Mansfield Socialist Party member
Some years ago, I worked for nine months at a packaging factory. There was an oversupply of workers and not always enough jobs. This was obvious every morning when the agency would send two double-decker buses to collect the workers (at their own expense, almost an hour’s pay) but not all of them. Everyone would be told to arrive at the collection point at 6am the following day, ready for work. But that did not guarantee a place on the bus. Each morning some would be turned away and told to come back the following morning when the cycle would repeat.
If you were sent to work that day, the factory was cold, wet and loud, with no room to move around while stood at the production line. Breaks were only allowed within the allocated times. Even stepping back for a few seconds to stretch would be met with scorn from the keen eye of the supervisor, whose main job was to threaten people with the sack if they didn’t speed up their work. Toilet breaks would have to be requested as though we were school children and were sometimes denied. Shouting was common and sometimes fights would break out, including on one occasion, in a fight involving the small knives we would use for the job, a woman’s cheek was cut. The conditions created this kind of behaviour.
Safety standards were terrible. People worked under heavy machinery and were sometimes told to put their arms into machinery to recover things. One man was hit by a forklift and his leg was reversed over and broken. I saw another man smashed into a wall by a forklift that was driving forwards with a load on the forks, so the driver couldn’t see what was ahead… a breach of safety standards anywhere. He was ok but we were all threatened with the sack if we said anything about it.
But the biggest problem we faced each day was the extremely monotonous and mentally numbing nature of the work. The entire job could be learned in ten seconds, there were no options to do other jobs within the factory and people were not rotated around. I saw many people start the job, and within a matter of hours they would walk out. One man in particular stands out to me. He told me he was recently made redundant from his previous job and needed something urgently as he had three children to take care of. He worked until ten minutes after the first break and then walked out, and was easily replaced the next day. The nature of the work was completely degrading and alienating. We were only doing the job because a machine had not yet been invented that could do the job for us that would save the business owners some money, and their contempt for us showed for every minute I was there.
The production line had overhead walkways where the supervisors and managers would stand, watching over us. The supervisor would constantly ‘crack the whip’ shouting: “Faster! Faster! Or you won’t work tomorrow!” When the manager above the supervisor would arrive, at least two people were guaranteed to be sacked on the spot. If 50 of us were working, there would always be two people slower than everyone else, the manager would watch us for a few minutes and then order two people to the canteen under a tirade of verbal abuse and sign them out, their day was over. This could be at 10am on a day that didn’t finish until 6pm, so they would have to wait in the canteen, unpaid, for eight hours before the agency would send the bus to collect everyone.
It’s important to understand that it’s capitalism that both enables and, more importantly, encourages these types of management practices. The constant cracking of the whip, the threats and intimidation, the denial of basic human needs and pitting one worker against another are all necessary for the normal functioning of capitalism.
Eventually I was able to leave but still kept in contact with some people there. I was informed of a spontaneous strike that occurred in December 2019, without any union involvement. In the busiest period, the factory was short of workers and the workers knew it – they demanded £15 per hour and stood outside until after two days the management gave in and granted them a temporary pay rise until the busy period had ended.
This is the power of an organised working class.
