New Syndicalist

In this episode of Requires Improvement, Co-hosts Tom and Lauren interview Andy Byrne, one of the committee members of Hammers United, a football fan club for West Ham. Andy speaks about the similar challenges fans face to educators and trade unionists when confronted with market forces, structural change and the need for ordinary people to have control over their cultural lives as well as in the workplace. Connections are drawn between how organisers in different sectors can learn from each other about effective approaches to building inclusive supermajorities and having an impact on real life events.

Check out Hammers United's website here: hammersunited.com/

You can also find them on twitter here: mobile.twitter.com/hammersunited2?lang=en

This episode includes references to violence, sexual violence, abuse and suicide. It also contains a lot of spoilers.

This episode we talk about feminism in horror films, with discussion of some feminist horror films you could watch to survive this second, yet more horrifying, lockdown.

We explore some different feminist perspectives in horror films, including films with more realistic psychological points about women’s oppression, like the Babadook, as well as some sillier films like Teeth, with its focus on sexuality, rape, revenge and liberation. We discuss Sophie Lewis on the horrors of the patriarchal family and the search for less oppressive forms of belonging in Midsommar. We talk about how feminist themes in horror have changed and developed and what it could all mean. Finally we discuss how the new physical and mental horrors created by the fusion of life and work in the world of AI, big tech monopolies and liberal feminism can be found in Possessor, a new film by Brandon Cronenbourg, continuing in the same body-horror vein (pun intended) as father David Cronenbourg.

'The Satanic Death-Cult Is Real' by Sophie Lewis - https://communemag.com/the-satanic-death-cult-is-real/

After the chaos of another week being educators and union organisers on "Rainy Plague Island" in January 2021, the Requires Improvement team come together to discuss school closures, remote learning, the failures of certain apparent allies in various political parties and unions to stand alongside us, and finally Gavin Williamson and OFSTED's flooded inbox. Hosted by Lauren, she is joined by co-hosts Nik, Charlie, Tom and Lee. Our brains are already melted, but let's reflect together in solidarity always!

Lockdowns have prompted union organisers to look anew at technologies that help connect workers together in communication, solidarity and struggle. We have previously published, for example, reflections on how messenger and video conferencing tools can be adapted to make organising more inclusive and that these lessons should be taken forward into a post-Covid world. In this episode of Talking Shop we are joined by Henry from the exciting new initiative Strike Map UK - a digital platform that aims to publicise and amplify the activity of the trade union movement in the UK. Strike Map was set up as a tool for rank-and-file trade unionists and aspires to be a worker-controlled resource to make organising and action for workers more accessible. Henry explains what motivated him and his colleagues to set up the project, how it is adapting and changing to the challenges created by Covid and what are his aspirations for the project moving forward.

Our reboot episode of Talking Shop focuses on the dynamics of home-working (which we also published an article on earlier this year) and what demands union organisers could collectivise in this area. We also look at the recent actions of the education union NEU and their use of Section 44 to organise against the wider reopening of schools. Chris from the editorial team shares his experiences of working in schools during the pandemic and what organisation around these demands has been like on the ground.

When we started the New Syndicalist project one of our key aims was to create a platform for like-minded organisers who wanted to see unions and workplace organising play a more active role as a tool for transforming our society. We were delighted, therefore, to discover a few months ago a podcast by and for trade unionist educators focused on exactly these concerns and with the kind of "nuts-and-bolts" focus we also value at New Syndicalist. It is with pleasure, then, that we would like to welcome 'Requires Improvement' to the New Syndicalist family! 

In this simultaneously reflective and forward looking 1 year anniversary episode of Requires Improvement, the team consider the current state of the education sector given the tumultuous events of the last six months both in UK politics and society at large. They start with a focus on the Labour Party and the sacking of shadow education secretary Rebecca Long-Bailey, and then consider what deep organising and the thinking of Jane McAlevey can offer Trade Unionists in this moment. This is followed by a discussion about a surge of interest in anti-racist teaching in the wake of the Black Lives Matter protests and what decolonising the curriculum means, and concludes by discussing what we see as the dangers lurking ahead for a proposed September re-opening of schools. This episode is hosted by Anu, along with co-hosts Nik, Charlie, Tom and Lee.

Links to discussed content:

UTLA statement: www.utla.net/sites/default/file…iffboats_final.pdf

McAlevey on organic leaders and deep organising : youtu.be/bl6P_2jt_Vs

Eric Blanc article on current situation in US: www.jacobinmag.com/2020/07/coronav…eachers-strikes

Christian Cooper incident:

www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/amy-co…5?ri18n=true

www.independent.co.uk/voices/amy-coo…vJ9-s-gvDmUiNU

David Olusogah - Black and British: A Forgotten History

www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episodes/b…-forgotten-history

Akala - Oxford University Address & Q&A on Black History

youtu.be/WUtAxUQjwB4

Clips:

"Only had a few ales...get in the back of the van" www.youtube.com/watch?v=PZ7SzAm92e4

"Meat and you: Partners in Freedom"

www.youtube.com/watch?v=zR_4h5A5z_A

educationukneuteachingnationaleducationunionunionscoronaviruslabourcovidkeirstarmerdeeporganisingjanemcaleveydecolonising

As governments across the globe, including the UK, start to implement policies of "lockdown easing" in response to the Covid pandemic knowledge, communication and enforcement of health and safety protections within workplaces has become of critical importance. In particular Section 44 of the Employment Rights Act (1996) has been touted as a key right workers can use when asked to return to a workplace that they believe is unsafe. In this episode we are joined by Petros of the United Voices of the World- a grassroots trade union of low paid, migrant and precarious workers. Throughout the pandemic UVW has been at the forefront of organising in the Capital , defending members who have been denied access to furlough schemes, Personal Protective Equipment or expected to continue to work during the lockdown. We discuss some of these organising efforts, lessons learnt from lockdown organising and the strengths and limitations of Section 44 as both a legal protection and organising tool.

Sex may seem an ironic or even unfair choice of topic at the moment, but, perhaps perversely, we found it provided a good diversion from some of the horror of everyday life during Covid. In what could be our least structured podcast ever we discuss sex. Is it good or bad? What do feminists think about it? What were the feminist sex wars, and are they over or still going on? What is straight sex and what are we really doing when we do it?

Plus, find out about feminist events you can take part in online, and discover who we've put in Cancelled Corner this month.

Reading -

Undoing Sex: Against Sexual Optimism - Lies Journal: http://www.liesjournal.net/volume1-02-undoingsex.html

https://libcom.org/library/marriage-and-love-emma-goldman

"Who cares for the carers? Well, it just turns out its other carers."

Care work has, for decades, been an undervalued and under-appreciated industry in the UK. Subject to a creeping wave of privatisation and outsourcing it is now largely provided by a complex patchwork of under-regulated and often outright parasitic companies who seek to drive up revenues and drive down costs by attacking workers' pay and conditions. The result is that the majority of care workers share a common experience of poverty wages, long and unsociable hours, precarious conditions, lack of safety equipment and adequate training. These are issues that we have discussed previously in New Syndicalist - here and here - where workers disclosed the often nightmarish scenarios themselves and their clients were forced to accept as "part of the job".

The Covid pandemic has shone a spotlight on these same conditions which have had absolutely devastating and deadly consequences for the vulnerable people who depend upon these services as well as the people who support them. Gemma and Andy from our Editorial Team took this opportunity to talk to Gemma - a care worker, member of UNISON and organiser for the IWW (Industrial Workers of the World) - about how Covid has impacted their work, what their colleagues are doing to support each other during this crisis and what they see as priority areas for organising in the industry for the future.

We decided to record a special mini-episode of material girls over Skype, partly as a way to try to stay sane and connected as we live through the coronavirus pandemic.

We discuss the ways patriarchy and capitalism are bound up with our responses to coronavirus, including discussion of the disproportionate burden borne by women doing care work, and how misogyny shapes public views of nurses. We also talk about what coronavirus lockdown by household means for the nuclear family and those who live within it as well as the impact on those who don’t. We discuss the availability of medical abortion at home and the demands we should be making to reorganise the world when the pandemic is over.