Photo Credit: Ahmad Gunnaivi
During the past five years of so I’ve noticed a trend in the labour movement to move away from some embraced words of the past in favour of newer, more acceptable words. Typically, this shift has gone from more aggressive words towards less aggressive; or certainly softer language. Does it matter? I believe it does. Language matters because organising is essentially degrees of communication. How we carry our message, how we get that message across and how we develop our workplace leaders to do the same is critical to our success as a movement.
What’s the problem?
Agitation is a classic ‘old school’ term that raises uncomfortable feelings for a growing number of people in our movement. When I have heard this sort of topic discussed it’s usually along the lines of placing distance between the industrial fights of the past and moving towards a more civilised approach of organising. There seems to be a growing desire within our movement to move away from classic hardcore organising towards something less resource intensive and lighter. The problem with agitation then is that it doesn’t fit that lighter version of unionism, so why would you do it? I agree with this in principle. I mean, if I was running a campaign where I knew damn well workers didn’t have the density to have a meaningful impact, or workers didn’t have the desire to take action, or our strategy for victory was speculative and untested, then sure…let’s not get everyone fired up when we know we can’t exercise any industrial power. However, the purpose of this post is to explore the meaning and practice of one of the most important aspects of classic union organising – agitation.
What is agitation?
Agitation is how we stand out from the majority of people surrounding most workers. When I say workers I’m speaking generally about anyone who’s essentially been told their whole life to not rock the boat and do what they’re told – and most people will live their whole lives doing just that. I’m not here to pass judgement on those people, after all life can be pretty damn scary with plenty of responsibilities like children, debt, mortgages and medical bills, so I understand the ‘don’t rock the boat’ mantra. I just don’t practice it.
Obviously there is risk and consequences to taking action, most people seem to understand that. However, not as many people realise there is significant risk and consequence to inaction. It’s the job of an organiser to get people to a point where they can see past the obvious risk of organising and focus instead on the potentially endless miserable trajectory of maintaining the status-quo. After all, if there is one thing an organiser must be able to do – it’s move people. Let’s not understate this point, if we can’t move workers, then we can’t organise them. Agitation is simply a method of movement.
How do we agitate?
Agitation is a tool we can use to shift workers from where they are today to where they need to be in order to take action and win. However, it doesn’t happen in a vacuum, it’s not something we do in isolation. Agitation is most commonly utilised through skilled and comprehensive organising conversations. Frameworks & semantics aside, all organising conversations have a single goal – movement. So how does agitation help us achieve this goal?
Saul Alinsky once said “the function of an organiser is to raise questions that agitate, that break through the accepted pattern”. In another article of mine titled “Shifting Workers – Overcoming Inertia” I go into considerable detail to explain the concept of inertia (not apathy) in people and the contributing influences of cognitive dissonance and confirmation bias in that process. Simply put – people resist change, all change. This is the default setting for most people we will encounter. Agitation allows us to explore the issues workers face by asking challenging questions that bring out the contradictions and injustice of the situation at hand. Here are a few examples of questions we can use:
- Why do you think your boss does that?
- Who benefits from this situation?
- Who makes these decisions?
- How long can you tolerate this?
- How does it feel to come to work each day in that environment?
- What are the consequences for you if you continue on this way?
Why do we need to agitate?
Because self-knowledge and information does not lead to behavioural change. Because inertia means that once a trajectory is set in life, that most people will follow that trajectory, good or bad until something forces them from that trajectory. Because our whole lives we’re told to calm down, not to overreact, to keep ourselves in check and to be a team player. This is why we need to agitate, to break through “the accepted pattern”, to make it OK to rock the boat and flip the bastard over if need be. There comes a time when workers need to be given the encouragement and platform to express their discontent with being unsafe, unappreciated, underpaid, disrespected and overworked.
However, agitation means nothing if we haven’t laid the proper foundation to build from. In any organising conversation, agitation will usually arise at the point of discussing deeply felt issues, and from there you’re going to need to move that worker towards action. This means providing genuine hope through a compelling vision, realistic plan of action and practical steps for that worker to engage with.