work slowdown, here we come [removed]

Also for security purposes. Call me fucking paranoid but you never know!

work slowdown, here we come

it is an exhilarating feeling to be a militant who is being organized by other workplace militants. today my coworkers talked to me concretely, schedule-wise, about what i need to do to get on board w the work slowdown. i was initially planning to have a meeting today with some other coworkers (which didnt end up happening cos one of them fell sick and we postponed it), and wanted to talk exactly about how we can do a work slowdown together. but others beat me to it and, today at work i was being organized. it's a great feeling to be organized by other workplace militants!

i feel like in this past year, since i started working at this nursing home, i have experienced for myself the lessons in "American Worker." more so than any job I have been in -- which had been more restaurant, cafe and non-profit work. i think perhaps it is because nursing homes, and hospitals begin to look more like the factories that American Worker was written out of, and restaurants/diners/cafes, are more individualized and involve smaller scales of labor. i do think there are other factors at my job that make it feel this way but i will mention them later in this post.

there's been some developments since i last wrote. i like to think that because we delivered our petition letter, the Director of Nursing and management told us that they were going to revise the way the shower aide system is going to be run. Not that they care about us any more, but more so, to make the plan more palatable to us in the short term, and to divide us. These m'fuckers are so shrewd.

Basically what it had been before was that the first floor of my workplace, consists of 2 longterm care units (56 long-term care residents, many with dementia or alzheimers and need intense assistance for daily living). In a total, we had 7 CNAs on the floor which amounted to 8 residents/CNA. Every CNA had to give a shower everyday and by the end of a week, all the residents would have had their weekly showers. We had a new DNS arrive a month ago, and she wanted to switch things around/play boss with us. She decided that we need a shower aide, and rather than hiring someone new, she says one of us on the floor will have to switch out to be a shower aide.

That meant 8-10 showers a day for the shower aide, while the rest of us on the floor (now 6), would have around 10 residents/CNA.

We submitted a petition by all the dayshift CNAs saying that this was UNSAFE for residents, as well as for us!! It was impossible to get the fucking job done safely!!

So management comes back, and says that for a "trial period", we will have 2 shower aides on the floor. That leaves us with 5 CNAs for 56 residents!!! That amounts to 11-12 residents/CNA.

Incredible!!!

In the meantime, each shower aide would have less showers/day. Between 3-5, which is doable.

So this was their plan. Starting Monday. And yours truely is being picked by them to do the shower aide position. I can only imagine it's cos I spoke up pretty intensely AGAINST it.

We were all confused by this change in their plans. Why make the shower aide job easier, why load more unto the remaining CNAs on the floor?

In conversations at work, we broke the shit down:
- It is to divide us. They observed that we were united as a group of CNAs and now they wanted to have the shower aide position seem hella easy, so many people will WANT to be the shower aide. They will find volunteers for a position that we once really hated. (and people did in fact say that they wanted to be shower aides now that it seemed like an easy job, or at least damn much easier than being a CNA.)

- By having a shower aide position that is much easier than the CNA position, they are institutionalizing the division b/w this new shower aide position and the CNA position. Everyone will wanna be the shower aide and thank god they arent CNAs with 12 residents each. Again, everyone gets to step on the CNAs.

- Since this is their trial period, they wanna sell the idea of a shower aide position. A few months later after we are used to the idea of having a shower aide, they will come back and say that having 2 shower aides is too many, since the work is EASY. So, they will eventually cut 1 shower aide and we will go back to having 1 shower aide for 8-10 residents.

By this time, any resistance against the shower aide workload will be done only by the 2 shower aides. It will no longer have the collaboration or unity of EVERYBODY, which is when we are most powerful.

BRILLIANT.
They are brilliant and so are we. Fuck em. Now we have to organize so EVERYONE sees through this shit.

Another insight I learned from these past few days, is further understanding our solidarity and collaboration with one another. Again, this idea was discussed in Facing Reality by the Johnson Forrest Tendency but I had only understood it more as a conceptual/theoretical/political principle because I hadnt experienced it in my previous jobs, at least not in such an intense way. Experiencing this gives me the opportunity to understand this more deeply.

James et al in Facing Reality talk about how workers, without management, will be able to a hell lot more productive. They will be able to exercise their solidarity with one another, their creativity and share skills toward *hopefully* constructive ends.

We always say at work how management knows how hard it is for us to do the work, but they load it on anyway because they know we will do it.

They know we will do it because they know we will help each other.

So, management talks about the need to "help each other out." Obviously, THEY dont help out. When we are short staffed, they disappear and maybe help us with serving 1 tray during meal time. But they do talk the big talk of us being a unified, helpful workforce and give out awards for that shit. But their talk of solidarity is 101% different from our form of solidarity on the floor.

Back to the shower aide business.

On the surface it looks like the shower aides have it easier than the CNAs who have 12 residents a person.
But in reality, I think the shower aide position is actually gonna be H*E*L*L*I*S*H*
Workload isnt the only determining factor.
In reality, if the shower aides have 3-5 showers and we finish early, then we are definitely going to help out the other CNAs on the floor, at least until they hella institutionalize and divide the position as a shower aide has nothing to do with being a CNA. I have seen them do that with the Physical therapist aide position which previously was a CNA position, and now is seen as completely different (and thus doesnt need to help out on the floor.)
If we help out on the floor, which we will cos many of us are friends and generally good coworkers, then we will end up doing 3 - 5 showers AND take on many residents. Worse still, BECAUSE we wont have a job description, we will end up being on everyone';s beck and call -- we will end up being everyone;s servant cos we are supposed to help out with everyone and anyone if we "look" free.
This stark division of labor where one assignment seems a lot easier than the other, is only actually recipe for OVERWORKING and recreating the servant position where you work work work but dont know where the time went to.

Anyway, I am sure management knows that we have the ability and the conscience to help each other out on the floor and rely on that to get the job done.

Workers resistance to this exploitation of our solidarity is to tell management that we are NOT helpful to one another, that we are only concerned about our own workload on the job, that we are in fact what they are: SELFISH.

I have an anecdote that expresses this.

E and A are 2 of my coworkers who are the formal shower aides. (Yours truly is for days that they are off).
A. had volunteered for the position cos she wants to suck up to managament.
E. is one of the most militant m-fuckers I ever met.

*Scene*
Management sits down w A. and E. to talk through the shower aide position.
E. says: This change is too drastic, my coworkers have 12 residents and I can't help them cos I am busy giving showers. This plan is impossible.
A. says: Dont worry, we will help each other out.
Management says: GREAT! A., you have great attitude. E., you should learn more from her.
*End Scene*

E. tells ALL of us about how A. sold us all out. A. sold us all out by telling management how we help each other out. This is supposed to be workers' knowledge. You dont snitch on that to the boss.
Management reaffirms what it already knows: that the workers dont sell each other short

I think this is why organizing a slowdown is so hard. It is my natural instinct at this workplace to help out my coworkers and vice versa when we are done with our tasks. But a slowdown is hard is because it forces us to counter our natural workpalce instinct to help one another and actually forces us to be like those who boss over us: SELFISH.

I am really just speaking about my own workplace. I know these lessons dont transfer into every workplace. This "natural instinct" that I am talking about, of helping each other, is actually also really cultivated. It doesnt NEED to be like this. But it makes things a hell lot easier and our work -- the need for cooperative labor and teamwork -- shows us that.  So much for human beings being "nasty brutish and selfish," I feel like right now, capitalism is forcing me to be that, very counter-instinctually.

Having read Theses on Feuerbach recently, and seeing Marx's critique of the Enlightenment thinkers (and the resulting capitalist/individualist conception of human nature), as well as his critique of Feuerbach when F. presents human nature in a static, unchanging manner, I feel like I can see very concretely how my being is being transformed by the relationships that arise out of my concrete material conditions. The workplace solidarity is of course, only one dimension of it. There are others, not always positive.

I know too, that I cannot take the workplace dynamics I experience for granted. More to think about, is how my workplace consists of many African immigrants from the same country who are very new to the US and have a sense of community and solidarity with one another, looking out for one another. This is cultivated, and might not be the same elsewhere.

Last bit: I read alot about Afro Asian solidarity and am excited that I am trying to do it at my workplace around a concrete struggle. I feel like I am crossing the color line, in struggle. To use the language of my coworkers, we are all modern slaves.

Butterflies in my stomach

We have no choice but to organize, to respond, to fight back. I feel this. If I don't want to spend each day at work nearly crying, desperate and angry, then this is what we have to do.

I identified what it is that makes work so mentally exhausting. It is the extreme anger and sadness I feel knowing that they dont treat us like people, like humans. Of course, it is because of our color. And seeing and recognizing this everyday is very tiring. I am not yet numb to the assault and erosion of my dignity and humanity.

B., a East African woman worker told me that for apparently "refusing to comply" with the white woman who is our staffer, for allegedly being "rude" to the white lady, B. was suspended for 2 days.

2 fucking days. For knowing our job descriptions and not wanting to be bossed around like a dog. The white woman's words vs. the Black woman's words. I have heard this before.

Management is trying to increase our work ratio from 8 residents to 10 residents/CNA.
This is incredible. It is so fucking hard. The new Director of Nursing comes from a home that worked 1:10-12. Now she is trying to convince us that we will have an easier time. She wants to "try" the new system. FOS.

We are presenting a letter on Wed. I am so fucking nervous about it. I have organized for a long time now, but being at this new workplace, new industry, with new co-workers, new everything, and alone as a revolutionary militant without the crew I usually roll with, without any experience in workplace organizing myself, I am actually fucking nervous. I feel like the stakes are high -- we might get fired, or the changes might be instituted and there would be widespread demoralization, OR struggle (?).

I think what it is too, is that I will have to see the bosses everyday, even after the letter delivery. I can't NOT see them, and be bitches to them as I want to, cos I have to have some kind of communication w them about care for the residents. This is hard for me. I am much easier at giving the pissy face and F-you. But there is always a new experience for everything. A first time for everything, and this is my first time. It is hard mentally and emotionally, but this is why our struggle at work has so much at stake -- my mental, emotional and physical liberation and relaxation.

I do have to say that many of my coworkers are militant like hell -- I just hope this energy stays up and I feel really stressed out trying to think about  WHAT I can do to support the upswing of militancy.

Reading

I am trying to understand the political economy of the healthcare industrial complex, and the nursing home industrial complex. 


I am doing so to understand the broader dynamics that are currently determining my work life, and my relationships with the residents at the home I work in. 


I am constantly reminded of the temporality of my body's abilities, and really like how disabilities liberation framework talks about abled bodies as merely temporarily abled. Part of my resentment with my work is that the speed up forces me to contort my body in destructive ways, using my back muscles to substitute for safety and time. I see my coworkers exert themselves too and understand how we are all vulnerable like this. And how tragic it is that our exploited labor power will not even be able to be reproduced in this country since many of my coworkers will either not receive appropriate retirement and healthcare, or will return home, or will die because of these work-induced disabilities.This dimension of things makes me really interested in understanding Marxism, and reproductive labor, and labor power. 


I also am exploring and trying to understand disabilities liberation, and disableism, with an eye toward thinking about how my struggle for liberation as a healthcare worker, my desire to protect my body and the bodies of the residents, are all intertwined. 


I have felt that the language of safety for the residents/patients that is being used in nursing struggles is not enough, is not satisfactory. It talks about safety in a bland way -- not surprising given many of these struggles are led by the union bureuacracies in an ableist society. I hope to find models that integrate a healthier, more liberatory vision toward all bodies, with the struggles of the workplace. I think the healthcare workers' struggles present a concrete site for struggling around reclaiming liberatory aspects of technology and medicine, while discarding its harmful/capitalist dimensions.


I have been exploring a few articles and blogs that come at the issue from the perspective of the people receiving commodified care, people with disabilities (PWD) who are forced into nursing homes and undesirable/unwanted/damaging treatment.


Here's from Marta Russell: No Nursing Home on Wheels
She strikes me as some kind of social dem, sort of mainstream disabilities rights writer. I am learning alot from her writings and her references though:


On productivity, work and the displacement of non-productive bodies under capitalist standards: 


Not coincidently, the rise of the institution accompanied the rise of capitalism in Western societies. As work became more rationalized, requiring precise mechanical movements of the body repeated in quicker succession, impaired persons - deaf, blind, developmentally disabled, mentally impaired, those with mobility difficulties and others - were seen as less "fit" to do the tasks required of factory workers. They were increasingly excluded from paid employment on the grounds that they were unable to keep pace with the "disciplinary" power of the new mechanized, factory-based production system.   So it was that the operation of the labor market in the 19th century effectively depressed disabled people of all kinds to the bottom of the market.  As industrial capitalism demanded a standard worker body which would conform to the needs of production, disabled persons came to be regarded as a social problem and the justification emerged for segregating individuals with impairments out of mainstream life and into a variety of institutions including workhouses, asylums, prisons, colonies and special schools .


This reminds me of the prison industrial complex; Displaced, Surplus, Unusable Bodies = commodities

When a single impaired body generates $30,000-$82,000 in annual revenues, Wall Street brokers count that body as an asset which contributes to a nursing home chain's net worth. Though transfer to nursing homes and similar institutions is almost always involuntary, and though abuse and violation of rights within such facilities is a national scandal, it is a blunt economic fact that, from the point of view of the capitalist "care" industry, disabled people are worth more to the Gross Domestic Product when occupying institutional "beds" than they are in their own homes.


What happens to the disabled residents/patients, happens to the workers too

A rejection by both disability groups and workers of the corporate "care" paradigm means a rejection of the logic that human labor and disabled people's bodies must be reduced to commodities for sale - in order that someone can make a buck. 


Russell is arguing that nursing homes are remnants of this way of factory/institutionalizing PWD. That the better alternative is independent living with paid care work. I am thinking this through and trying to understand what this also means for workers who engage in that kind of care work. Women's labor/domestic labor/caring labor has historically been undervalued. In my work environment, the nursing home sweatshop I work in provides me with benefits and healthcare, which I wont get if I were to do home healthcare. More research!

Machines and love lost

I am a body that takes care of other bodies, and what kills this body of mine, is that it is treated like a machine, too fast too rushed too susceptible to injuries.

VENTING

i had the most intense, demeaning day at work today. i was a poop cleaning machine literally. add to that, my coworker and i got slapped and smacked by our patients. the company stole my break time and even with that, i got yelled at by a nurse who treats me like some 6 y/o kid. they all treat us like we are kids, naturally lazy until probed and nagged. well, fuck that!!! the entire management at my workplace is white. the entire cna workforce is black and brown. some patients say literally racist things to us (like, "i want to shoot indians", or "go back to where you came from," or, "colored girl") while the management is liberally racist, and for all the work that we do, we are the first ones who are forced to take unpaid leave when there are vacant beds. even tho the work we do is the hardest. for all the christian lutheran faith this home was founded on, our boss makes 160,000 bucks a year while we make only 1/6th of that and they dare to tell us that they are short of $$. we used to have 3 guys doing laundry for a 120-bed facility. now we have only 1. and the guy comes 1 hour early UNPAID to get the work done. now they want to cut the CNAs to save money, and be more efficient. i am so mad. 

i hate the healthcare industrial complex. i hate commodified care, i hate fucking nurses who piss on cnas -- and the same nurses who havent done a days work of being a cna. who would cringe at poop, and yet they talk to me like they own me. i wanted to cry out of anger and desperation cos i couldnt stop. 8 hours STRAIGHT of walking, lifting, cleaning, rushing, being bossed around.  

ahhhh!!!!!!

AHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!

Welcome to my first post

My friend encouraged me to start a blog about these immense emotions and struggles I am facing at my job and how it ties into my life.
To boil it down, I am surrounded by Violence, violence, violence.
This past week, I learned about the 5 suicides of gay boys, victims of bullying. Who knows how many more queer and trans folk killed themselves this week
This past week, I learned about the torture of 3 gay Latino men in the Bronx, NY. This was an organized crime, premeditated and planned to humiliate, rape and torture.
This past week, I learned about the hunting of Afghans by the US soldiers who tried to make it seem like they were defending themselves when they were actually out hunting natives.
This past week, there was a Domestic Violence situation that happened right outside my house. A man struck down a woman who hit her head on the ground. I ran out with my friends to intervene, ready for a punch to my face.
This past week, a sorority girl was found dead outside a UW frat house. They declared it suicide though I dont believe it. At all.
This past week, I was pushed to work faster than I have ever had, like a poop-cleaning machine, like an object, brown and meaningless in a Christian nursing home.
This past week, the nurse screamed at me in front of everyone, misunderstanding and misconstruing what I was saying and treating me like a 5 year old needing discipline.
This past week, I got exhausted and slept for hours and hours and hours to try to block out the misery and pain surrounding me. To reproduce my labor. To be able to go back tomorrow to work, to make ends meet.
This past week, violence surrounded me and I felt like puke, disemboweled, disgusted and worthless.


Welcome to my diary.
Disparaged: Regard or represent as being of little worth


CNA: Nursing Assistant Certified 


Commodifed care: turning care and love into capitalist properties for the purpose of gaining $$, not for the purpose of support and relationship-building


Immigrant: Me, and 95% of my co-workers