Striking Workers Are Bringing Back 1970s 'Mindfuck' Tactics
The 23rd of January was meant to be another strike day at the Ministry of Justice. Just like the day before, an anti-strike workforce of cleaners, receptionists and security guards had been brought in to keep the building running. Early in the morning, Purma and the other strikers turned up to form a picket line. But then, all at once, they walked inside to do their jobs like normal. Rather than continuing the protest, the workers had secretly coordinated to go back to work a day early.
The unexpected non-strike meant that all the outsourced staff turned up for work and needed to get paid, and so did the anti-strike scab workforce. Someone was going to have to pay a double wage bill.
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Deliveroo and UberEats riders, however, are masters of the mindfuck. Because they’re technically self-employed, the laws on strike action and trade unions don’t apply to them. That means that the slow bureaucracy of postal ballots and turnout thresholds designed to prevent workers from taking collective action goes out the window. Instead, these workers can just do what makes sense to them. The result has been an explosion in militancy, as the platforms try to cut their workers’ already-low wages. Strikes are now breaking out every couple of weeks with little or no prior notice. They’re organised through complex networks of encrypted messenger chats which are completely invisible to platform bosses, meaning that all their standard management techniques need to be rewritten.
Remind them that the alternatives to them treating us fairly at the negotiating table is Open Goddamn War