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| Always a dangerous situation |
The stark reality of the employer's ideal workplace was brought home to me in no uncertain terms at work the other day. As an equipment operator for a public utility I was called to work with a crew who were to repair one of our water lines that was broken by a contractor laying sewer mains for the city.
The job was difficult for our crew in particular. This was an extremely busy intersection with the contractor also operating within the work area. So apart from traffic, there were numerous pieces of large construction machinery, including mine. Compounding this was the fact that the pipe couldn't be repaired so we had to replace it, but the street surface was some 16" thick, which meant we had to call for a street saw---- more machinery.
Despite the delay, everything went fairly well. The cooperation between the two different groups, the contractor, and us, (private sector and public) was good. The crew finally managed to replace the broken line with a new one and we began to fill the hole we had created and re-surface the street. This area is heavily populated with pedestrians and there are numerous small businesses making it a major intersection for rush hour traffic. Because of this, the contractor informed us, they had to be off the street by 3.30pm.
The relative calm of a well-planned unionized work area was shattered around 2.45 pm when all hell suddenly broke loose. Traffic delineators went flying as pieces of machinery weighing thousands of pounds went whizzing by us, picking up material to backfill the contractor’s excavation. Space was limited but these machines swirled around in the street like bumper cars at an amusement arcade, one of them scraping up debris from the street with such precision it was like a vacuum cleaner on wheels. Children had stopped to watch on their way home from school and came perilously close to the rear of one of the machines as it did circles in the street. I had to go get some temporary street surfacing material with my machine and found myself racing up the street as if my life depended on it. The transformation can be infectious, the pressure to conform, great, but I caught myself in time and held back. It was clear that someone could get hurt, traffic was heavy and space was become more limited.
Nevertheless, it was impressive to see the workers' skill, honed from days of repetitious use on one job-sight after another, as, like the footballers two-minute drill, they wrapped things up before three thirty.
Along with this increased activity a change of consciousness seemed to take place. Less smiles, more frowns, as focused concentration dominated the mind. No time now for conversation or casual interaction between co-workers. This was serious business, it seemed, and nothing was going to get in the way, including those traffic delineators and other objects that were there to protect both worker and the public
As I watched them though I wondered what the injury rate for private sector versus public sector workers was. At what time of day does the injury or death take place? This is what our public employer wants us to be like. This is what they consider efficiency?
And what was the cause of this activity, this sudden transformation of seemingly rational, caring human beings in to these little worker bees? This activity was clearly an attempt to clear the street by the required time, by 3.30pm. But this could have been accomplished much more safely and in a less stressful way by simply stopping the job a little earlier. But not so, and that is the catch. Stopping the job earlier would have meant curtailing the actual "productive" work. The contractor in this situation is in competition with other contractors for public works and when installing pipeline of any sort, the bottom line is how many linear feet, not how clean the work area is at the end of the day, although this is a factor. So work on this area of the project was carried on until the last minute and then the mad dash to be off the street in time.
This is what the employer means by efficiency and why, in order to be more efficient, workers, have to be more competitive. Have to lay more linear feet than the other guy's workers. Must file more files, write more briefs, see more patients, stuff more envelopes, make more cars than the other guy and for less pay. What I saw today was the result of competition and efficiency. What a trap it is for all of us. It is easy to fall victim to this pressure to run around like chickens with our heads cut off, to be "productive". But productive doesn't mean more water, better services, increased education or more mass transit. It means maximizing profits at the expense of the worker and our communities.
As I watched these co-workers in the private sector I realized so clearly that this is what public sector employers want from us. In general, we in the public sector have a much more secure, less strenuous and healthier work environment. This is what is inefficient. It is our benefits, our security, a workplace that is more humane that is inefficient although the employer denies this. The employers pay lip service to the issue of social concern and safety for their workers. They hold seminars and safety meetings on company time to "get the message across". If there had been an accident or fatality on this job that day you can bet the workers, and the poor foreman would have been sought out for punishment. Drug tests would probably have been added to the indignity of being blamed for a situation that seems beyond your control. A scapegoat would have been found.
But the reality is; don't you dare let safety interfere with profit taking. Don't you dare let concern for the public cost me that contract. The brutal reality is that the employer’s propaganda is lies. They publish lies, they hold seminars where they tell lies. They hire what they call organizational psychologists to convince us that our gut instincts, our class consciousness is skewed. They control politicians that tell these lies to us and they use the media, and the education system to perpetrate these lies to a resistant public.
It is hard to resist this pressure as individuals. As workers, it is only through organization as unions and as independent political parties that we can change it. The idea of the team concept that the leaders of the trade union movement have adopted perpetuates this whole method of work. A method that enriches the employers, empowers them at the expense of workers and the general public. But resist it we must. From the employers' point of view there is never enough efficiency, never enough pipe laid, envelopes stuffed. From our point of view as workers, and most of us are workers, efficiency is decent housing, education for our children, a society that we feel can nurture us and offer a future. Our failure to resist, and resisting means transforming our unions and the role they play in society, leads us down a road to nowhere.
Richard Mellor
1-15-99
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