I QUIT

Today I had to quit.

The thought struck me as I approached the warehouse on my efficient and speedy bicycle with the wind behind me while gliding the corner in a pleasing way, the bicycle leaning in around the bend keeping momentum and without veering into the middle of the road endangering myself or other road users; I was in a good state of flow and riding high.

And it was then that the thought struck me, CRITICAL MASS I thought, that's what's wrong,  it's not happening (refer to my last post), it's impossible that there'll ever be the critical mass necessary to stand up for our rights in the warehouse, therefore we have no means to assert ourselves, we're just being consumed by the industrial corporation until we get wasted, exhausted, then discarded. There have been casualties, I realised as I lifted my bum off the saddle riding over the speed bumps through the car park, once a dead body was discovered in the car park, a worker had gone outside to rest and was later found dead in his car, I remembered.  What will become of me? There was clarity in the early morning summer sunshine, the end result of our input in this system is that people will suffer.  We are being pushed to work until we are rendered incapable,  and then when the point of exhaustion is reached we are rendered useless.  I have known all this for some time, these thoughts weren't new, the epiphany was that we really are powerless to generate the critical mass necessary to engineer change; to command a living wage and forge a system in which all workers are treated humanely. I have two options I was thinking as I fiddled with the lock to secure my wheels in the bike shelter; to stay, get wired up to a voice activated machine by a head set, a heavy and cumbersome wristband and a scanner attached to one of my fingers, a system in which I would need to talk to the machine that would then keep track of my picking rate and evaluate my performance or to leave.

So I gave one week's notice in writing to the agency and announced my decision to my co workers;  wonderfully hard working and humble and responsible people that I've shared life with over the past couple of years, I'll miss them.

The realisation (English spelling this time for ZAK) that I needed to get out or be consumed by the industrial machine was sudden and unforeseen this morning, I must be responsible for myself, and in this situation the most responsible thing is to get out to save myself, and  it had better be today, no time for delay.  I should explain why it is that working under these conditions is unsustainable.

Sustainability relies on a system that is ongoing, the flow on energy should be cyclical, in that  the energy that gets spent somehow gets fed back in to the system so that regeneration can take place.

How is my energy refreshed when I'm paid less than a living wage?  Like many other operatives I need to supplement my income with other work during evenings and weekends, all my time, my life is taken up with work, time that should be spent with family and friends, recreation time.  There's a notice up on the board today about the Bank holiday weekend.

It gave us an option to receive pay for the bank holiday by using up pay accrued payed holiday. So a bank holiday is not a bank holiday, just a day when  we don't get a shift,  Just shoot me, I thought as read the notice. This is so wrong. It's immoral and inhumane and I can't remain in this situation, I quit to save myself.  What means do I have under this level of exploitation to re-energise?  No rest days for warehouse operatives. Pay that is less than a living wage, is a death sentence, a slow death in which energy is sapped out of us by a drip drip effect, one underpaid shift at a time.

I quit to save myself.

critical mass

crit′ical mass′

n.

1. the amount of a given fissionable material necessary to sustain a chain reaction.

2. an amount necessary or sufficient to have a significant effect or to achieve a result.

[1940–45]

Random House Kernerman Webster's College Dictionary, © 2010 K Dictionaries Ltd. Copyright 2005, 1997, 1991 by Random House, Inc. All rights reserved.

I started thinking about critical mass on a bike ride at the weekend.  I was cycling in unison with a large group of activists to demonstrate outside an Israeli owned drone factory. It was important to do this because the Israeli defence force uses drones against Palestinians.

Cycling gives me great pleasure; I like the rhythm of pedalling, the cyclical turning of pedals and wheels, the pace; fast enough to cover distance but steady enough to enjoy the smells and sights and sounds in the environment along the way. But there was tremendous joy and energy generated by riding en masse that day,  it felt to good to be riding as a collective. Recently I heard Jannis Varoufakis in an interview say that humanity only exists in the collective, this was qualified by pointing out that  the word idiot comes from the Greek word for individual and so it follows that acting alone is idiotic whereby collective action demonstrates the workings of a civil society.  So, we were cycling together, as a collective with a common purpose, and we chanted  

We will ride 100 miles and 

We will ride 100 more

And we will ride for Palestine 

And we will end Israeli war

End apartheid

End apartheid 

End apartheid.

But how does all this relate to book packing?
Well, we are soon each to be harnessed to headsets, wristbands and a finger scanner. Pickers on the line will work in isolation, communicating only with his or her machine.  We will no longer have the facility to communicate with one another, the mass of workers will be fragmented to a series of idiots wired up to and controlled by the system and pitted against each other by performance evaluations while 'team leaders' in pink vests do the job of an overseer. 

 'Overseer', I think that's the word that was used during the slave trade to describe those who had the job of extracting forced labour on the sugar plantations of the 18th and 18th Centuries. 

An overseer in the past

An overseer today

The need for an overseer both in the past and today is because of numbers; those doing the work far outnumber those whose job it is to extract work from the labour supply. A large number of workers has the potential to constitute a critical mass so from the point of view of slavery it would follow that such a system would need strictly control of its workers. 

During the slave trade this was done with various barbaric methods.  Nowadays things are different, for example whipping is no longer routine. However, there are is a complex system of contracted labour supplied through agencies that exploits people to serve productivity and maintain discipline in the workforce (this can be explained in more detail in another post). In the place where I work the overseers have started to wear very bright pink vests, and there's a large screen at the entrance to the warehouse that displays our overseers standing together and smiling in their pink vests;  I think it's a stupid picture, but there it is, each time we enter the warehouse we're reminded that they are in power.  But we need to remember that we are many and that we too have power too. 

On the day I rode my bicycle to Shenstone with 200 other people, the drone factory was closed down for the day, so our common purpose was achieved, our demonstration was effective.

A Publicity Stunt

Way back January, a friend and I made a pledge to support an event; a bike ride from London to Birmingham and then on to a protest outside a factory that makes parts for drones to supply the IDF;

 http://www.redspokes.co.uk/thebigride/index.php

Yikes, now, I'm committed to actually doing the ride this weekend (I think I won't mind too much if I don't get offered a shift on Tuesday).

Participation is costing me £100, that's 2 days' pay and a fellow worker has donated £5.

I know that our lives seem precarious at times, in this fast changing world but I met people in the Occupied Palestinian Territory and conditions for them are inconceivably oppressive and that's why I'm going on this ride, with a couple of hundred other activists, to raise awareness of Israeli apartheid and to campaign for it to end.

The link below shows how the separation wall, recently constructed by Israel (many more are planned), affects the daily life of Palestinians, an obstacle that confronts people each day on their way to work.

http://www.btselem.org/workers/20160731_inhuman_conditions_in_checkpoints

It has to be pointed out that passing through the many checkpoints is just one example among many ways that Israel administers it's system of apartheid against Palestinians whose land it illegally occupies.

So, the ride is supporting a charity that provides sports activities for children in Gaza, so I'm inviting you to make a donation through the link below.

https://www.justgiving.com/fundraising/Rebecca-Rocket1