(en) UK, ACG Jackdaw #13: Wildcat strikes: a very basic intrduction (ca, de, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

A number of wildcat strikes broke out in the UK during August. ---- The wave of
wildcat action kicked off at Cranswick Continental Foods in Pilsworth. Next,
wildcat strikes broke out at several Amazon warehouses including Tilbury,
Rugeley, Coventry, Bristol, Dartford, Coalville, Belvedere, Hemel Hempstead and
Chesterfield. There were also more wildcat strikes at Grangemouth oil refinery.
---- Chemical plant workers also took wildcat action at several sites across
Teesside and at Humber Refinery in North Lincolnshire as well as at Valero
refinery in Milford Haven. Train drivers at Avanti West Coast brought some
services to a halt by refusing shifts. ---- But what makes a strike ‘wildcat'?
---- Wildcat strikes are a form of autonomous direct action. ‘Autonomous' because
they are not officially sanctioned by and are
likely to be outside of the control of the unions and left-wing political parties.
‘Direct' because they short circuit the
mediating and representative role of the
trade unions. As the recent wildcat strikes
spread like wildfire, media outlets were
keen to describe the danger to businesses.
Share Talk website wrote: "Businesses
cannot plan for wildcat strikes, making it
difficult to manage them. These strikes are
dangerous for employees who abandon
the legal protections granted to them in
collective bargaining."

The Evening Standard asked: "What is a
wildcat strike?" Wildcat strikes don't have
the permission of their union, and workers
don't go through the typical process a
union does when arranging industrial
action, which sometimes challenges their
union's authority."

Computer Weekly stated: "Amazon
workers also have staged wildcat strikes
(meaning they were conducted without
the involvement or support of a union) in
Rugeley, Coventry, Swindon, Rugby,
Doncaster, Bristol, Dartford, Belvedere,
Hemel Hempstead and Chesterfield."

A couple of dictionary definitions of
wildcat strikes are:

Merriam-Webster Dictionary: "Wildcat
strike: a strike that is started by a group of
workers without the approval of their
union."

Cambridge Dictionary: "Wildcat strike: a
sudden strike (= act of refusing to work as
a protest) without any warning by the
workers and often without the official
support of the unions."

But council communist Anton Pannekoek
outlined the reason that anarchist communists
and libertarian communists emphasise the
subversive potential of wildcat
strikes: "In the wildcat strikes, we may see
the beginnings of a new practical orientation
of the working class, a new tactic, the
method of direct action. They represent
the only actual rebellion of man against
the deadening suppressing weight of world
-dominating capital."

Wildcat strikes are a form of direct action and
the anarchist Emile Pouget explained the
significance for revolutionaries
of this tactic of militant working class action:

"Direct Action is a notion of such
clarity, of such self-evident transparency,
that merely to speak the words defines
and explains them. It means that the working
class, in constant rebellion against the
existing state of affairs, expects nothing
from outside people, powers or forces, but
rather creates its own conditions of struggle and
looks to itself for its means of action."

As a form of autonomous action, wildcat
strikes have the potential to go beyond the
narrow framework of trade unionism.
Anarchist communists and other communist
revolutionaries offer criticisms of the limitations of trade unions.

William Morris, the author of News from
Nowhere and Lectures on Socialism, wrote
in 1885 that: Trade unions[do not]
"represent the whole class of workers as
working men but rather are charged with the
office of keeping the human part of the
capitalists' machinery in good working order and
freeing it from any grit of discontent".

In a similar observation to William Morris,
council communist Cajo Brendel described the
role of unions: "The undeniable fact that from
the very first day of their existence unions
have had the task of mediating between capitalists
and workers, mediating of course in
order to extinguish the flames of conflict
between the two parties, not to kindle the fire by
pouring oil into it, mediating in order to stabilize
the antagonistic relationship of workers
and capitalists, not to destroy it."

The wildcats in the UK have been in mostly,
though not entirely, in workplaces where
there are either no unions or they are unrecognised.
The GMB union is taking credit for at
least some of the Amazon actions, but they
are, for the most part, self-organised. What is
important about these wildcat strikes is that
they show what workers can do for themselves.
If they can be extended and spread
then they can overcome isolation and being
picked off.

https://www.anarchistcommunism.org/2022/10/02/new-jackdaw-out-download-here/
https://www.anarchistcommunism.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/Jackdaw-13-1.pdf
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