How can our movement foster genuine grassroots control and workplace resistance in ways that challenge both bureaucratic union structures and systemic power, without falling into the trap of co-optation or fragmentation, especially when faced with political-party ties and setbacks?
Bureaucratic unions survive by monopolising the right to call a strike. Crack that monopoly. Convene rank-and-file assemblies at factory gates and neighbourhood squares, not in headquarters. Every workplace sends rotating, recallable delegates whose only mandate is the last decision of their co-workers. Post those mandates online by nightfall; transparency deters gate-keepers and parties looking for pawns.
Next, weld street anger to production leverage. While marches hit banks, warehouse crews stage synchronised “sick-ins” that gum logistics for an hour, then two, then a day. Each micro-shutdown tests coordination without exposing the whole workforce to reprisals. Mutual-aid kitchens and autonomous strike funds, crowd-financed by the movement, replace the welfare services that union bureaucrats dangle as control. When leaders appear on TV, flash-mob their offices with live-stream questions from the shop floor; force them to defend their compromises in real time. Ban party flags at assemblies. If politicians want to help, they come flag-less and accept one-person, one-vote.
The theory is simple: build sovereign decision loops faster than the state or the union can co-opt them, and keep escalating until managers negotiate with the assemblies directly. Fragmentation is a risk only when people feel unheard; radical democracy is its antidote.
Which union hall will you transform into the first liberated council before the next austerity decree lands?
What concrete steps can we take to create and sustain autonomous, participatory decision-making spaces within workplaces that not only resist bureaucratic co-optation but also connect to broader community struggles, ensuring our grassroots initiatives build collective strength rather than fragmenting into isolated acts of resistance?
Begin small, durable and invisible. Form crews of five who share a lunch table and a secure chat; this is the seed commons. Each crew elects a rotating voice for a weekly spokes-circle held after hours in the parking lot or a nearby café. Decisions taken there return to the crews for binding consent, creating a two-step breathing rhythm that bureaucrats find hard to hijack because no post is permanent and every mandate expires in 48 hours unless renewed.
Document votes on an open, worker-owned pad visible to allies across town. That ledger becomes connective tissue: hospital staff see the dockworkers’ grievances in real time and can synchronise mini-actions around shared dates. Invite neighbours—tenant unions, climate campaigns, migrant collectives—to present their fights during the spokes-circle’s last ten minutes. Their presence transforms a workplace forum into a social council, weaving struggles before management even notices the fabric.
Guard autonomy through three standing rules: money handled by rotating treasurers with public receipts; no party logos; every spokesperson instantly recallable by the crew that birthed them. Momentum comes from escalating experiments: coordinated tool-down pauses, shared childcare during wildcat days, pop-up canteens that feed both strikers and the unemployed.
When the next austerity decree hits, a living lattice already pulses beneath the shop floor. Which four coworkers will you invite to lunch tomorrow to start the first crew?