Let's Talk About Union Busting Through Media Narratives
Strikepost! About how the ruling class agitates against working class solidarity, and why you should not listen to them.
Wherever there are protests or strikes, there is media framing of the people agitating for the interest of the working class as being The Baddies. With the perpetual crisis that we find ourselves in, there has been increased strike activity, and with that, increased efforts to make the general public hate unions and everything they stand for. I haven't been reading the French news, but for those who have looked at German publications lately, it should have been hard to avoid the barrage of thought-pieces and interviews with employer interest groups claiming that the strikers are literally holding a population hostage, tanking the economy, and ruining workers' lives.
Of course, there cannot be even the smallest awakening of class war without retaliation of the ruling class, but the accusations levelled against organisers at this time go beyond anything I’ve seen before. And we haven't been setting things on fire here in cautious (not to say cowardly) Germany, unlike our French comrades. All it takes for collective media outrage is to simply announce a large-scale transport strike that is to last one full day. Oh, the humanity! The collapse of society is near. The strikers are "shutting down the entire country" even, which will "eradicate acceptance of the strike laws", to quote two people whose expropriation I would celebrate with enthusiasm.
There have even been discussions on restricting our already incredibly restrictive strike laws further, implying that unions and their members are no different from terrorists who should be barred from continuing their activities now and in the future. Because we will lose all social and economic stability and witness the fall of everything that modern civilisation has accomplished when there is no activity on our tracks for a day.. right? Any thinking being should consider this statement to be laughable – I've had to sincerely double check that I haven't missed the memo that the strikes have been extended to last indefinitely, and sadly they haven't been – but leave it to employer councils and the media that amplifies their viewpoints to always have a moralising narrative ready to try to make people who aren't hardline socialists believe in the catastrophic snowball effects of a twenty-four hour transport strike.
People are being told that without the train going, they can't get to work, if they can't get to work, they might lose their jobs, they won't be able to feed their children, their children won't be getting an education, they'll struggle to find a job because they couldn't get to school, the list goes on... see, these selfish union members care about nothing but themselves! They're not even asking themselves the questions we do! We, the employers, are the only ones who truly care about you. Because we want to be able to continue employing you, and for you to send your kids to school and to put food on their table. <3
These types of statements are designed to get people distracted from the issue at hand. The issue at hand being that people are not being paid fairly, they're being overworked and understaffed.. all issues that the average person should not think about too much lest they recognise that it applies to them just the same. Instead of fostering solidarity, people are made to worry about their personal situation and that of their immediate family, a situation that the strikers are said to be all too happy to destabilize even further. The strikers are portrayed as evil agents that are out to destroy the average worker’s already difficult life, just so that they can get a little salary increase that helps them afford one more serving of high-end sushi a month, at the same time as the regular proletarians struggle to even serve their family one frozen pizza a day.
But the narrative goes far beyond these everyday, individual concerns. We're busy shutting down a whole civilisation, remember? Margaret losing her job and having a dumb kid is not nearly enough to make that happen. No, the strikers are single-handedly crashing the economy on top of it all. Companies won't be able to continue to produce if there is no transport, the delivery lines are already blocked and disturbed as it is, many businesses will need to close up shop and fire people like Margaret and at the end of it all, everyone suffers. Which is why, they claim, nothing should be allowed to shut down even for one day.
This response may seem a little overblown, but the people making these statements do not actually believe that one day of strikes is going to do much more than mildly to moderately inconvenience the average prole with no major consequences to their life. People might be late to work, have to pay extra for alternative means of transportation, maybe little Amanda even misses a day of school, but ultimately everyone is going to move on with their lives and forget about it all a week later. Even the company will recover, let's face it.
But the employer advocates who talk about the downfall of civilisation at the first sign of heightened union activity know full well that this is only the beginning. They know that more strikes will follow if they do not pay up. They know that there will be longer strikes, they know that the much-contested strike laws will be disregarded eventually in favour of longer, unannounced and more "political" strikes, they know that large numbers of workers honestly do have the power to shut everything down, to disrupt all economic activity if they put their collective mind to it. They want to avoid all of that happening without having to add one singular cent to their employees' salaries. Their method of choice, a method that costs them nothing, is to convince unorganised workers, which are unfortunately the majority, that they and the unions have opposing interests. The unions want to make everyone's lives more difficult for their own gain, they want to take and take more and never give, they're leeches who just hate to work, while charitable CEOs are contributing to society by owning their corporations and reaching out their kind hand to the poor to give them a chance to work for them and afford a roof over their heads. So, Margaret, whose side are you on?
The narrative of strikers being selfish, out for their own interests only, without any consideration for the struggle of regular workers is necessary and convenient for employers to go on their merry way, improving fuck all in terms of working conditions and salaries. Not only does it help them avoid taking action in response to the strikes that are taking place at a given moment, it also manufactures consent for further exploitation and eradication of worker's rights by pitting union members and non-union members against each other. What better outcome can there be for employers than for their workers to be convinced that they're standing on the same side of workers' issues as their boss? Class consciousness is a powerful weapon against the ruling class, and they know this. Capitalists have incredible class solidarity and will do whatever is within their means to make sure that the solidarity of the working class is poisoned and parched before it has a chance to grow into something threatening.
It is completely in capitalists' interest, and in their interest only, to divide the people of the working class to prevent them from understanding their common interest and standing up for themselves together, and we should do what we can to make sure they do not get away with it. Those who aren't commie-pilled enough to instantly clock that the demonising framing of the unions is a deliberate attack against the proletariat may be preoccupied with concerns for their own situation, and I do not blame them. They think about how much their life already sucks right now and how they really cannot afford for it to get worse, and not being able to catch a train on top of all of their other issues may feel like just another punch in their already bruised face. But the fact that their face is taking punches on the daily in the first place is exactly why they need to stand with the unions. So what can we do to help people understand that they, as workers, are no different from those who are on the streets at this moment in time?
The way I see it, the low unionisation rates among workers are the greatest hurdle, and probably a point that we should be addressing. I'm talking from the German perspective right now, where less than 20% of workers are registered with unions, and I can imagine that the situation isn't much better in most other capitalist countries. This makes it incredibly easy for those in power to portray union members as their own class, as a nefarious working elite that is separate from and above other workers, an organisation of lazy, greedy narcissists who will gladly throw the average Joe and Jane under the bus for their own interests by preventing them from getting to their place of work, among other things. The "caring" employer can then swoop in to save the day by nipping the activities of the small but powerful, harmful interest group that is the union in the bud. Such heroes they are! We love a corporate CEO.
So what I'm suggesting is that we need to have more people joining unions. The employers' interests seem to be getting a push in the media, which makes sense considering their financial leverage, but all of this would be completely ineffectual if organised workers weren't such a small minority. If we manage to grow to a majority, the union will not be able to be framed as a separate class that stands in opposition to the common worker. There will be a common understanding that unions are workers’ organisations that are meant to stand for the interest of every single person who has to sell their labour power to get by. When strikes focus on certain industries more than others, it does not mean that they are special interest groups that have more power than the rest of us – it only means that there is a higher percentage of workers within those industries who are members, which makes organising efforts much more powerful and likely to yield success. If you as a worker want to see more striking activity happening from within your own workplace, the best way to get that going is to join a union and convince those around you to do the same.
I'm a union member myself, but the way it stands at the moment, I'm essentially paying fees only out of class solidarity. As a tech worker, the unionisation rate in my workplace and industry are abysmal. Tech workers are highly underrepresented in unions compared to the already barely organised general population, which makes it next to impossible to get much if any striking going at this point in time. One might say that it is pointless to be a member if I do not currently stand to gain from it personally, and there are many people who carry this exact mindset, but we have to start somewhere. I might be one of three union members in a company of 500+ "human resources", but I might be able to convince others and bring it up to 30 eventually. We might start a workplace union at some point. Eventually we might be able to get organisers to help us get a strike of our own going.
Such is how the wheels of history can turn, and I believe that we are witnessing them turning at a faster rate than we have in a long time. As I've mentioned previously, we've been living in a perpetual crisis, and people are getting fed up with the way that workers remain left in the dust with deteriorating wages and standards of living, while reading news reports about how essential goods have had a greed tax attached to their inflationary price hikes and corporations are cashing in record profits. The numbers of people who buy into the moralising narratives against strikers seem to be decreasing, and now the numbers of people who advocate for themselves by getting organised need to increase in turn.
Capitalists know our power much better than we do. Their attacks are becoming more aggressive because they are afraid. They know we can crash an economy, if we want to, because it is, after all, workers that keep production going. They know that we can create a true national "hostage" situation, if we want to. But by the time it gets to that point, the capitalist class will be the one in captivity. It will not be a situation of workers turning against workers. To have such large-scale effects, we need all workers on our side to participate as much as possible. And it's possible. Let's put more fear in the fragile hearts of the capitalists. Let's show them what we are capable of. Let us organise, let us strike and strike and do whatever is necessary to exercise our collective power and create a world that caters to the interest of the working majority.
Join your union! Convince others to join their union! And do not let employers' councils or company owners of all people tell you what you, as a worker, are supposed to be thinking about workers' strikes.
Power to all people on the streets on Monday and beyond <3