, and who, of course should run the workplace: the bosses (a tiny minority) or the workers. I want to raise the banner of workers’ control. A more rational system is workers’ democracy, with committees in every workplace electing their leaders, who are completely accountable and recallable – not managers who get paid more for ordering you around and you had no choice in putting there. This sort of rank-and-file democracy has been achieved in the past, most notably in Russia during and after the Russian Revolution of 1917. In this case, councils of workers’ and soldiers’ deputies (Soviets) were built from below, against the bosses. This situation of dual power later lead to the conquest for power of the workers under the leadership of the Bolshevik party – the overthrow of the bosses and their system, capitalism. So what started under capitalism lead to the overthrow of the oppressors and pushed forward to a socialist future. The only failing was Russia’s cultural and economic backwardness and the failure of the working classes of surrounding countries (like the more advanced Germany) to spread the revolution and make it permanent. A vicious civil war between the workers and rulers ensued which rocked the country to the core and made it difficult for the productive forces to be built up further, as all energy and money was put into fighting back the capitalists from home and abroad. But the ground was laid for socialism by this true workers democracy (for a more detailed analysis of workers’ control click here and more more on the Russian Revolution click here).

This is why we need to continue to build a rank-and-file movement in the unions and in our workplaces, behind the backs of and against the employers. We can show them, through unity, (regardless of race, nationality or sexuality) who should be really running the world.

So whenever we are threatened with cuts in hours or pay, or even our jobs, we need to stand firm and fight back. This means strikes and occupations of workplaces when the bosses threaten closure or lay-offs. This tactic has worked countless times all over the world. Some say, ‘well, we can’t just occupy or go on strike because it’s illegal’. What we reply is: ‘Fuck the anti-trade union laws! We can break them through struggle and make them unworkable and obsolete!’ We can do this if we organise. This is what we are attempting to do day-by-day.

All I can say now is: LET’S DO IT!