Gosh, it's been ages since I wrote a "service note"...
But we all know horror stories.
The Factory's full of them, mostly in events we have to report, occasionally on the premises.
This week has seen another "inside" one coming to a climax, where the action -- or more correctly, immobile stance -- of a bunch of people has outraged dozens of other journalists into signing a protest petition.
Today, a sixth person asked why I refuse to put my name to it, because "you agree with everything in it". Yes I do, but by this morning I'd decided that since this log exists, I'll use it to tell those who care why I'm being difficult again (and say "sorry" to others thus sent elsewhere for entertainment).
Good people, I will not sign any petitions inside the Factory -- this "multi-national" one, or a previous one sent upstairs by many in the English-language services -- while we still have trade unions.
Such protests and dealings with management are their job. As a former, elected union "official" who took a back seat about 12 months ago after two dozen years trying to do that job in various workplaces, I think we should tell the unions what we want.
If they don't do it, first kick their butts, then vote them out.
On arriving in France, I was appalled to find how many journalists' unions there were. In Britain, life was simple. There's one. It survived Thatcher. It's active today, with a strong membership, despite the growth of a generation which knew nothing but Thatcherism and union-busting.
In the early '90s, I researched and wrote an article about why there are so many unions in the country I chose as home, as much for my own edification as for equally bewildered friends and colleagues. The answers proved to be historical and sometimes sordid ones we have to accept.
People complain that these unions waste time bashing each other. True. They do.
Many say they're disabused because some union officials used that elected role to do nothing but advance their own careers and those of buddies. True. Several have.
Some argue that the latest petition -- whose substance I can't write about here without breaching my employment contract -- is a "saute d'humeur", a joint expression of shared disgust. True. It is. In part.
There's more to it, however, and the protest should be channelled properly and as effectively as possible. Like it or not, the elected representatives of the workforce remain that channel. Hundreds of people voted for them. So let's use them! If they disagree with each other, then bang their heads together until they see sense. I used to do that, sometimes from a minority position, and it worked.
As in any huge workplace, many of the legally imposed meetings between unions and management I attended were exercises in sometimes deliberate mutual incomprehension.
The minutes, available to all to peruse, include tragi-comic records of ego-stroking and bad faith nobody would believe if I were foolish enough to publish extracts as a script for a play.
Yet, decent things occasionally got done.
AFP, like other mass production units from Hollywood to Hanoi's armaments factories, has endured crisis after crisis.
We've seen managements come ... and go. In the old days, I had names for some of the big bosses. There was an uptight, humourless "Unterseeboot Kapitän" with his almost rimless specs (I thought "Labour Camp Commandant" too harsh even for him). We had the "Fat Controller", lover of thick cigars and armagnac, witty fencing master with words -- and a man who made dangerous decisions concerning the Internet as the "second wind" of the written press when he knew almost nothing about it.
Sadly, it took strikes by the journalists and other personnel to get rid of one or two of a succession of bosses and their senior officers when lots of us thought their rescue plans were our disasters.
At such times, even the French unions got their act together. I was there. I'm not on active service now, but even when I agree with angry Factory hands, whatever their target might be, I'll never forget how wrongs were and are still best set right.
You may object to the alleged "hotpants" I wore a couple of times in summer. You may find my sense of humour wearisome. You may accuse me of swimming against the tide. You may consider me naïf and ancient in my attitude, but I'll go on paying my union dues.
I will not sign petitions. It's easy. It makes you feel better. It's cheaper than paying annual union membership fees. It's quicker than surgically inserting sense into skulls and lobbying elected delegates. And I don't believe it gets us anywhere.
9:46:25 PM link 
|
|
postbox