Robert Poole ad Henry Fowler: The global economy, matched with global supply chains, is facing a growing movement of disruption. Some of the most impressive industrial action is taking place by self-organised workers, sometimes with the backing of recognised trade unions and often without. These self-organised workers are using tactics like walkouts, sickouts, and workplace occupations, as Tronti notes, to ‘block the economic mechanism and, at the decisive moment, render it incapable of functioning.’ You’d be forgiven for not knowing about these actions, though: most in the country don’t. Labour organising isn’t the subject of choice for a mainstream media who have vilified trade unions for the past forty years. … [I]n combining both the innovative forms of worker organising with the technology available to us all, we have built Strike Map UK. Currently, there are no coordinated records kept of the strike action happening across the UK. Our online map is an attempt to start to catalogue the action taking place, and we hope this will be useful to other workers. The site is ‘worker-powered’ and relies purely on the information supplied via our submission form.” (An Australian equivalent would be great to see!)
30 December 2020