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Title: Dealing with Difficult Bosses
Author: Solidarity Federation
Date: Spring 1998
Language: en
Topics: workplace struggles, bosses, Direct Action Magazine
Source: Retrieved on November 30, 2004 from https://web.archive.org/web/20041130181935/http://www.directa.force9.co.uk/archive/da6-features.htm
Notes: Published in Direct Action #6 — Spring 1998.

Solidarity Federation

Dealing with Difficult Bosses

Do you ever wonder what your life would be like if society was organised

along different lines?

As a postal worker, my job can sometimes be routine, so to relieve the

boredom, I sometimes daydream about such things, particularly what the

job would be like ‘come the revolution’. Of course people would still

want letters delivered, but does that mean the job wouldn’t change?

It would — though the fine details would be up to all of us to work out

when we are in a position to do so. Some things are assumed, although if

management stopped running the post office, we would make sure everyone

got their letters. The sole purpose would not be profit at all cost.

That would mean shorter hours and no more 6 day weeks, no more overtime

to make ends meet, no more macho management bullies. And that’s just for

starters. And don’t forget you – ‘the customer’ – no more junk mail, no

more bills, no more tax demands, eviction notices or the like.

Too good to be true? Surely, we would be lost without management to tell

us what to do? The answers to these questions are no, and no.

When I first started at the Post Office 10 years ago, one of the first

things I heard hurled at a manager by an old timer was ‘this job will

run without the bosses but not without us’. Startlingly simple, but an

assertion which is borne out with experience. We do the work. We know

the job inside out. We know how to save time and money. We know how to

do everything most efficiently and in the least hours. Management are

constantly trying to get that information out of us so they can make

cuts and increase profits.

We wouldn’t tell them what we know. In fact, we do everything we can to

sabotage management’s efficiency drives. But it’s our knowledge and

experience which, one day in the future, will be used to transform our

working lives for the benefit of all.

In the meantime, we have an ongoing guerrilla campaign on our hands. One

thing that has kept me at the post office so long is my fellow workers

disrespect for petty authority. And that includes union bureaucrats

along with the bosses.

An understanding amongst us is that anything management want us to do is

bad news. Time and again their proposals are kicked out following a

brief debate. Sure, we are not always as solid as we would all like, but

the basic uncooperative attitude is always there. The management start a

get-smart campaign, and we start a get-scruffy campaign, you know the

type of thing. The bosses statements are met with our resolve. Their

appeals for the guilty to step forward are met with cries of ‘I am

Spartacus’. Team briefings are an excuse to piss around, and if you can

piss-take the manager by carrying out orders literally, all to the good.

All this schvejkian messing about might seem rather empty and pointless.

After all, it isn’t going to kick anything off towards a ‘revolution’,

is it? Still, I say it is something worth celebrating. This stubborn

bloody-mindedness is behind the still-common unofficial walk-outs. It

led to the vote for strike action last year. It is behind the ongoing

battle to defend what little we have and to fight for better.

And we have another understanding – whatever the union recommends must

be a crap deal. The union bureaucrats have themselves to look out for,

not us. It is all part of a great tradition of workplace resistance,

done with inventiveness and humour. It’s something to be proud of. It’s

a way of showing we are not devoid of imagination, and this will

sometime be turned into something more positive.

As you may have gathered, I’m not a cynic, and neither are most of my

colleagues. Where there is disobedience, there is hope. It is the

difference between existing and living.