IWW.

ORG
ONE BIG UNION
This edition of How To Fire Your Boss is a slightly edited version of a PDF that is published by Zabalaza Books and can be found on-line at, www.zabalaza.net

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our bosses.
be pissed off at
boss every right to
has. we have
fire your one who ever
known to any-
living is well
how to working for a
the indignity of

how to fire your boss

a workers guide to direct action Most courts held labour unions to be illegal conspiracies that damage ‘free
trade’, and strikers were often beaten and shot by police, state militia and
The indignity of working for a living is well known to anyone who ever has. private security goons. The legal right of workers to organise is now officially
Democracy, the great principle on which our society is supposedly founded, is recognised by law, yet so many restrictions exist that effective action is as
thrown out the window as soon as we punch the time clock at work. With no difficult as ever. For this reason, any worker thinking about direct action on
say over what we produce, or how that production is organised, and with only the job—bypassing the legal system and hitting the boss where s/he is weak-
a small portion of that product’s value finding its way into our paycheques, we est—should be fully aware of labour law, how it is applied, and how it may
have every right to be pissed off at our bosses. be used against labour activists. At the same time, workers must realise that
Ultimately, of course, we need to create a society in which working people the struggle between the bosses and the workers is not a soccer match—it is
make all the decisions about the production and distribution of goods and ser- war. Under these circumstances, workers must use what works, whether the
vices. Harmful or useless industries, such as arms and chemical manufactur- bosses (and their courts) like it or not.
ing, or the banking and insurance scams, would be eliminated. The real essen-
tials like food, shelter, and clothing could be produced by everyone working
just a few hours each week.
In the meantime, however, we need to develop strategies that both build Here then, are the most use-
towards this utopia and fight the day-to-day drudgery of today’s wage-slav-
ery. We believe that direct action in the workplace is the key to achieving both ful forms of direct action.
these goals. But what do we mean by direct action?
Direct action is any form of guerrilla warfare that cripples the bosses’ ability
to make a profit and makes him/her cave in to our demands. The best-known slowdown
form of direct action is the strike, in which workers simply walk off their jobs and
refuse to produce profits for the boss until they get what they want. This is the The slowdown has a long and honourable history. In 1899, the organised dock-
preferred tactic of many unions, since this action is easily controllable (in other workers of Glasgow, Scotland, demanded a 10% increase in wages, but met
words, stoppable), but is one of the least effective ways of confronting the boss. with refusal by the bosses and went on strike. Strike-breakers were brought
The bosses, with their large financial reserves, are better able to withstand in from among the agricultural workers, and the Dockers had to acknowledge
a long drawn-out strike than the workers are. In many cases, strike funds are defeat and return to work under the old wages. But before they went back to
non-existent or not sufficient. And worst of all, a long walk-out only gives work, they heard this from the secretary of their union:
the boss a chance to replace striking workers with a scab (replacement) work- “You are going back to work at the old wage. The employers have repeated
force. We are far more effective when we take direct action while still on the time and again that they were delighted with the work of the agricultural
job. By deliberately reducing the boss’ profits while still continuing to collect labourers who have taken our place for several weeks during the strike. But
wages, we can cripple the boss without giving some scab the opportunity to we have seen them at work. We have seen that they could not even walk a ves-
take our jobs. Direct action, by definition, means those tactics we can under- sel and that they dropped half the merchandise they carried; in short, that
take ourselves, without the ‘help’ of government agencies, union bureaucrats, two of them could hardly do the work of one of us. Nevertheless, the employ-
or high-priced lawyers. Running to the Commission for Conciliation, Media- ers have declared themselves enchanted with the work of these fellows. Well,
tion and Arbitration for help may be useful in some cases, but it is not a form then, there is nothing for us to do but the same. Work as the agricultural
of direct action. labourers worked.”
What follows are some of the most popular forms of direct action that work- This order was obeyed to the letter. After a few days the contractors sent for
ers have used to get what they wanted. Yet nearly every one of these tactics the union secretary and begged him to tell the dockworkers to work as before,
is, technically speaking, illegal. Every major victory won by labour over the and that they were willing to grant the 10% pay increase.
years was achieved with militant direct actions that were, in their time, illegal At the turn of the century, a gang of section men working on a railroad in
and subject to police repression. In the United States, for example, up until Indiana, usa, were notified of a cut in their wages. The workers immediately
the 1930’s the laws surrounding labour unions were simple—there were none. took their shovels to the blacksmith shop and cut two inches from the scoops.
Returning to work they told the boss “short pay, short shovels.” strike, you’ll be gaining the support of the public, whose money can make or
Or imagine this: train operators in Australia are allowed to ask for break a business.
“10 – 501’s” (toilet breaks) anywhere along the mainline and Central Control Whistle blowing can be as simple as a face-to-face conversation with a cus-
cannot say no. In reality, this rarely happens. But what would management tomer, or it can be as dramatic as the engineer who revealed that the blue-
do if suddenly every train operator began taking extended 10 – 501’s on each prints for a nuclear reactor had been reversed. Upton Sinclair’s novel, The Jun-
trip they made? gle, blew the lid off the disgraceful health standards and working conditions
of the meatpacking industry when it was published earlier this century.
work to rule Waiters can tell their restaurant clients about the various shortcuts and
Almost every job is covered by a maze of rules, regulations, standing orders, substitutions that go into creating the food being served to them. Just as
and so on; many of them completely unworkable and generally ignored. Work- work to rule puts an end to the usual relaxation of standards, whistle blow-
ers often violate orders, resort to their own ways of doing things, and disre- ing reveals it for all to know.
gard lines of authority simply to meet the goals of the company. There is often
an unspoken understanding, even by the managers whose job it is to enforce sick-in
the rules, that these shortcuts must be taken in order to meet production The sick-in is a good way to strike without striking. The idea is to cripple your
quotas on time. workplace by having all or most of the workers call in sick on the same day or
But what would happen if each of these rules and regulations days. Unlike the formal walkout, it can be used effectively by single depart-
were followed to the letter? Confusion would result—production ments and work areas, and can often be successfully used even without a for-
and morale would fall. And best of all, the workers can’t get in trou- mal union organisation. It is the traditional method of direct action for public
ble with the tactic because they are, after all, “just following the rules”. employee unions, which are legally prevented from striking in a lot of regions.
Under nationalisation, French railroad strikes were forbidden. Nonetheless, At a New England, usa, mental hospital, just the thought of a sick-in got
railroad workers found other ways of expressing their grievances. One French results. A shop steward, talking to a supervisor about a fired union member,
law requires the engineer to make sure of the safety of any bridge over which casually mentioned that there was a lot of flu going around, and wouldn’t
the train must pass. If, after a personal examination s/he is still doubtful, then it be too bad if there weren’t enough healthy people to staff the wards.
s/he must consult other members of the train crew. Of course, every bridge was At the same time—completely by coincidence, of course—dozens of peo-
so inspected, every crew was so consulted and none of the trains ran on time. ple were calling the personnel office to see how much sick time they had
In order to get certain demands without losing their jobs, the Austrian postal left. The supervisor got the message, and the union member was rehired.
workers strictly observed the rule that all mail must be weighed to see if the
proper postage had been stuck on. Before, they had passed without weighing dual power (ignoring the boss)
all those letters and parcels that were clearly underweight, thus living up to The best way to get something done is to simply organise and do it ourselves.
the spirit of the regulation but not to its exact wording. By taking each sepa- Rather than wait for the boss to give in to our demands and institute long-
rate piece of mail to the scales, carefully weighing it, and then returning it to sought change, we often have the power to make those changes on our own,
its proper place, the postal workers had the office full with un-weighed mail without the boss’s approval.
on the second day. The owner of a San Francisco coffeehouse was a poor money manager, and
one week the paycheques didn’t arrive. The manager kept assuring the work-
good work strike ers that the cheques would be coming soon, but eventually the workers took
One of the biggest problems for service industry workers is that many forms things into their own hands. They began to pay themselves on a day-to-day basis
of direct action, such as Slowdowns, end up hurting the consumer (mostly fel- straight out of the cash register, leaving receipts for the amounts advanced so
low workers) more than the boss. One way around this is to provide a better that everything was out in the open. An uproar from the boss followed, but
or cheaper service—at the boss’ expense, of course. the cheques always arrived on time after that.
Workers at Mercy Hospital in France were afraid that patients would go In a small printing shop in San Francisco’s financial district, an old worn-
untreated if they went on strike, so instead they refused to file the billing slips out offset press was finally removed from service and pushed to the side of
for drugs, lab tests, treatments and therapy. As a result, the patients got better the pressroom. It was replaced with a brand new machine, and the man-
care (since time was being spent caring for them instead of doing paperwork), ager stated his intention to use the old press “for envelopes only.” It began
for free. The hospital’s income was cut in half and panic-stricken administra- to be cannibalised for spare parts by the press operators though, just to
tors gave in to all the workers’ demands after three days. keep some of the other presses running. Soon enough, it was obvious to
In 1968, bus and train workers in Lisbon, Spain, gave free rides to all pas- everyone but the manager that this press would never see service again.
sengers to protest a denial of wage increases. Conductors and drivers arrived The printers asked the manager to move it upstairs to the storage room,
for work as usual, but the conductors did not pick up their money satchels. since by now it took up valuable space in an already crowded pressroom. He
Needless to say, public support was solidly behind these take-no-fare strikers. ummed and awwed and never seemed to get around to it. Finally, one after-
In New York City, usa, iww restaurant workers, after losing a strike, won noon after the printers had punched out for the day, they got a moving dolly
some of their demands by taking the advice of iww organisers to “pile up the and wrestled the press into the lift to take it upstairs. The manager found
plates, give ‘em double helpings, and figure checks on the low side”. them just as they got it into the lift, and though he turned red at this open
disobedience; he never mentioned the incident to them. The space where the
sitdown strikes press had been was converted to an ‘employee lounge’, with several chairs and
A strike doesn’t have to be long to be effective. Timed and executed right, a a magazine rack.
strike can be won in minutes. Such strikes are “sitdowns” when everyone just
stops work and sits tight, or “mass grievances” when everybody leaves work monkey-wrenching
to go to the boss’s office to complain about something of importance. Monkey-wrenching is the general term for a whole host of tricks, deviltry, and
The Detroit iww used the sitdown to good effect at the Hudson Motor assorted nastiness that can remind the boss how much s/he needs his/her
Car Company between 1932 and 1934. “Sit down and watch your pay go workers (and how little we need her/him). While all these monkey-wrenching
up” was the message that rolled down the assembly line on stickers that tactics are non-violent, most of them are major social no-nos. They should be
had been stuck on pieces of work. The steady practice of the sitdown raised used only in the most heated battles, where it is open wholesale class warfare
wages 100% (from $.75 an hour to $1,50) in the middle of a depression. between the workers and the bosses.
iww theatre extras, facing a 50% pay cut, waited for the right time to strike. Disrupting magnetically-stored information (such as cassette tapes, floppy
The play had 150 extras dressed as Roman soldiers to carry the Queen on and discs and poorly-shielded hard drives) can be done by exposing them to a strong
off the stage. When the cue for the Queen’s entrance came, the extras sur- magnetic field. Of course, it would be just as simple to ‘misplace’ the discs and
rounded the Queen and refused to move until the pay was not only restored, tapes that contain such vital information. Restaurant workers can buy a bunch
but also tripled. of live crickets or mice at the nearest pet shop, and liberate them in a conve-
Sitdown occupations are still powerful weapons. In 1980, the kkr Corpo- nient place. For bigger laughs, give the Health Inspectors an anonymous tip.
ration announced that it was going to close its Houdaille plant in Ontaria, One thing that always haunts a strike call is the question of scabs and strike-
usa, and move it to South Carolina. The workers responded by occupying the breakers. In a railroad strike in 1886, strikers who took ‘souvenirs’ from work
plant for two weeks. kkr was forced to negotiate fair terms for the plant clos- home with them solved the scab problem. Oddly enough, the trains wouldn’t
ing, including full pensions, severance pay and payment toward health insur- run without these small, crucial pieces, and the scabs found themselves with
ance premiums. nothing to do. Of course, nowadays, it may be safer for workers to simply
hide these pieces in a secure place at the jobsite, rather than trying to smug-
selective strikes gle them out of the plant.
Unpredictability is a great weapon in the hands of the workers. Pennsylva- Use the boss’s letterhead to order a ton of unwanted office supplies and have
nia, usa, teachers used the Selective Strike to great effect in 1991, when they them delivered to the office. If your company has a toll-free number, have all
walked a picket line on Monday and Tuesday, reported for work on Wednes- your friends jam the phone lines with angry calls about the current situation.
day, struck again on Thursday, and reported for work on Friday and Monday. Be creative with your use of superglue… the possibilities are endless.
This on-again, off-again tactic not only prevented the administrators from
hiring scabs to replace the teachers, but also forced administrators who hadn’t solidarity
been in a classroom for years to staff the schools while the teachers were out. The best weapon is, of course, organisation. If one worker stands up and pro-
The tactic was so effective that the Pennsylvania legislature promptly intro- tests, the bosses will squash her or him like a bug. Squashed bugs are obviously
duced bills that would outlaw selective strikes. of little use to their families, friends and social movements in general. But if
we all stand up together, the boss will have no choice but to take us seriously.
whistle blowing (the open mouth) S/he can fire any individual worker who makes a fuss, but s/he might find it
Sometimes simply telling people the truth about what goes on at work can put difficult to fire the entire workforce. O
a lot of pressure on the boss. Consumer industries like restaurants and pack-
ing plants are the most vulnerable. And again, as in the case of the good work