E105: [TEASER] Fireside Chat – Organising in the public sector

Working Class History

Society & Culture, Education, History

5.0 • 813 Ratings

🗓️ 5 June 2025

⏱️ 23 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

This is a teaser preview of one of our Fireside Chat episodes, made exclusively for our supporters on Patreon. You can listen to the full 104-minute episode without ads and support our work at https://www.patreon.com/posts/e105-fireside-in-127749416

In this episode, we spoke to one of our hosts, John, about his experiences organising at work in the public sector, first as an agency worker, then a permanent employee, and as a member and representative of Unison, the UK’s largest public sector union.

In the full episode, we go into detail about some small local disputes and victories, and how these connected with the dynamics of large, national disputes – in particular, the public sector pensions dispute of 2011. We also talk about the relationship between union officialdom and struggles on the shopfloor.

While these experiences are specific to John, we do think many of the dynamics are pretty common, with similarities with many workplaces – especially office-based ones.

Our podcast is brought to you by our Patreon supporters. Our supporters fund our work, and in return get exclusive early access to podcast episodes, ad-free episodes, bonus episodes, free and discounted merchandise and other content. Join us or find out more at patreon.com/workingclasshistory

Acknowledgements

Thanks to our Patreon supporters for making this podcast possible. Special thanks to Jazz Hands, Fernando López Ojeda and Old Norm.
Edited by Jesse French
Our theme tune is Montaigne’s version of the classic labour movement anthem, ‘Bread and Roses’, performed by Montaigne and Nick Harriott, and mixed by Wave Racer. Download the song here, with all proceeds going to Medical Aid for Palestinians. More from Montaigne: website, Instagram, YouTube.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hi everyone. As you might know, we don't get any sort of funding from any wealthy benefactors, academic institutions, governments or political parties.
0:09.0	Our work is funded by you, our listeners and readers, on Patreon.
0:13.3	In return, our supporters on Patreon get access to exclusive content and benefits like ad-free episodes, bonus podcast episodes and two exclusive patron-only
0:22.9	podcast series, fireside chats and radical reads. So here's a little preview of our latest
0:29.1	patron-only episode. You can join us, help support our work and listen to the full episode today
0:34.6	at patreon.com slash working class history. Link in the show notes.
0:43.4	As we come marching marching in the beauty of the day. A million darkened in kitchens, a thousand mill
0:53.2	off screys, are brightened by the beauties, sun and sun discloses.
0:59.0	And the people here are seeing bread and roses, bread and roses.
1:06.0	You know, I was friendly with the fellow temps and things,
1:10.0	so we just kind of would chat about this, that and the other.
1:14.8	And so kind of started asking questions about our working conditions and pay and that sort of thing.
1:20.6	And it turned out that even though we were all temps all in the same kind of job, doing the same level of work, kind of admin clerical work, basically.
1:30.1	We were all getting completely different race of pay. So we kind of thought, well, obviously,
1:37.1	why don't we try and do something about this? So we all got together and said, well, whoever gets the
1:41.8	most pay, let's say, well, let's talk to our
1:45.0	agencies and accounts and be like, we should all be paid this, because we were all doing the same
1:49.9	works. We should get the paid the same thing. So we did that, got back to our agencies, and that
1:57.0	was successful. So it was a really small thing, but it was great for us because out of the
2:03.9	five or six of us, all of it except one got a decent pay rise out of it. So it was like a good start.
2:10.4	And then beyond that, while I was there, there was a big national public sector strike about
2:16.1	pension cuts. This was in 2006. And so, as I said,
	...

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