I was recently made aware of an interesting article that appeared on direktaktion.org . I would like to reflect on and document it here for the following reasons: (1) Perspectives from autonomous trade union practice are hardly represented on this blog. (2) Contributions from autonomous trade union practice are generally rarely written down – which is sometimes very regrettable, because knowledge, analyses, experiences, and personal history are thus not shared and made more widely known. (3) Comrade Franz Heuholz reflects self-critically on his own activism, political logic, and his own role. I like that very much. (4) Comrade Heuholz’s reflections are also based on theory – which, in my opinion, allows for a meaningful and application-oriented approach to them, which I very much welcome. (5) I was asked to share the text, I like it, and I’m sharing it because that’s what this blog should be for.
“[T]he question of ‘what we should do’ that revolutionary-minded groups ask themselves generally depends on their position ‘outside’ a workplace or other struggle situation. The would-be revolutionary feels the need to engage with those directly involved in the struggle, especially ‘the workers,’ and will try to influence them with leaflets offering, if not explicit ‘leadership,’ then at least ‘advice’ and ‘lessons.’ Or perhaps the most militant among them, having recognized the failure of such external intervention, will try to intervene in the situation themselves by going into the factories or wherever something is expected to happen.” – Endnotes: We Unhappy Few
1
Jonathan || “‘Salting’ means taking a job with the intention of starting or supporting an organizing campaign in the workplace.” [1] This is how IWW organizer MK Lees defines a union tactic that I unconsciously used in my own FAU activism. I worked for seven months as a food delivery driver, a ‘rider.’ During this time, I was part of an FAU workplace group (BG). This BG—let’s call it ‘BG Delivery Country’—had already existed for a good two years when I joined. It had been founded on the initiative of a rebellious colleague who was fed up with his own miserable working conditions in the delivery sector. The colleague contacted our General Syndicate and started the organizing campaign. A petition was collected from colleagues and presented to management. Then he was fired and…—but that’s another story.
The overall evaluation of the BG campaign is still pending. With this first part of the article series, I only want to make one specific contribution among many. I want to (self-)critically examine the application of the salting tactic within the BG Lieferland campaign. Salting, according to MK Lees above, should be one tool among many in the hands of self-organized workers. Salts should not replace the self-organization of colleagues. Neither in the sense of ‘leadership’ (let alone through socialist-enlightened consciousness, yawn!), which comes from the outside; nor by taking over central tasks of workplace group work. On the contrary, Lees makes it clear that salting causes considerably more problems than it can solve. That is, if we are truly concerned with building workers’ power in the workplace – and not with the self-promotion of left-wing windbags or the construction of their small political organizations mediated through labor struggles.
When I joined BG Lieferland, I had been an active member of a political organization, the ‘Allgemeine Syndikat’ (General Syndicate), in our city for a few years. There, I was one of the union activists who wanted to invest time and energy in workplace organizing, even though they were students by profession. Such activists, who support an organizing campaign, are called “salts” in union jargon. Probably because they are meant to be the spice in the union’s internal stew. At the time of my rather late entry into BG Lieferland, there were at least four similarly positioned union activists who came from outside the organization campaign and thus also became riders within the company. We were spread across the various stores of the franchise company in the city. I went to a store where another colleague, a member of the FAU (Free Workers’ Union), had already been transferred as a disciplinary measure.
The three other Salts and I had either not yet graduated or had only recently completed our studies. We were in a specific phase of life within the privileged ranks of the education system. During this time, we financed our lives as wage earners (still) through precarious side jobs. The rider job was one source of income among others for us. On the surface, some other colleagues at the company were in a similar situation. They were also students or pupils. Some of them later joined the BG. But these newly acquired comrades had primarily started their jobs as riders as wage earners, not as union activists.
One of the four Salts mentioned, let’s call her Tabea, commented as follows: “I can’t necessarily agree. I see myself (and did see myself in the host country) primarily as a wage earner and not as a union activist. Perhaps that’s why I experienced my time there somewhat differently.” So there were differences in the ambitions of us active FAU members coming to the BG. One comrade suggested in the discussion that perhaps the term Salt shouldn’t be applied to all four of us, or that we might simply be different types of Salts. In any case, one difference between me and all the other colleagues in the BG was that I didn’t organize because of my own problems at work, out of a sense of violated dignity. Instead, I organized politically first . As one comrade rightly points out, the activist tourist differs from the militant colleague in that the former initially has no idea about the actual interests of their colleagues and is more interested in them instrumentally than out of personal concern.
I came up with my own idea for salting and wasn’t motivated or approached by the syndicate or the BG, as MK Lees, for example, fundamentally emphasizes for successful salting. I didn’t even know the term, let alone the tactical concept behind it. This approach wasn’t discussed within the syndicate; there was no mandatory training for the relatively numerous activists who wanted to infiltrate a syndicate-organized operation from the outside. I think the other comrades also had little knowledge or understanding of this tactic. Tabea says: “Your text perfectly captures the important point that there’s absolutely no knowledge about salting within our syndicate, and that this can be fatal. In the BG, everyone could just do whatever they felt like. I don’t think that was the main reason why the BG ultimately fizzled out, but it certainly wasn’t helpful.”
MK Lees aptly describes activists like myself as “salting tourists.” As a tourist, I wanted to support the BG’s struggles during a temporary lull. I wanted to actively demonstrate my solidarity and had the necessary resources to do so. Despite such selfless , noble motives, MK Lees warns—and for good reason, as I will explain:
“Let’s beware of the tourist. It’s not always the case, but sometimes a Salt’s profile is that of someone who has better opportunities than being used as a Salt… So when Salting, beware of people who are simply looking for an adventure, perhaps an exciting escapade in their life. This is simply not conducive to the mentality needed for successful organizing. Because that is a lengthy, usually boring, and often demoralizing process. And if someone comes along looking for an adventure and possibly wants to play the hero, it won’t end well. It will end particularly badly if the usual problems arise in a campaign and we then rely on such people to be the brains behind the operation.”[2]
2
Among the four of us who came from outside, I behaved during those seven months as a particularly “fiercely determined” union activist. I first learned the store’s procedures. I wanted to perform the rider job well and be respected by my colleagues and the shift supervisor. During my shifts, I built relationships with my colleagues, got to know them better, and showed that I would lend a hand when needed. I was open and humorous. As a result, I gradually gained the trust and sometimes even the affection of my colleagues. I followed Berni’s tips for workplace revolutionaries. [3] My goal was to get through the six-month probationary period “undetected” in order to then become more confrontationally active for the union. Exactly how that would work was still unclear to me at that point. The person officially mandated from the union to advise the union advised me to hold back and not make any direct attempts to approach them.
Nevertheless, I tried to learn more about my colleagues’ problems at work through individual conversations. I endeavored to understand their relationships with one another and to identify the existing lines of conflict within the company. I wanted to understand the internal processes at work: when the store manager cheated the staff, whom she favored and how, and what her exact relationship with senior management was. I recorded everything together with the only other active employee in the store, mentioned earlier, in a detailed communication plan and a sketch of a relationship diagram. Towards the end of my probationary period, I also began to conduct more proactive one-on-one conversations to arrange organizational meetings. In doing so, I acted as the “successful organizer” [4] had revealed to me.
As a store employee, I tried to set up a separate WhatsApp group exclusively for riders to foster a sense of community and independent solidarity among colleagues. Unfortunately, it had little success. During my probationary period, I raised the issue of the hot working temperatures during the summer and coordinated with the workers’ union. Although we didn’t take any direct action or other industrial action, the store manager immediately provided a case of water. Ultimately, other small successes in the store were also the result of my individual initiatives. While the store manager, as Berni puts it, “took our side of the barricade,” ironically, this made organizing with colleagues and the long-term success of the campaign more difficult.
During my seven months as a tourist in the delivery country, I encountered increasingly disappointing situations. No demand within the company could garner a majority, or even more than two colleagues. Despite obvious and sometimes blatant problems, such as the so-called “tour allowance,” my organizing efforts during that period were fruitless. With the tour allowance, a percentage of our tips was automatically deducted—more precisely, from every trip we completed. When I raised the issue in one-on-one conversations with colleagues that the redistribution of tips to the back office was illegal and the alleged redistribution itself was opaque, I met with little resistance. My suggestion of a separate, solidarity-based tip fund with voluntary contributions also garnered no interest. Not a single colleague could be persuaded to even remotely support “our” cause.
It’s possible the colleagues had no interest in changing anything because they didn’t want to keep the job anyway and didn’t enjoy it, meaning they didn’t identify with their work, as one comrade in the discussion suggested. This could also be explained from the union’s perspective. The BG, in consultation with the syndicate, had, from a certain point onward, created a stir and unrest in the supplier country “almost exclusively through public pressure,” rather than through the development of power within the company among the rather “conflict-inexperienced employees.” Peter Renneberg writes something relevant to the experiences in my store:
“A strategy relying solely on public pressure […] can be useful for trade unions if union development (member recruitment, finding activists, building structures, etc.) is secondary or even irrelevant within the respective company. However, the rule of thumb is: no public pressure without a workplace presence and a plan for union development there.”
The combination of workplace and public pressure (also in that order) is all the more important in companies with employees inexperienced in conflict, because there is often a hope that their conflict can be resolved without their direct involvement, as if by proxy from the outside. However, this experience is crucial for the further development of trade unions, for solidarity, self-confidence, and future conflicts.”[5]
Even the organizing goals set in a workshop for all stores didn’t work in our store. This made me impatient. What was I doing here if nothing was changing? My way of thinking and feeling was fundamentally activist , similar to that of Tu, a character from Brecht’s play: “Tu said: if you always strive to take the most comfortable position and get the best out of what already exists, in short: if you strive for pleasure, how can you fight? Meti said: if you don’t strive for pleasure, don’t want to get the best out of what already exists, why should you fight?” The external consultants from the employers’ liability insurance association (BG) repeatedly tried, in the spirit of Meti, to draw attention to our own experiences in the workplace. They demanded: “Formulate goals that make your workday more pleasant.” My inner reaction to this was usually incomprehension. As a fiercely determined activist, I hoped for the exact opposite: that the problems would become so unbearable that my colleagues would finally take action!
Jan Ole Arps has described in detail [6] how such an ultimately avant-garde approach and correspondingly exaggerated expectations [7] of student factory workers lead to resignation. A comrade suggested in the discussion of this text that I might simply have lacked the “big picture” that could have motivated me. His counter-example was Salts at Amazon, who understood their work as “a contribution to one of the most important labor struggles of our time” and found meaning and motivation in it for years to come. In any case, I now realize that I should have listened to the only other active FAU comrade in the store from the very beginning and, in the spirit of MK Lees, left the “leadership”—meaning, in this case, the initiative in organizing within our store—to him: “Salts should not presume to take the lead, and if the organizational activity depends on the Salts, it is time to apply the brakes, not the accelerator. Above all, the Salts should share the leadership role equally with the non-Salts on the committee, and they should avoid creating an imbalance in the hard work, no matter how great the pressure,” writes MK Lees. [8]
My comrade had told me very clearly at the beginning: “There’s nothing to organize here.” However, I didn’t want to believe it, partly because of the jingoistic propaganda in ‘Secrets of a Successful Organizer’. “Apathy isn’t real” [9] , is it? And if nothing happens in the workplace, then you probably haven’t tried hard enough to organize or you’ve approached the matter from a social engineering perspective . The success of workplace organizing, so goes the implicit and fatal message, ultimately lies in your own hands, dear self-proclaimed organizer…
Sidebar: The Angry Workers respond to a syndicalist critique by Marianne Garneau
“’There may be highs and lows in the class struggle, but if one focuses one’s organizing approach on the ‘objective conditions,’ the whole thing quickly becomes a convenient alibi for the failure of one’s own organizing. The strike didn’t happen? The conditions weren’t right. The workers didn’t join you? They ‘weren’t ready.’ Time and again, the Angry Workers take stock of their lack of success and conclude that ‘you can’t ‘start’ conflicts and strikes if the conditions and the workers’ confidence aren’t ripe.’[10]
We consider this subjectivist perspective dangerous. It portrays the effort to understand precisely why workers struggle to organize as merely an excuse for failure. This view contributes to burnout and leads activists to blame themselves when things don’t go as planned – even though they adhere to the mantra of organizing, which states that with the right plan and discipline, things can be set in motion anywhere, anytime.
This is also why we take the trouble to describe the composition of the workforce, precisely because we need to know what specific obstacles different groups of workers face. For example, problems with the immigration authorities – instead of simply saying: All workers are afraid, so what?! Or, more importantly, instead of contributing to the workers’ mistaken belief that their struggle will always be successful as soon as their department or company is united and prepared.” [11]
3
“WHAT TO DO? HOW TO ORGANIZE? […] These questions can never be settled, one never gets closer to their solution, because when activists ask them, they do so as if they were separate from their lives. The answer is delayed because the question is not asked by the one who possesses the concrete solution. One can assemble for hours, racking one’s brains. The practical agent that the ideas lack will not suddenly appear. While these questions are trivialities for the revolutionary proletariat, because the questions of action and organization are concrete for them, they become a PROBLEM for the activists.”[12]
An activist dry spell, like the one I experienced during those seven months as an uncontrolled and unconscious Salt, happens from time to time. It can even be quite welcome, and thus a much more welcome respite after two years of workplace struggles. Many were glad that the new standards in working conditions, which had been fought for with the BG (Berufsgenossenschaft, the German trade union), were maintained and that the stress decreased. “When leftists take on ‘strategic’ jobs and have grand plans (the details of which are usually quite vague) – and see themselves at the center of these plans” [13] , then such a dry spell can be almost unbearable for left-wing tourists like myself. And so it happened, at least in our store, as MK Lees predicted: “When activity is reduced to the Salts and/or a few activists, it can be another moment when people start to suppress fundamental issues and feel that they have to do something or all their work will be lost. That never ends well.” [14]
What to do? I asked myself. At the end of the seven months, after all these “setbacks” and disappointed activist expectations and personal humiliations , I was venturing onto thin ice: “Setbacks are painful, but rushing forward from a position of weakness is even worse. So it is better to slow down or even start over than to run headlong towards the end,” [15] writes MK Lees. However, I launched an offensive campaign in the store’s general WhatsApp group, this time without prior consultation with the BG. I shared scandalous facts about how management was stealing money from the workers every month. I did this without any organized support within the company that could have protected me in the event of repression through direct action, because the BG existed there only in a very rudimentary form. Ironically, I owe it to the store manager that she didn’t immediately report me but let me continue. She showed some solidarity and stood by me, the lonely one, on the ‘barricade’. So it wasn’t just luck that I wasn’t fired outright. A dismissal would have unnecessarily drained energy from the campaign and the BG itself at a time when the BG’s organizing efforts in all stores had stalled.
After the fruitless WhatsApp campaign, I held one-on-one meetings with colleagues using our payslips. It turned out that we were receiving different wages, but no one seemed interested in this as a collective problem. Two colleagues, however, were ultimately interested in individual legal advice to claim outstanding payments for themselves. At this point, though, I discovered MK Lees’s text on salting and, alarmed, pulled the plug. To be honest, I had already lost my motivation and was about to leave the company. It seems that the desperate surge of activity in the WhatsApp group was just a last gasp before a disappointed departure. “When you have salts in leadership who just want the whole thing to be over, it’s not a situation in which good decisions can be made,” [16] as MK Lees aptly observes.
The IWW advice on salting came just in time for me. I had already become increasingly lost in mindless agitation and thus an individualized simulation of workplace organizing . I can’t claim to have been “a really good organizer” or to have “quickly earned the respect of my colleagues.” Perhaps, however, that was a stroke of luck. iii As practically clueless salters, it was perhaps even best for the BG (presumably a trade union) if we simply completed our six-month probationary period in the company quietly, some of us filled with vague plans. If things go badly, people might start making grand “political” speeches. Another fiercely determined salting tourist came to “my” store and began loudly denouncing the working conditions during his trial shift. He didn’t stay long, and I was afraid that we would both be exposed as union activists during our probationary period. Such incidents could have been avoided with a short training session beforehand, a clear mandate and accountability:
“It happens time and again that comrades like you try to agitate the workforce in their factory. And then they get told: ‘That’s all well and good, what you’re telling us. But keep it up. You’ll soon be fired!’ To your explanation—born of a somewhat short-sighted willingness to sacrifice—‘That doesn’t bother me at all!’ comes the reply: ‘But it does bother us.’ That’s basically the end of it. You couldn’t get your point across. Now you’re isolated as a revolutionary. You’re probably, like most of us, a novice in revolutionary factory work.”[17]
4
From an organizational perspective, it is also problematic that our activism as Salts within the BG may have led to an unrealistic assessment of its actual organizational success. Purely quantitatively, in terms of membership numbers, the BG remained fairly constant. However, the qualitative success of one-on-one conversations, the development of relationships among colleagues, and the planning of small, direct actions declined rapidly. This is what Peter Renneberg calls “embedding the union within the company and having a plan for union development within the workplace.”
Two of my fellow Salting members have limited themselves to supporting the BG meetings. However, it’s important to note that even these supporting members, as Salts, assume key responsibility for the ultimately ‘heavy work’ of the BG’s self-governance. They convey a false impression of their collective strength within the company to the other colleagues. The regular after-work meetings are running smoothly, even though the campaign within the company has lost momentum. There are no one-on-one conversations, and relationships with most colleagues are generally strained. Furthermore, there’s a high turnover among the BG’s active members, and no ongoing knowledge transfer takes place to compensate for this. It may be the supporting Salts who at least ensure the organization’s continuity. The BG may therefore only ‘function’ because almost half of the organized colleagues are Salts, and not because the BG has truly gained a foothold and activated permanent employees. As a result, the union’s activities revert primarily to “after work,” thus resembling a political group and its corresponding after-work activism as a true fighting organization . This might provide some respite for a while. However, in the medium term, it doesn’t appear to be a recipe for success for grassroots democratic workplace groups.
What did we, as union activists in an organized workplace, do during a campaign lull? First and foremost, we simply earned our living. Just like all our other colleagues – even if, at least for me, I couldn’t admit this simple fact to myself at the time. Tabea, on the other hand, experienced her time in the Lieferland union much more pragmatically than I did and draws different conclusions, which put some of what I’ve written into perspective.
“I struggle a bit with this identification of ‘first a union activist, then a wage earner.’ Don’t we as union activists also primarily need to earn our daily bread? So, when I started in the delivery country, my main priority was to get a job again, because I desperately needed one. It was simply a good fit that the BG (German Trade Union Confederation) was there.”
It’s probably also a matter of personality. Reading your post, I get the feeling you approached it much more idealistically than I did, and as a result, you were much more “fiercely determined.” I, on the other hand, approached the job more cautiously—I can’t think of a better word. Initially, I mainly wanted to earn some money and get a feel for the work of the BG (Berufsgenossenschaft, or professional association). At first, I saw my role in the BG as simply supportive; I took care of taking minutes at meetings or other low-level tasks that the more experienced members were simply fed up with.
I also had a good contact person in my store, so it was clear from the start that he would take the lead. Reading and thinking about it, I wonder if it also stems from the fact that we both simply held different positions within the syndicate. This is just my subjective feeling, but I think the other BG members had thoughts like, “Franz is a FAU veteran, he knows exactly what he’s doing, we don’t need to explain anything to him,” or something along those lines.
Wildly determined outsiders like myself aren’t deterred by a lack of organizing skills and union experience. These syndicalist tools are essential for activists from outside to effectively support other workers. But we lacked these tools; as unplanned Salts, we were simply inexperienced beginners.
“Perhaps you have been employed at your workplace for some time. But you only recently decided to do something for the revolution there as well. And not just after work in meetings or on the street. Or perhaps you have only just now taken on such work. Out of the realization that revolutionary work is primarily necessary and meaningful in the workplace. With the current labor shortage, that’s not a problem. Either way, you are a beginner.”[18]
Specifically, beginners in the following areas:
- Personal relationships and mutual trust, being on equal footing with colleagues
- Knowledge of the life realities and existential constraints of colleagues – empathy for their needs, desires and problems – understanding of their necessary coping mechanisms at work
- Knowledge about the company, its hierarchies and workflows, as well as its weaknesses and pressure points.
- Production intelligence, that is, the knowledge and ability to carry out production.
- Informal conflict experiences in the workplace – resilience at work – knowledge of realistic courses of action
- Experiences with established trade unions regarding the handling of concrete working realities
- Getting used to the work itself and the corresponding perseverance.
This means that tourists who come to salt are generally learners and those being guided. However, I felt like an ‘organizer,’ that is, a guide. This fundamentally activist distortion is key to understanding what can go wrong socially and revolutionary in salting in particular, as well as in ‘union work’ in general. For in my self-image and my assumed, and moreover vague, role, I was no different from a ‘Leninist’ missionary [19] . But, it must be emphasized here,
“The workers [in reality] have a much more precise and comprehensive (albeit latent) awareness of their oppression and exploitation than we student cadres with our ‘Leninist’ blinders could have imagined. The scale of their protest attitudes ranges from unconscious refusal, which manifests itself, for example, in grimacing, aggressive jokes, and conspicuous lethargy and sluggishness, to conscious resistance, which manifests itself in spontaneous outbursts of anger against foremen and timekeepers or in the individual boycott of overtime and increased assembly line speeds.”[20]
5
Getting a taste of workplace organizing during a period of political inactivity was a rather discouraging experience for me. That’s one of the reasons why I want to process it. Nevertheless, it probably earned me more respect among my comrades – and I learned a lot. For a long time, I had been ‘just’ a student trade union activist among others in the political organization of our General Syndicate, occupied with administrative work and internal political squabbles. Now, as a Salt (a type of union activist), I sat in on the meetings of a workplace group of militant colleagues . I participated in organizing workshops, was able to practice in the workplace, and gain experience. However, the involvement of Salts presents “another organizational risk: once you are in the workplace and become a contact point for the campaign or the organization, in the case of the IWW – due to our structure – you suddenly gain a credibility and a social and organizational power that can also be a problem.” [21]
Student activists lack experience, knowledge, and self-confidence in workplace organizing. As full-time students, they often lack these qualities in their own existential struggles with wage labor. They find all of these, however, in abundance in the internal wrangling of the union’s political organization. As a member of a trade union, for example, the importance of one’s own opinion in policy debates and decision-making processes increases significantly among the ranks of after-work activists. Here, one’s own “Salting tourism” can become a “resource, activist street credibility as a benchmark in bargaining and action.” [22] I could, for example, have acted as a spokesperson for an active labor dispute. I could have done this internally or to the press. In MK Lees’ case studies, media work generally plays an important role, as it does specifically in the campaign in the supplier country.
I could start by giving BG workshops in other syndicates and building the social capital of the activists. I could gently launch my own ‘radical’ journalism career in relevant media outlets, like the Express. All without actually organizing militantly along the lines of my own existential interests as a wage earner. I could expand my credibility in the radical left niche that is more than overshadowed by the FAU syndicates.
“The longer the RK [Revolutionary Struggle] was active at Opel [early 1970s – FH], the more difficult it became to say exactly what the factory work was supposed to achieve. In Frankfurt, it was primarily useful for the group’s prestige within the scene; it was the RK’s political figurehead, particularly active at the university. Conversely, the RK’s internal cadres needed belonging to the collective with its ‘revolutionary actions’ in Frankfurt in order to feel like revolutionaries at all.”[23]
The radical left-wing niche, inexperienced in labor struggles, is riding the waning wave of “new class politics.” Suddenly, even within this group, there’s talk of an almost unassailable position of “class-struggle” authority. They might merely deliver food and not even dare to take the first step of organizing and ask their colleagues about their problems. In fact, they might only actively participate in union meetings or general assemblies, lecturing their own comrades in a “radical” manner. This is even more detrimental, as their purely activist concerns occupy the space that should be reserved for the self-organization of permanent employees and their problems. A union should be an effective interest group within the company. However, the personal interests of these “Salting tourists” are primarily different from those of most other colleagues. Therefore, salts must be subject to “different standards of conduct and different responsibilities [than organized workers]. Salting should be defined as a time-limited action that gives impetus to a campaign. This categorically distinguishes salts from all other workers, who had entirely different motives when they wrote their job applications,” [24] says MK Lees.
One comrade emphasized again in the discussion that the BG had achieved a tremendous amount in the past two years, and that this shouldn’t be forgotten. She suggested that perhaps the problem lay precisely in this particular situation, this specific store I had chosen to target. Perhaps the people here simply weren’t ready to organize themselves. Another comrade commented in the discussion that there’s a difference between going into work because you find it socially relevant and fulfilling, and going into it solely for the sake of the FAU’s development. In the latter case, he argued, it’s better to just leave it alone. I wouldn’t fundamentally disagree with either comrade, but I would respond to the first one: Even if my efforts hadn’t been ineffective, they would have been driven by the same activist ways of feeling, thinking, and acting that I find objectionable . Because activists, quite fundamentally, act as “aliens.”
“They enjoy their exteriority in every situation. They hang in the air and derive from this a feeling of some kind of specialness. They prefer to live as aliens – that is the comfort that life in the metropolises, their preferred habitat, still allows for some time.”[25]
But on the other hand, I would also respond to the latter comrade with MK Lee’s words:
“Admittedly, there are times and places for a strategy of external influence. If we strictly confined ourselves to organizing only our own workplaces, we would sacrifice our diversity or limit our ability to develop a strategic organizing plan. Salts are a tool that can help us expand our organizing in a targeted and strategic way. Salting can be useful if the salts are trained and accountable. But if the whole plan is for these people to fantasize about themselves as heroes in a John Steinbeck novel, we will be very disappointingly ruining our plans. If we use salts, we must be clear about their purpose.”[26]
I do not want to—and I think we cannot, given our current weakness—completely reject extraterrestrial activism for our organizing. I am not arguing for a slide into a “council communist extreme.” In the next parts of this series , however, I will further analyze and productively critique “union activism,” of which salting tourism is a case study, from a purely anarcho-syndicalist perspective. My proposed objective would be, on the one hand, to utilize the resources of (mostly student) activists—for example, as salts, when “requested by those directly involved” [27] —for workplace organizing, and on the other hand, to collectively contain the problems associated with extraterrestrial activism for proletarian self-organization and defense. I will also attempt to spell out what these problems are in the following parts.
For example, most of us salts shouldn’t have waited six months to become active. We should have been sent into the workplace with a concrete plan from the start, to perform specific tasks for which we wouldn’t have had to put ourselves out there. Tabea says: “I find it interesting that you suggest that. To be honest, that’s exactly how I perceived my assignment.” Nevertheless, based on my self-critical report, I recommend establishing such guidelines collectively and consciously ensuring their adherence. Even if some, like Tabea, might follow them more intuitively, we probably shouldn’t leave them to individual compliance, especially by those who are wildly determined. As mentioned, MK Lees also gives concrete recommendations for sensibly planned and limited salting activism. You could discuss and adapt these locally.
Thank you to all comrades who read, criticized and commented!
Endnotes
“ ‘Wildly determined’ [within a company] are rarely the same as key personnel. They are ‘passionate’ about the cause, have internalized the desire for change, and often form the ‘driving force’ behind activities […] Therefore, it is sometimes important to ensure that the wildly determined are not the only ones who dictate the plans and procedures. Within the group of active participants, the calmer and more considered voices often ensure a good balance in the level of action.” (Renneberg 2020)
ii “Every individual—regardless of their social position—is dependent on the goodwill of their superiors. And they are privileged compared to those below them. This principle can only be broken if isolation is abolished. That is, through solidarity. Therein lies the barricade: Is someone prepared to show solidarity with their peers and subordinates—or are they striving to conform to those above them? Depending on this, their behavior is revolutionary or not. The enemy is always at the top. The specific enemy is always the next higher-ranking superior who does not show solidarity with their subordinates. For a worker, oppression by a despotic foreman is much more vivid than that by a jovial director.” (Kelb 1974: 5)
iii Compare this example from an IWW campaign analysis: “The problem was that Bob’s rapid organizing did not build real workplace groups, did not inoculate properly, and did not develop any real strength in the workplaces before he pulled the trigger. As a result, mass layoffs and other reprisals, such as the withdrawal of work papers (official or unofficial) by the employer, were common. Bob raced through four or five workplaces in this way. One IWW member estimated that over the years he was the reason 170 people were fired.” (Garneau 2019)
iv This point is really interesting and reveals something about the internal status parameters in the FAU: a low FAU membership number creates an aura of experience. In my case, however, that’s nonsense, since although I joined the syndicate early on, I only became active two and a half years ago and, moreover, I have no prior trade union experience.
“The council communist rejects the desire for such a ‘role of revolutionaries. ’ Beyond their immediate activity in their own workplace, they primarily disseminate information and analysis, understanding this merely as an attempt to comprehend what people are actually doing and the true significance of these actions. This skepticism regarding the importance of ‘revolutionaries’ and their political ‘intervention’ in these struggles has strong plausibility when it comes to workplace conflicts. It is certainly true that in such conflicts, the distinction between those inside and outside the workplace is usually fundamental. What can be done ‘from the inside’ is immediately apparent; the possibilities are determined by the workers’ position, their role in the company, the company’s position in the economy, their relationships with colleagues, and so on. In comparison, what can be effectively done ‘from the outside’ is usually not much, unless it is an activity desired by those directly involved.” (Endnotes 2019: 36f.)
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