Workers' Diaries

The plant is a construction site. A small crane blocks off the main traffic route to the yard, and what remains of the empty tarmac is full of steel girders, ladders, scaffolding, tools and gantry fittings. Another section of the yard has been dug into a shallow trench to install new drainage, and contractors cabins line the stores and boiler houses behind them. Vehicles delivering chemicals — urea, lime, caustic soda — or collecting residues — ash, metals, pollution control — have been directed to leave and enter site via the exit, following a traffic-light system. It’s busy and space is...

Gordon was found dead in his flat. Nobody had heard from him for ten days, so a couple of friends went round to check. Gordon had worked for the NHS for over 30 years. He caught Covid early in the pandemic, pre-vaccination. To start off he seemed to be recovering and came back to work. But as time went on he got more and more breathless, went off sick again and started to find it difficult to get out. He lived on the upper floor and walking up the stairs left his chest heaving. He told me the short walk to the local shop used up his energy for the day. He lived on his own. He had friends who...

It’s often the little things that get to you: not having the right equipment, no tech support when you need it, and management who don’t seem to care unless it’s on a computer screen and affects the "Key Performance Indicators". Just recently, we’ve had the spectacle of no lubricant available in our stores. For maintaining points, supplies a minimum requirement. Even though we’ve recently had no rain, which tends to wash the oil off, the need to lubricate is still there. In we come one night, and due to perform the points-lubrication maintenance. Before we left the depot I checked the back of...

Since 2019, and since 2020 almost weekly, Solidarity has had a “worker’s diary” column, variously from an engineer, paramedics, a trackworker, rail station staff and drivers, and a firefighter. Articles vary. Some cover what life at work is like, like an earlier series in Solidarity (2010-2012) “My life at work”. Others focus more on conflict and discussion in the workplace. The industrial and workplace bulletins produced by Workers’ Liberty carry similar snapshots of workplace life. They are almost unique on the Trotskyist left in Britain, both today and historically. No other regularly...

It took Terry O’Day quite a while to die, in fact, it took him several years. I suppose you’ll say, “Why, Terry isn’t dead — I saw him in the union hall yesterday. What do you mean?” Well, a man can die and still leave his body walking around the streets. That’s what happened in Terry’s case. It’s just his body that’s left. You couldn’t even say it’s Terry’s ghost that’s around, because the ghost, the spirit of Terry O’Day, is gone. There’s just a body with certain well-remembered ways going down to the union hall every day and sitting at the International Rep’s desk. But it’s not our old...

Conversations with my workmates now, as a traffic controller on construction and civil engineering sites in Queensland, Australia, are completely different from what I had before as a seafarer and a construction worker. We are employed by traffic-control contractors which function like labour-hire companies, and there are almost no conversations with the workers directly employed on the sites. Traffic controllers want to talk about traffic. There’s almost no talk of politics. There are a lot of complaints about how we are treated by management — by the labour-hire companies, that is, not the...

“It’s a slap in the face.” “Shove it where the sun don’t shine.” Or, simply, “W*****s.” Like much of the public sector, we’ve received an annual pay offer of 2%. This follows 10 years of pay freezes or largely below inflation pay rises, leaving us 12-15% down even before this year’s inflation is considered. The union is consulting on the offer, which you can guarantee will be rejected. Some firefighters are frustrated by the consultation because it slows us down and pushes any ballot back. I’m sympathetic to that thinking. Summer is arguably the most strategic time to strike or ban overtime...

Well, it’s been an interesting week and no mistake. Our picket lines have been well attended, with “spare” pickets going off and setting up lines we thought we wouldn’t be able to staff. Going back to the old days of flying pickets! At least in this area we don’t have a serious scab problem. But a lot of us are worrying about what comes next. The three days of strike [21, 23, 25 June] have had a massive impact, and now the union leadership seems to be dithering as to what, when, and where, the next series of actions will be. Also, there seems to be a serious reluctance on our leadership to...

The weeks leading up to a strike, like our Tube strike on 21 June, tend to bring out the most sceptical voices the loudest. There is a general consensus in my depot that you strike, you don’t scab, and whatever misgivings you have are not aired in loud debate in the mess room. Those that speak up tend to be the minority, those that want to justify coming in, often raising old grievances against this or that union stance or some often long forgotten rep. “I don’t give a fuck about…” O starts all his sentences like this when he’s making a point, usually about why he’s no time for a strike. “It...

The “Additional Roles Reimbursement Scheme” of NHS England pays GPs to employ non medics — pharmacists, physician associates, social prescribers, paramedics, etc. — in primary care. In many surgeries there are now more of those roles than doctors. It’s important that these roles are used to make healthcare better, not just as GPs on the cheap, as a 13 June BBC Panorama investigation found to be happening in a big chain of GP practices. Since starting work in primary care recently I’ve seen what the scheme looks like, if not the abuses reported in that Panorama screening. Everyone on a mission...