Working Voices UK

WORKING VOICES’ latest film documents Unite workers at Whirlpool, Peterborough, and their successful campaign to negotiate a pay deal with management. This was achieved without strike action.

This short, sharp snippet is a useful educational tool for workers in struggle. It provides a handy, step-by-step guide in six chapters for any group of workers in struggle. Indeed, the film is subtitled, “Campaigning for a decent wage increase in 6 steps.”

In particular, it shows what power workers have when they are united, as the management agreed to between 10 and 18 per cent when presented with the threat of strike action. This tells us that a strike ballot in and of itself can be a powerful weapon.

Working Voices is the creation of friends David Tarren and Ian Tasker, who have been travelling Britain since the start of the year talking to workers in struggle. Like many working-class people, they were angry at the portrayal of workers in the corporate media and decided to try to do their bit to balance the scales. The footage they are assembling in these short films is being made into a feature-length documentary.

What is admirable about this film is how much airtime is given to the workplace rep, Andy McMath, with only the odd line being heard from the film-makers.

We get to hear the story from the workers’ point of view, interspersed with chapter headings detailing the flow of events, with Rage Against the Machine’s Wake Up being used as a sound bridge between the chapters.

Andy is honest about the difficulties of getting workers to come out: the loss of pay; strike action being classed as an absence by the company; loss of the ability to accrue extra holidays for the next year, and so on. 

Andy’s candour adds to the film’s usefulness as a piece of political education, as in less than four minutes, worried workers’ fears can be assuaged, to some degree at least. Of course, most management doesn’t settle as quickly as at Whirlpool.

As readers will know, David and Ian are far from the only people developing left AV content for independent media: Double Down News, Counterfire and Novara Media and others have been doing so for quite some time now. There is a broad range available, from Marxist to social democrat.

What makes Working Voices stand out is the sole focus on workers in dispute at a time when that is where the class struggle is predominantly being played out. There has been a year-long uptake in strike action, some wins, and a (still modest) increase in union membership — in some unions, at least. David and Ian are very much where the action is. 

Here’s to more wins and more films.