Note: This piece was published before rs21 was established as an independent organisation in January 2014. rs21 was founded by a group of people who had been in the opposition within the SWP and who left in response to its persistent mishandling of rape and sexual harassment allegations against a leading member.
Hero to zero
Jamie Woodcock •Jamie W and Sølvi G reflect on how they and others responded to the sudden proliferation of awareness about, and anger towards, zero-hour contracts, seeking to inform the way we operate and organise in the future.
Of course, the fact that the media hype around zero hours has died down doesn’t mean that the material conditions no longer exist. We feel our lessons are threefold:
1. That we need to be prepared to make inquiries from the perspective of workers, not simply the Office for National Statistics.
2. That we need to foster activists who can organise and network in their workplaces, not just in their national unions.
3. That we need to experiment in order to find out what is working, if at all, and be honest when we are doing so.
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