From a course at the 1999 Spring School
Saskatchewan Federation of Labour/ Canadian Labour Congress
Led by D'Arcy Martin and Adriane Paavo


SESSION I - SUNDAY NIGHT (90 MINUTES)

1.OPENING (10 minutes)

(a) Instructors welcome people and introduce themselves
(b) Go around: Name and union for all participants
(c) Initial remarks
- we deal with management all the time
- management agenda is based on cutting costs, improving productivity, etc.
- they have a range of strategies to pursue this agenda
- we need to be clear on our agenda
- and develop a range of options for how to pursue it
- from rejecting their initiatives to participating, to initiating ourselves
- we'll examine current management strategies, and how various unions are acting
- not promote specific responses, but widen the range of options to consider
- give lots of information, and outline options
- strengthen your capacity to make judgements, not apply a formula
- one size doesn't fit all
- at the end of the day, your local and union will set its own direction
- course title: a form of martial art where you have to engage, and use the opponent's strength and momentum against them
- this course different from much union education
- not focused on a role (like stewards) or a specific problem (like harassment), but on a perspective.

2.SOLIDARITY BINGO (15 minutes)

(NOTE special version drafted for this course)

(a) Introduction: Ask if anyone has played bingo before, has won more than they paid for the cards. Promise that the prize here is greater than the cost of the cards, which after all is zero. Distribute the cards, face down, and explain the game. Say it requires people to move around. Say it will run 4 minutes, then keep an eye for when energy starts to flag.

(b) De-briefing: After awarding prize, tie in some of the items to the course themes. This is another opportunity to say what the course is about.
- "ordered to smile and make eye contact": 6 put up hands, direct service work and emotional labour, as compared to background work.
- "own shares in company": note public sector workers all do, in a sense. Sense of loyalty and commitment to the employer.
- "sat on local bargaining committee": have faced management across the table, and will share these experiences. Union activists have some repetitive strain; we need to be more flexible, try a range of tactics.
- "seen harassment": not hard if it's management doing it to a member, but co-worker harassment dangerous and divisive. Need to know yourself as well as your opponent in order to be consistently effective. Look at internal divisions, how to fight the "divide and rule".
- "think top management is competent": Need to assess the other side accurately. May have problems at the middle level, and effectiveness at the top. We don't often get access to the top, and need to judge when it makes sense to go there.


3.INTRODUCTIONS

(a) Cartoons in the binder: Use humour to lighten up how people relate to each other and the union.

(b) Review the worksheet (to be revised)

(c) Divide into pairs
- one way is to number off participants (e.g. 1-8) until you're half way through, then start over. Then match the people with the same number, in order to break up informal groups of friends.

(d) Report back on content expectations for the course:

PARTICIPANT EXPECTATIONS:
- how to represent with dignity
- guidelines to work with or against management
- how to stand up for our rights
- how to listen
- make work more enjoyable and less stressful
- be assertive, not aggressive
- learn all that can help a union leader
- "Art of War" principles
- how the union works and represents members vis-a-vis management
- how to deal with management
- different bargaining tactics
- ways to approach management, and when to walk away
- think quickly how to respond to situations
- how to handle management

(e) Link participant expectations into the page of "course objectives" in the binder.

(f) Review the process expectations (see flip charts) for what the participants and facilitators can do to make this a good learning experience.

PARTICIPANTS CAN:
- participate
- listen for helpful information
- take back what they learn to the members
- ask questions, and take an active interest
- add input to the discussion, based on experience
- listen to different views, and stay focused
- stay attentive
- communicate with others.

FACILITATORS CAN:
- share experience to keep it interesting
- allow helpful discussion
- make it easy to understand and bring back to members
- be good listeners
- respect people's opinions and remain open-minded
- keep the momentum going/ keep course on track
- stay focused

4.LOGISTICS

(a) Elect the class rep

(b) Review the schedule of the week
- the flow from context/ workplace/ at the table/ in the society
- purpose is to develop elements of a plan for your workplace

(c) Safety provisions for the week
- first aid and CPR skills in the group
- check workers' compensation provisions for people

(d) Optional activities - fitness, hospitality room, etc.


5.UNION JUDO PRINCIPLES

This is a course on judgement, on principles to help you and your local judge how to act in a more volatile workplace. Union leadership now involves an increasingly aggressive management, an increasingly divided membership, and increasingly complicated issues. So it's stressful. We need a range of tools to address new challenges.

For this purpose, we have developed a basic framework, to help make sense of management agendas and labour agendas. On the management side, we speak of a "management cocktail" of 5 strategies and 5 tactics. On the union side, we speak of 5 guidelines, as the basis for developing strategy and tactics suited to the situation.

6.HOMEWORK READINGS

(a) Principles of Union Judo (Sun Tzu)
(b) Watch Out! (Rita Kwok)
(c) Why Unions Matter (Elaine Bernard)
Ask: How do these readings relate to your own experience? What in the readings is:
- interesting?
- useful?
- missing?

7. *AMENDING THE BINDER

(a) Insert a page at the end of each section - "what stands out for you?"
(b) Some pages to insert from CEP version, especially for history

SESSION II
MONDAY MORNING (2.5 HOURS)

1.NAME REVIEW

Welcome a new participant, and have people repeat everyone's name. At first, do it by table, then skip around the room until everyone's name has been covered at least twice. Then short interactive lecture:
- who here has difficulty remembering names?
- is this a problem in union life? (including at this school)
- two keys are clearing your mind to focus when you first here the name, and storing it in more than one part of your brain (by visuals like name card or tag, by repeating and/ or writing the name down).

2.READING REVIEW

(a) "WATCH OUT" by Rita Kwok (needs to be linked into Management Cocktail)

Interesting: This describes things we face all the time
- strong echoes in people's experience as activists
- not only reaction from management, but from members as well

Useful: Delay - pattern in workplaces is to do it now, and grieve it later
Denial - get contradictory reports from supervisors, or even members
Discredit - sometimes of the issue, sometimes of the person
Divide - e.g. Gainsharing plans that give individual financial benefits
- also lifetime probation schemes
Missing: Duh - the incompetence of management
- a hazard for the union

Implications: Division of senior and newer employees
- younger often don't see how it'll affect them down the road.
- like part-timers vs. full-timers, men vs. women
- key here is more information
- importance of sharing history, and information, to build the union.
- through song, through video, through booklets
- helps to prepare the ground for a specific issue
- helps understand how their struggle also is part of the future
- create committees or task groups to work on issues
- involve people from both sides of the issue


(b) "WHY UNIONS MATTER"

More for information, food for thought, than immediate use
Good perspective on democracy outside the workplace with autocracy inside the workplace
"Instead of democracy coming to the workplace, the corporate model is coming into the rest of the world".
- which way does this go? how can we influence its direction?
The place where we spend most of our waking hours doesn't have any democracy
- how can we be involved on a day to day basis
Lots of the gains we have fought for affect workers society-wide, whether or not people are unionized.
- otherwise we are seen to be privileged
- e.g. Medicare benefits everyone
- this reduces the isolation of unionized workers, not sitting ducks for employers
- a real push now from the United States to roll back workers gains


(c) "PRINCIPLES OF UNION JUDO"

Importance of educating everyone, not just unionized people
Important to know yourself and defend yourself
Watch out when it appears the leadership has its own agenda
- mistrust of the executive by the membership
- can be driven by individual personal agendas
Avoid having people go in to talk with management on their own
Need for discipline in meetings with management
- not going off spontaneously on an issue
- keep your focus
Sometimes issues lose their momentum
Need some creative ways to inform and involve people
- can be electronic
- note people respond to very different ways of presenting (see flags and drums)
- e.g. hard to get people out even on a percentage rather than flat rate
The importance of preparation
We tend to be a one-note band, often so pressed for time
Value of analysing all the players in the situation
- need peripheral vision
- see the whole battlefield, not just the skirmish we're in

Missing: What to do about all this
- some impatience with analysing management
- desire to move to action ideas right away

3.MANAGEMENT COCKTAIL

Strategy
- intimidate
- divide (note that this shows up later in the tactics, 5-D's)
- end run
- exploit the caring
- ignore?? (to think about)

Discussion of experiences with this
- and linkage to the 5-D's

SESSION III
MONDAY AFTERNOON
3.5 HOURS

1.WORKPLACE EXPERIENCE AND PATTERNS
(What has changed in the workplace in the last three years)
- what is striking is how much change there has been
- also the need to counter media images about unions
- with pro-union videos on loan, also music, community donations, etc.
(a) Language
- "new opportunities"
- "multi-functional"
- "risk management"
- "empowerment"
- "abbreviations" (TQM, etc.)
- team player
- composite employee
- conform to the norm
- phantom shoppers
- club cards
- right sizing
- JIQ - job info questionnaire
- continuous evaluation (lifelong probation)
- technological change
- stakeholders (everyone but staff)
- right to manage
- virtual campus
- most available hours (screwing the part-time people)

OPPORTUNITIES FOR THE UNION FROM THE LANGUAGE
- how can we become a "risk", in the terms of risk management?
-* see Alice De Wolff references to follow this up
- how to "call their bluff" on the language used

(b) Techniques
- befriend, then undermine
- intimidation
- patronizing
- divide and conquer
- creation of artificial business units
- increased use of part time employees
- front line management
- performance evaluation
- show the big picture/ business plan
- competition info by e-mail and meetings
- buddy systems
- divide and conquer
- sabotage

OPPORTUNITES FOR THE UNION FROM THE TECHNIQUES
- surveillance is passed off as a "report card". Other possible report cards?
- using threats to security etc., as a basis of invading privacy
- privacy complaint (Internet research on labour law for this)
- exploit the contradiction in long-service awards
- between undermining seniority in the day to day
- yet doing long-service recognition in order to keep people in line.
Recognition systems (buy you a meal, or some donuts) to motivate people
- we might set up our own
Front-line managers squeezed even more than the bargaining unit members
Pack the empowerment committees with union people
Set up our own buddy systems, adopting a manager, or a new employee
- even if they aren't going to stay for long
Welcome packs for new employees, with a union contact follow up.

(c) Equipment/ Processes
- more computers, less jobs
- corporate spies/ mystery shoppers
- technological change
- less people doing the same job
- job performance criteria
- On Board Reporting Systems (OBRS)/Yard Operating Plan (YOP) technologies
- counter ready pork and beef (done at the plant, with vacuum packing)
- time systems
- remote control trains
- SAP inventory control systems
- virtual office (laptop computers)
- banner accounting system
- hiring processes
- security systems (cameras, smart cards, etc.), used for discipline
- camera surveillance everywhere
- evaluatin by JIQ
OPPORTUNITIES FOR THE UNION FROM THE EQUIPMENT
Note that new technologies are personally convenient for many of us
- hence we are less likely to be critical of their use in the workplace
Virtual labour
- www.clc-ctc.ca
- labourstart.org
- labornotes.org
- thinkingunion.net
- www3.sk.sympatico.ca/grains

2.IMPLICATIONS
Buzzword bingo
- see Thunder Bay SEIU use in the hospital campaign
Three-cornered dynamic of interactive service work
- see Sask Union of Nurses effective work on public opinion
- remember that management can get there first, timing is important
Could consider a fourth corner in this dynamic
- government/ regulators
- customers/ public
- workers/ unions (sometimes more than one)
- managers/ owners

3.MANAGEMENT'S HIDDEN AGENDA

(a) Mike Parker video
- available from Terry Kennedy, Labour Education Centre, Manitoba Fed
- especially how Parker describes the meeting called by the manager
- also the green-yellow-red lights
- term "management by stress"
- also favouritism vs. merit
(b) Theory X and Theory Y linked into Mike Parker
- and could echo from "What's New?" video if it's used earlier
- low trust/ lazy/ external reward
- high trust/ motivated/ intrinsic reward
- how Theory Z combines the two
- examples like phone companies
-tradition of Theory X in operator services and Theory Y in craft
- or in industrial workplaces, treat assemblers with Theory X
- maintenance electricians with Theory Y
- reflect on labour activism as a Theory Y activity
- implications of each for union activism
- unity higher with Theory X, room to manoeuvre greater with Theory Y

(c) Bigger picture of relationships (developed further from previous session)
- more complex and volatile than in the past
- "worker" corner has solidarity to be built, rather than assumed
- "management" corner may have more and less scope at different levels and times
- "customer" corner includes "secret shoppers" etc.
- and may be the public at large (consider the SUN experience)
- "government" corner may be the management, if a public service job
- changing too, with de-regulation and cuts in monitoring staff etc.

(d) On the ground
- identify situations from course participants where problems exist
- arising from discussion so far, including Mike Parker video
- say they won't be addressed immediately, but will be during the course
- begin planning to use them as cases or role plays the day after tomorrow