Photo credit: Icons8 Team
Recently I was contacted by an experienced lead organiser who was asking about inoculation and it sparked a conversation about an unlikely topic for me. I mean sure, I understand what inoculation is and am very confident in my ability to best utilise it when organising workers, however I never saw it as an overly important discussion point. As I reflected on our conversation it dawned on me how inherent inoculation is to all things organising, and it also raised some uncomfortable feelings about personal failures from the past that made me explore the concept further. Had I always prepared workers appropriately for the battle ahead? The answer was no, I hadn’t always done so. And quite frankly, that’s not good enough.
What is Inoculation?
The term comes from the medical field, and probably best known these days through the flu shot, where someone is given a small amount of flu ahead of time so their immune system becomes stronger and will be able to fight off the flu when exposed to it later. In organising, inoculation is the process of exposing someone to a potential risk for the purposes of building future resistance to said risk. So we inoculate to prepare workers for the potential retaliation they might face when attempting to organise.
When would we inoculate workers?
Inoculation isn’t something that happens by itself, it’s always tied to an ask, and all organising conversations should have an ask. Therefore, it’s fairly common. However, I would argue that it’s not always necessary depending on various factors, yet at the same time getting this wrong could result in dire circumstances for the workers involved. So it’s probably best to inoculate a worker whenever there is a probable chance of aggressive employer retaliation – and to error on the side of caution. I don’t feel it’s realistic or sustainable to inoculate every time we ask a worker to do something. Like any aspect of organising, there needs to be judgement exercised by the organiser, but this judgement needs to be rooted in experience and evidence – not intuition.
How do we inoculate workers?
While it’s my experience that many union organisers are familiar with the concept of inoculation, I do question the frequency and quality of the practice on the ground. How many times have you heard someone say this travesty, “your employer cannot discriminate against you for belonging to a union”? Every time I hear that I cringe. Let’s be clear – an employer can do whatever they want, to anyone they want, as long as they’re willing to face the consequences. It’s always cheaper to break the law and pay the fine than allow workers to organise. Now I’m guessing what they actually mean is ‘it’s illegal for your employer to discriminate against you for belonging to a union’. Sure, that’s true…and it’s also illegal to exceed the speed limit, but it certainly doesn’t stop me from doing so on a daily basis.
So how do we inoculate? Like most aspects of genuine organising we need to be asking workers questions instead of telling them things. Let’s say you’re asking someone to move a petition inside a workplace, a very simple way to inoculate them would be by asking “how do you think your employer might react to you doing this during work time”? From that question two roads will diverge – the workers will have an understanding of the reaction, or they won’t. If they understand there is likely to be aggressive retaliation, then you might say “so how might you go about this in a systematic way that is safe for you?”, from there you can explore options.
If the person has no idea how the employer might react, then many people might suggest the organiser should provide some common and truthful examples of things they’ve seen in the past to help prepare the workers. I disagree. I’ve seen this approach fail gloriously by organisers being overly prescriptive and getting it wrong, thus losing credibility with workers when their employer doesn’t act in the manner described.
In the event a worker was keen to take action and really had no clue about the employer reaction, rather than throw out examples of employer retaliation (tell them things) I would instead recommend running through a series of questions along these lines:
- “Do you think your employer wants a union here?“
- “What makes you say that?”
- “How might they respond if they saw you moving a petition during work time?”
- “Why might they respond that way? What reaction do you think they are looking for?”
- “What message does the employer get if people back down with a little pressure?”
- “How could you make sure you do this in a safe manner?”
The fear of inoculation
When I was a young organiser and first learned about inoculation I remember thinking I should tread lightly in case I scared off some budding activists, and I suspect this is fairly common thinking in the early days of organising. It’s dead wrong. The whole purpose of an organiser is adequately prepare workers for the battle ahead, whatever that battle may be. It’s not the role of organisers to protect or shield workers.
We don’t lie to workers – no matter how uncomfortable if feels.
Workers are adults, if they feel the need for protection and/or advocacy, they will request it – we don’t get to make that decision for them. If workers understand the risks, are adequately prepared and decide to proceed, then we’ve done our job to a high standard. Sure, people are going to get fired or discriminated against from time to time – that’s not unheard of. However, we inoculate to prepare workers for that reality, so when the hammer eventually drops they’re ready for it.
Inoculation is about learning to take a punch, not avoiding one. It’s simply not possible to organise on a large scale and never experience employer retaliation. Things will eventually go wrong, employers will attempt to make an example out of someone – we cannot control that. What we can control is how prepared workers are for this type of behaviour.