A number of factors contributed to my decision to quit, not the least of which was a growing sense of disrespect from the management...
I learned a couple of hard lessons at Outside In. I learned that organizations which devote themselves to good work often do so at the expense of the very people who make that good work happen I learned that it takes more than a couple good conversations to build solidarity, or class-consciousness, or whatever the fuck else. And I learned that worker control is absolutely vital to a just organization. This last matter was raised in the most recent issue of No Boss News. There the author/editor Andrew McLeod asks "[W]hat is the point of worker control? As long as one is receiving the fair share of the profit's from one's work, why should it matter whether one has to deal with the stress and craziness of being in control of one's livelihood?" I wonder at this point about McLeod's own work experience, that the answer to this question might not be obvious to him.
While wages might be the clearest point at which workers are cheated, it is not always the most important issue on the job, and hardly ever the only point of contention More important than wages, so far as I am concerned, is respect. At Outside In, for example, there was not, stricly speaking, any profit for the workers to have a fair share of. Wages were a sticking point, but it would have taken a lot more than a pay raise to get me to stay. It was, in part, a lack of respect which caused me to leave, as well as a feeling of powerlessness to change frustrating circumstances created by problems with management. There are a whole range of boring but important aspects to an organization which workers benefit by controlling--safety, staffing, scheduling, disciplinary policy, budgets, and the relationship between the organization and its customer or clients, the community, the environment, etc.
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