PART V: Fighting Outsourcing and Precarious Work: The First Steps

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Outsourcing has emerged as one of the key management strategies for weakening and undermining union strength. It takes different forms in different countries and even within single plants. To tackle the problem effectively, you need to carefully plan your strategy according to your local situation. This includes your own strengths and weaknesses and your members’ needs and readiness to act, as well as your own managements’ attitude, strategy and plans. This section can only offer ideas on first steps if your union is starting to take up the problem. More advanced strategies will have to be developed in the course of your own activities. OUTSOURCING AND CASUALIZATION IN THE FOOD AND BEVERAGE INDUSTRY 49
50 PART V Fighting Outsourcing and Precarious Work: The First Steps Why fight it? convincing members and colleagues Outsourcing is a complex process. Its negative consequences are not always immediately obvious. When they do become visible, the process is often well advanced. Union leaders must explain to their members and activists why this is an urgent issue requiring collective action. Management everywhere has a common stock of arguments to justify outsourcing and casual labour. Convincing people of the need for action means taking on the arguments that management uses to justify these practices. They have become so widespread that you may even hear them echoed by those you work with when you raise the issue! Here are some of the main arguments unions typically meet with and how you might respond. “It’s none of your business” Management claims it is their prerogative to hire and use people in any way they see fit, and tells us it’s not our business. They can, and do, say the same about wages, work organization, gender policy, and virtually everything which affects workers. It IS our business, because it affects the job security, working conditions and union organization of everyone at our workplace! “It’s not part of our core business” When work is outsourced, we’re typically told, “This is just about the canteen, it’s not part of our core business.” Later, we hear the same about cleaners, and security, and maintenance. Tomorrow it could be the warehouse, or the drivers, or loaders, or sales, or office staff, or packaging … The truth is that in practice there are no limits. All work can and will be made more precarious if unions don’t stop it through organization and negotiation. In many workplaces the process has already penetrated into “core production” – workers find themselves working on the same production line, but under different conditions. Many companies in the food and beverage sector are implementing continuous restructuring as part of the drive for greater flexibility. Under continuous restructuring, the “core” is constantly changing. The real question we need to ask is whether the company could function without all those services and tasks that are described as “auxiliary” or “not core business”. Imagine your workplace without a canteen, without cleaners, IUF
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PART V: Fighting Outsourcing and Precarious Work: The First Steps

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