Robert Monk

The Year of the Six-hour Day

White-collar Workers Strike in Berlin
January 2, 1998

BERLIN Ñ 500 workers from the copy-editing division of Verlag publishing company arrived an hour late to work today. "This is just the begining," said union spokeswoman Gabi Friedman. "We are working a seven hour day now. Next year, we will be working six hours. We are demanding our full salaries and will not permit a reduction in them."
The company's management team seems to be caught off guard. "Of course we are very surprised," said a senior management official, "we have always offered the best available insurance programs and done our best to make the company a part of our workers' families."
The editors had not initiated any kind of negociations or made any demands before returning an hour late from their new-year's holiday. According to one project director, "no one in management had any inkling that there could be even organization going on with the copy-editors." It was only at two o'clock today that Johann Brinkman could confirm that there had been a 'strike'. "I don't know what they could want," was the confused response of one project-director.
Managers seem confident of their ability to adjust. Said manager Dieter Kirchman, "This is going to foul up some deadlines and we'll have to move some people around, but we'll make it work." "Well, they're sure not going to have time to chat about their work this week."
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Journal
January 4, 1998

It's amazing. We don't even have salaries! I never thought of organizing an office, but after a year of this eight-hour drudgery, I'm ready to work with these Germans. I don't know the first thing about organizing. I tried to call the spokeswoman Ñ somebody Friedman Ñ yesterday, but I forgot the time-difference. I hope she speaks English, I don't think I could get very far with my German.
A strike makes so much sense, but it never occurred to me. Here we are typing and editing away with our eyes frying on the screens. I'm sure Penguin can afford to give us an hour off, so why shouldn't they?
I can't believe I'm gonna do this. I don't even know anyone on my project, let alone this division Ñ or at Signet or Vintage! We just sit here on our consoles all day and never talk, except sometimes over lunch. I wonder if Tim could help me get in touch with people over at Signet.
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Document
an Email from Gabi Friedman to Jason Preston

To: JPreston@vintage.penguin.com
From: monk@sccs.swarthmore.edu (Rob Monk)
Subject: re: organizing
Cc: Karl@lichtung.com
Bcc:
X-Attachments:
Mr. Preston, I am sorry I could not speak with you more long. We are very very bizy. I am very happy and excited that we here might be able to have started something over there. It makes me think that we should be thinking bigger. We were organized good for this Demands; we got most of our Industry here, but did not think of other Countries. I am thinking about how to help you there, and I thought that you will have more Trouble than us. We have only to organize our Industry in Germany, because no one else speaks the Language. Your Books will be published anywhere on the World where it speaks English. Do you have connection with the Socialist Party there? I think they could help to you much with Organizing. Our Experience has been very very good with Email. I think you need to just start talking to People and get some People to help you inside Penguin. But you need to get your all your Industry for you can convince Directors to pay all your -- what is the word for money you get? Let me know what you are doing, because you got me thinking: the other Nations in Europe will have less Trouble the way we did not have it. If we can do this together I think it will make a better Impressiveness, and People will understand how important this all is.

--Gabi F.

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Journal
January 13, 1998

I really must be busy if it's been so long since I last wrote here. I've been meeting with Tim Hunter, the guy who was transferred over here from Signet, every lunch-hour in the cafeteria off in a corner. Between the two of us, we've found good people in all Penguin's divisions and we're all working on our peers. The people on my project team seem game. We're all pretty young, and like me, they're just here on a temporary basis -- we can get work elsewhere and aren't too committed to what we're doing here -- layout and preliminary editing. Sure, there are some interesting stories going through us Ñ I corrected some typoes in The English Patient Ñ but you don't get a chance to read the stuff with any pleasure. You could never keep up with the production schedule. They keep dropping bits of texts into your hard-drive and if you get backed up, you get a little talking to. They've got files to show how fast you've been working since the day you come in here.
Anyway, everyone in my team seems pretty interested in demanding shorter hours for equal pay; they just haven't committed. I've just gotta show people that all the editors are behind this. If they see it'll work, why wouldn't they go for it?
Someone's not going for it. Somehow, management somewhere's found out the irony of our using its email to organize. Using company email is grounds for dismissal now. I thought of that though a couple days ago, and I've been talking with the socialist party office here in Austen. They've given us accounts on their server, so we're ok there. They got me in touch with some committed Party members in all the other publishing houses, too. We'll see what we can do with that. My contacts here in Penguin mostly want to do this thing in a week or two; I'm not sure we'll be ready.
Another thing is, I heard a rumor the head of Vintage is looking at temp agencies already. Our management's not real fast, but they're not slow, either. Funny thing is, a lot of us used to do temp work, so we're connected. Those guys are even younger than we are, and even more willing to move around. I got hold of a woman over there who's been thinking of organizing anyway. She's already talked to some other people in her agency Ñ one of the really big ones here in Austen, and I got her in touch with someone in San Francisco through the Party office. Seems like the farther this goes, the bigger it gets.

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Document
an email from Preston to Friedman

To: Gabi@lichtung.com, Karl@lichtung.com
From: Jason@lenin.AmSoc.org
Subject: re: setting a date
Cc: GTiefl2@Klam!.com, Organize-publ@Lenin.AmSoc.org, action-group@Morris.BSP.org
Bcc:
X-Attachments:

Liebe Gabi! Congratulations on your little victory over German fascism! ;-) . I'm glad you were able to get the other publisher's offices organized in time.

I think you are right about it being time to act. Things are finally starting to solidify here. Margaret says things look very shaky in England, though: I do not think they will be with us if we walk out during the next few weeks. I think we should go ahead and aim for the 25th. Management knows we're planning something, and the sooner we get on with it, the less ready they'll be. The temp agencies have been ready to go for days; all the editors are connected, we just need to convince them to do this. We should get moving on a unified statement to give to the press on this. I think we should emphasize this is not just an isolated strike. All workers are entitled to reduced time as technology develops. The only reason we are not organizing more broadly is that we have to take this one industry at a time. We have to take total control of our market before we can look at other ones. We also need to play down self-interest. People are not very sympathetic to a lot of salaried (remember Gefahlt? salaried=festangestellt) workers asking for free time. We have to make this seem like part of a bigger vision for all workers...

Ich warte auf deine Verhaltung. Tschuess,

Jason.

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Publishers' Strike Goes International -- Students Protest in Support
January 30, 1998

PARIS Ñ Strikers who walked out last week in book-printing companies all over the European community gained yesterday the support of thousands of demonstrating students. Continuing a long tradition of student-labor cooperation in social protest, about 15,000 students gathered this morning in the busy .... district, an urban center for...in the city's south-east outskirts.
The action in the streets yesterday and today is part of a large-scale demonstration involving a boycot of classes and refusal to purchase books. Classes were scheduled to begin Monday, but students have not bought books as they usually do in the preceding week, and only a few students have been showing up for class.
GrŽgory Boidet organized a boycot of bookstores in ...... a university-town in the south of France from which many of the protesters here came yesterday. "I had no idea my little game would grow so big" he said. "I thought it was just a little consciousness-raising thing for ....... But on the day after our boycot began, we found out that it was happening all over, and we started getting in touch with each other. I don't know, maybe it will actually hurt the publishers, now you see what's come of it."
Publishing executives could not be reached for comment.
After rioting during the Christmas shopping season last month, the government has been far less tolerant of protest. Guy Tregot, head of the ministry of education, has stated "grave concern" in students' willingness to cooperate in their own education. He says that the Committee on Higher Education is considering national regulations for dropping students who "repeatedly disrupt the educational process" by organizing protests and "similar mass interferences."
This represents a major turn-around in the attitudes of educational administrators to students' social activism. French political analist Robert Seccombe said of the statement, "This doesn't seem like it's coming from Tregot or the other authorities in the Ministry of Education; the ministry has been under a lot of pressure lately to produce trained young people to drive the federal government's lates seven-year plan. A lot of appointments in the ministry are threatened by the new conservative majority-coalition in parliament, so I think they're afraid to go against them."
The students do not seem phased by the prospect of being locked out of their educational system. Said one student, "I think this short-time demand that the publishing-workers are pushing is more important than Jean Genet. I want to see this happen." There were fewer demonstrators in the streets this morning, but about a third of yesterday's were from out of town, so this does not necessarily mean that they have been dissuaded from protesting.

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The 4-Day Week Revisited: Volkswagen Plants Threaten Walk-out
February 15, 1998

BERLIN Ñ Encouraged by the successes of the International Clerical Workers' Union in demanding shorter hours with equal pay, workers in VW plants here and in Bremen have revived their own demands for shorter hours in the form of the 4-day week. 6,400 workers here, and another 4,000 in Bremen say they are prepared to walk out if management will not convene negotiations for halting its program of lay-offs and institute shorter hours to accomodate the entire work-force, even though production is scaled back for the depression. Management continues to argue that the long-run effects of work-time reductions will be a shift in investment away from new job-creating ventures and into rationalization of those industries where the cost of labor has risen due to the short-time agreements.
Despite such criticisms, many industrial unions, incuding the auto workers, have already established agreements with government and business for systematic reductions in working time, with a target work-week established in 1986 of 36 hours by 1995. While Germany has led the industrial nations in work-time reductions over the last 20 years, and work-time has been significantly reduced since 1986, the 36 hour target still has not been reached, and until now had been largely ignored in favor of more recently devised employment policies.
The workers claim that the current maneuvering is different, however. "Employment is not the primary question here," said a press-release from the union headquarters in Berlin. The statement acknowledges that short-time has been pushed by government and labor alike as a solution to unemployment, but says "It is time for all workers to recapture the margins of profit which have been ceded to investors. We are demanding that Volkswagen not only fulfill its role as an important employer in German society but also that it respect the workers who have made its existence possible, and who have done so with commitment far beyond that of the unconcerned investor. We have a reasonable proposal; we are giving Volkswagen an opportunity here to show responsibility to its employees and to demonstrate an awareness of its leadership role in our national economy."
Managers would not comment on the corporation's possible responses. "We're going to wait and see exactly what their proposal says before we make any moves," said Stefan Sperling, vice-president of labor-relations for Volkswagen. A junior manager who commented on condition of anonymity seemed doubtful: "I just don't see how we could do it. The cost of keeping paperwork on workers who aren't working a full week would already be high. I'm worried what that much time off will do to worker-productivity when they are here."
Some members of the labor party are hoping that Volkswagen's response will not ultimately matter. The auto-workers' demonstrations for short-time at equal pay are part of widespread agitation throughout the European Community. Banking on the new wave of popular support, the labor parties of Germany, France, and Britain are pushing for an international agreement on the limitation of hours in the work-week. ...

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H+R Block Wins Password Injunction, Replaces Workers
February 14, 1998

Washington Ñ Tax preparation service H and R Block obtained a federal injunction Friday requiring its striking employees to release password lockouts on all of its computer office equipment. Threatened with lockout and replacement by temp workers willing to work the company's traditionally long nine-hour tax-season shifts, striking workers had used a password function to prevent 'scab' access to office equipment in 87 of the company's 123 offices nation-wide.
"The battle's not over," though, according to Block attorney Michael Greenwood. Just days before Friday's ruling, workers in several Seattle-area offices installed a more complicated password system that prevents access to computer functions except during the seven hours when regular workers have continued work. Greenwood says, "We've won the major part of this fight, but [the Seattle offices] are still refusing to release full access to my clients. We're going to sue for losses due to what amounts to serious property damage." The results of that suit are not likely to be clear for several months, at least.
Most other firms faced copycat access lock-outs soon after the Block company confronted the problem, but few responded as aggressively as Block. "We're gambling we can break this just by waiting it out and defending systematic dismissals on the basis of the eight-hour day we're paying for," said Dick Spiegel, president of Harcourt-Brace publishers. Like most of his industry, he's hoping to let Block's victory in court Friday work for him.
Managers in the Block offices have agreed on a general national policy of replacement for workers who will not work normal hours. After failures with after-hours replacement workers, the national managers' association agreed very early on a policy of dismissal and replacement with full-time workers supplied by temp agencies. That policy, impractical for larger firms requiring large replacement forces, had been uniquely successful for the small regional Block offices until password lock-outs became prevalent.
Computer stocks took a hit over the weekend in response to broad media coverage of the role office technology played in making the Clerical Workers' strike possible. IBM spokeswoman Ira Tumel says she is concerned that "this kind of hyped coverage might have a negative effect on CEOs' decisions whether to continue investing in office technology."
Wired magazine owner/editor Louis Rossetto says he is not surprised at the role technology is playing in the clerical workers' strike. "We've been seeing the same thing for several years in the political revolutions in China Ñ Tienenmen Square, for instance Ñ and in activism in countries in the former Eastern Bloc countries. This thing was organized almost entirely by email; these workers would never have gotten in contact with each other without it, and that connectivity was established by the companies that it's now working against. Computers have played a major role in disciplining labor in every industry, but now we're starting to see how they can be used to bring it together." Rossetto did not comment on how the possible success of the strike might affect his company's relations with its work-force.
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ABA mobilizes support for publishing workers
February 16, 1998

Los AngelesÑThree days after national retail bookseller Barnes and Nobles pledged its support to the major publishers in their confrontation with their employees' strike for shorter hours at equal pay, the National Booksellers' Association is urging its thousands of independent members to "fight the impersonal cruelty of large corporations" by launching boycots of Barnes and Nobles stores in their local communities.
"This is an opportunity for our members to show that they play an important role in the community," said ABA president Sherwin Howard. "It's also a chance for us to bring some other issues to the attention of the public. Our suit against Waldenbooks last year was successful, but we can never stop fighting the corporations in this business that want to monopolize."
Sherry Turkle, vice president of Barnes and Noble: "I don't know how they think they're helping themselves." "This thing's about the right to lay about the house for an extra two hours, it's not about justice, and it's going to cost consumers and retailers alike." Barnes and Noble has told major publishers it is willing to "wait as long as it takes for new orders if it means the publishers can resolve the strikes."
...
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Clerical Workers' Int'l Wins 6-hour Day
March 2, 1998

New York Ñ The Clerical Workers' International union yesterday signed a basic contract that provides for progressive reductions in the working time of its members in the US, Canada, and the European nations now negotiating terms for unification under the umbrella of the European Community. Though it has been promoted as a strike for the 6-hour day, the workers' 5-week reduced-time walk-out has actually won them a blanket contract that specifies only a basic framework for reduced time at comparable pay. The details of individuals' working schedules are left open to determination between the various corporations involved and the union locals within them.
The issue of back-pay for the hours missed in the last 4 weeks of short-time protests had held up negotiations since last monday; yesterday's agreement granted workers even that demand, which amounts to about 1.5 million hours of back wages for work that was never done. "We're extremely pleased," says Norton layout designer Chuck Peterson. "Two months ago, I couldn't have conceived of taking part in a thing like this."
The walk-outs began on January 25, when about 75,000 clerical workers from the larger temp agencies, publishing firms, and tax preparation services in most Western nations cooperated in the largest white-collar direct-action in history.
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Short-time Tax-Reform to Come Before Parliament
March 6, 1998

LONDON Ñ Seeking a compromise with the powerful Labor Party in the British parliament, the ---- party proposed an alternative to the government-enforced work-reductions now being debated in the Big 7. "The Labor Reform Tax Bill" would give a scaled tax-exemption to investment-income from companies whose employment policy included reduced-hours for competitive weekly salaries.
For each reduction in weekly hours worked in a company's standard contract, the investor in that company would get a tax-break of two percent. Dividend and capital gains taxes for individuals in Britain currently range from 15% to as much as 55%.
The response to the proposal among Labor Party members was mixed. Said Labor Commission chairman Edward Hobsbeen, "We're concerned that this may be an attempt to derail the proposals already on the table. We've made substantial progress toward securing an international treaty that establishes substantially reduced working-hours in the major industrialized countries. This new proposal may have some merit, but it could also destroy the momentum which has been developing these past weeks. It could throw a wrench in the works."

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Union Summer '98 to Kick-off With a Bang
June 12, 1998

Detroit, MIÑPreparations are well underway here for the '98 Labor Fair, which will begin with a weekend concert including performers John Mellencamp, Tracy Chapman, Willie Nelson, The Disposable Heroes of Hiphoprisy, and others.
In a regional convention last month, AFL-CIO leadership decided to repeat last summer's organizational drive despite widespread feeling that it had been unsuccessful. Said ------, "We have been really encouraged by some of the international developments, especially in Germany and France. The international labor community is looking ready for unprecedented cooperation. I think we can get some of the same public support here in the states that you can see happening over there."
Promotors are not emphasizing the issue now, but it seems clear the decision is part of last month's resolution to launch a long-term, international campaign for shorter working time with equal pay. This marks a major turn-around in American labor organization, where the outlook has been largely defensive and the goals more narrowly focused on inustry-specific interest.
At last month's convention, the US labor leadership acknowledged the momentum of broad-based movements for cross-industry agreements when it decided to participate in the mostly European International Workers' Coalition for Reduced Hours. Sponsored by left parties of the countries negotiating a European Community, the Coalition has begun to have a major impact on the EC treaty process.
US labor leaders hope to tap into momentum both abroad and at home with a Union Summer that, according to event director Robin McDowel, "will emphasize labor politics and culture as well as plain organization." She sees the fair as "reinstating a labor culture in the popular imagination. We want people to see labor as a vital part of their lives. This is about creating a cross-industry community of working people, and that has to be seen as fun if it's going to work."
Apart from the performances next weekend, the fair will include rides, a travelling labor history museum, film-screenings, and, of course, representatives from union locals and information about organizing.

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Brazilian traffic controllers threaten to freeze American air-traffic
June 12, 1998

Buenos AiresÑAfter a third week of stalled talks with the Brazillian national air-traffic board, officials of CACI, an international coalition of South American aviation unions, say they are expecting the help of additional pressure from American assembly-workers at Boeing/McDonnel-Douglas plants in Seattle and Texas and from traffic-controllers in Chicago and St. Louis.
The present confrontation is CACI's first, and comes after a year and a half of preparations which included instruction in English and supplemental training in aerial navigation sysems for 1200 air-traffic controllers in nine countries throughout Central- and South-America and the Carribean. The coalition was formed in January of '97 in response to growing concerns about air safety standards, particularly in South America. CACI officials say they are expecting higher wages and better working conditions in exchange for the progress its members have made toward raising its standards to those of American traffic-controllers.
Robert Gonzales, a spokesperson for the National Association of Air-traffic Controllers here in the US says, "We are striking in solidarity with controllers in South America and to obtain safer working schedules. We demand a six-hour basic shift and more employee input into the scheduling of shifts. If anyone in America needs shorter hours, its us: your safety depends on it." Officials at American Airlines, the company most affected by CACI's strikes and a likely target in the case of NAAC walk-outs, made no comment, but issued a written statement referring to studies that they say indicate "no appreciable improvement" in the safety records of controllers who worked fewer than eight hours at a time. That statement also pointed to growing competition from European and Asian carriers as a reason for stagnant wages.
If the traffic-controllers' strike and get the cooperation of aircraft manufacturing unions also threatening walk-outs, travellers could face disrupted schedules and significantly higher fares, as airlines re-route traffic away from Chicago and St. Louis. With its hub in Chicago, American Airlines could be severely affected by strikes.
American is also depending on a batch of 757s now being completed in Boeing's new high-speed plant in Seattle, which was build after its 1996 merger with MacDonnel-Douglas to help meet backlogued production deadlines. The Washington chapter of the International Association of Machinists & Aerospace Workers is hoping that American's and Boing's vulnerability will allow them a quick victory, perhaps even without work stoppages.
...

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Document
Manifesto of the International Workers' Coalition for the 6-hour Day
July 4, 1998

The interests of the working class and the investment capital that directs the majority of world employment are opposed. Neither committing to the system of capital control of the means of livelihood nor seeking its replacement, this coalition exists to regulate some of its pernicious effects on the working class.
Whether it takes the form of respectabe salaries or that of unconscionable wage-exploitation, compensation for labor under capitalism is determined in a world market and is always as low as workers allow it to be. Most of the international economy is dependent on the incentive-structure of returns on the investment of capital, but the rate of return has varied in history and can serve its function even at a minimal level. The purpose of this coalition is to seize for workers the bulk of the labor surplus that is now extracted from them in the form of unfair profits for the few.
This is neither a radical challenge to the structure of the world economy, nor an endorsement of it. It is merely a practical accomodation to things as they are now, an accomodation that promotes the ends of all labor organizations.
'The Six-hour Day' may be the actual form which this effort takes in some industries; for others it may merely serve as a convenient moniker for a far more complex arrangement of reduced work-time. Whatever form shortened work-time takes in the various industries, it will be tied in to an international standard under which workers receive increased compensation for hours worked beyond 30/week and, for certain industries where long-term employment is standard, days worked beyond 330/year.
...

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AFL-CIO to back Labor Party
July 23, 1998

New YorkÑ"The AFL-CIO is going to do its own politics from now on," said president Kerry Morgan-Eppler at a press-conference yesterday, in which she announced that the nations largest affiliation of labor unions will be promoting Labor candidates in the congressional elections this Fall. "This isn't really a surprise" says political analyst John Mintzner of UCLA, "With the momentum established at the Detroit thing, the union leadership would be throwing away a golden opportunity not running its own candidates.
The announcement added to the political intensification that the AFL-CIO has undergone since its decision to participate in the International Workers' Coalition campaign for shorter hours across all industries. The IWC6 was founded in late June following the successes of the international clerical-workers' strike in March. "We need to be careful" says Morgan-Eppler, "not to upset the competitive principles of the labor-market; we realize that the implementation of shorter hours is a delicate process that will be different in every industry, but this is a reasonable goal and long over-due."
...

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Mexican Ford plant in massive meltdown, thousands killed
July 23, 1998

NUEVO LAREDOÑAfter sixteen hours of intense flames that could be seen 80 miles away in Cotulla, Texas, the rubble of a Ford auto parts plant can now be seen through billowing inky smoke. The plant had employed 5100 assembly workers since its opening in September of '92, and 3019 of these are confirmed to have been inside yesterday when a reservoir of molten plastic ignited accidentally, leading to a chain reaction that set the whole complex ablaze.
...
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Document
an Email from Jason Preston to Gabi Friedman

To: Gabi@lichtung.com, Karl@lichtung.com
From: Jason@lenin.AmSoc.org
Subject: thank you, Mexico!
Cc: GTiefl2@Klam!.com, Organize-publ@Lenin.AmSoc.org, action-group@Morris.BSP.org, laborforum@wilde.labournet.org
Bcc:
X-Attachments:

Can you believe the luck! 3000 dead! (Is this Mexico thing in your papers?) I'll tell you a bit anyway: Ford's plant on the border exploded with thousands of peopal in in. It's still on fire an d the press won' t leave it alone. The timing! Our Labor Party chair just denounce dthe safety standards in Mexican plants a week ago. He didnt' mention FOrd --- but you can't have everthing, right?
I think this gives our candidates a chance in November. We just hav to push the Gatt and NAFTa revisions in the platform and needle the press to make sure this gets covered right... I gotta get to work. by for now.

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Journal
August 2, 1998

Another month! I'm now the AFL-CIO liason to the German contingent of the IWC6 -- publishing is a thing of the past. I'm actually beginning to have doubts about this. Six-hours worked for the clerical workers, and autoworkers got short-time adjustments, but these are pretty well-defined industries. And they were won by industry, not with an all-out attack like this one. The contracts are going to look so different! We've been working on proposal for an international contract that would reduce hours for nurses, and their schedules are screwed. Some of them work three nights in 16 hour shifts. Some work a few hours five days. Italian nurses get a wage, not a salary. All we can really do is help get people in touch with each other.
If there is something good about this thing it's all the political momentum. Everyone is thinking in terms of labor now. I think we've broken the Rep./Dem. hold on things. We're getting 40% in the polls in a lot of states. I think if short time is going to happen, it'll happen with legislation.
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