UK: Workplace strategy of the Anarchist Federation

via ainfos, 12 May 2009:

The following text is the official workplace strategy of the Anarchist Federation, adopted nationally in April 2009. Drawing on the experiences of AF members at the workplace, it aims to lay out the possibilities for anarchists in the here and now and open debate in the movement on workplace organisation.

Preface

It is necessary to explain why we felt we needed to clarify and publish our workplace strategy. Given our stated position that unions are not revolutionary organs, and that they play an important role in the management of workers, many comrades have expressed puzzlement at the involvement of AF members in the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW). Others, hearing these views on unions, did not understand why AF members often join the unions in their workplaces. There was clearly a perceived mismatch between our stated politics and our visible practice, and this needed to be addressed.

The existing published positions fail to adequately address the kinds of struggle and solidarity possible in different kinds of workplaces. This document is an attempt to detail the various situations working people face, and the consequent possibilities for action. Our aim is the development of a culture of resistance amongst workers, and this workplace strategy details how we believe this is possible, and the role of unions in this. In short, we hold that unions are not working class organs, and play an important role in managing and containing workers and workers' struggles. However, they are one place where class struggle finds expression. They provide important protection for workers, and are a common point of departure. However, as mediating institutions, struggle must move beyond them for meaningful change to take place. Our involvement in unions recognises what they are and how they operate; it is motivated not by trade unionism, but a broader anarchist communist perspective. We seek the broadening and advancement of workers’ struggles, not the advancement of the sectional interests trade unions represent. In this sense, the trade unions are a site of struggle in their own right.

Our current publications describe workplace resistance groups as the only form of workers organisation consistent with anarchist communist politics. However, we felt that the formulation was vague, and did not address the need for workers to use unions and union recognition to defend themselves against sacking and victimisation. Moreover, extra-union forms of organisation and resistance are always contingent on the specific situation workers find themselves in, and in periods of low struggle they can be a less viable strategy of self-defence than the decision to form a union branch. This document describes the workplace resistance group as a tendency of self-organisation and militancy which can take radically different forms as a result of different contexts, but remains the form of organisation which takes on the bosses in both the workplace and in the union. It is a tendency towards self-organisation, mutual aid and direct action. The workplace resistance group can exist in non-unionised workplaces, but it is not described as an alternative to unionisation. Rather it is an important strategy in moving beyond trade union structures and towards workers taking full control of their own struggles.

...

Clearly if we stood on the street and called for workers’ councils tomorrow we wouldn’t get anywhere. But it is the job of anarchist communist militants to push for the broadening of all struggles, for turning defensive struggles into offensive ones, and for struggles to be directed directly and democratically by those they concern, not dictated by union bosses or obliquely by union laws. None of this can be abstracted from the real development of class struggle on the ground.

Read the full article here

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