Conciliation

• As the workers’ strike enters its fourth week, local, provincial, and national actions were revealed.
• “Sobeys’ offer of a nickel raise above minimum wage is a heartless insult,” said Danny Cavanagh, the NSFL President.
• “It is shameful that these workers can’t afford to shop at the place they work,” said Debbie Richardson, the HDLC President.
• For information about the workers’ efforts to win a fair contract from Sobeys, owners of Pete’s Frootique, visit www.PetesOnStrike.ca .

• In Nigeria they are angry over the rising cost of living and in South Africa, municipal workers are striking for better wages.
• But it’s becoming increasingly difficult to build sustainable worker organisations as companies employ more people on a casual basis in the digital age.
• In our new book, Recasting Workers’ Power: Work and Inequality in the Shadow of the Digital Age, we focus on workers’ power.

Three case studies

• We found the factory workers were using a range of tools – old and new – to organise.
• But they also drew on old practices (institutional power) by taking up cases through the Commission for Conciliation, Mediation and Arbitration and the amended Labour Relations Act.
• Both offer the possibility of workers being able to get permanent jobs in the company at which they work.
• In Kampala, we found that the Amalgamated Transport and General Workers’ Union was also using new approaches to organise workers.
• Importantly, where trade unions have taken up the issues of informal workers, unions have also undergone fundamental changes.

What next?

• But it also suggests some grounds for optimism in the new and hybrid forms of organisation and the coalitions that are emerging.
• The question raised by these findings is whether these embryonic forms of worker organisation are sustainable.

• Just as you begin, a colleague sighs and shares an eye-roll with their buddy.
• This type of incivility doesn’t quite rise to the level where you can complain to human resources and expect a satisfying resolution.
• But incivility – being less severe and more difficult to prove – tends to fly under the radar.
• Most of us will experience incivility at some point at work.

Why are people rude to each other?

• Certainly such behaviour is much more likely from people with dysfunctional personality traits, especially the “dark triad” of narcissism, psychopathy and Machiavellianism.
• Incivility can therefore become a vicious spiral that turns victims and bystanders into perpetrators.
• Read more:
  What Jeremy Clarkson taught us about incivility in the workplace

Incivility in the workplace

• We’re social creatures and learn what’s expected and acceptable from those we look up to.
• Incivility is most harmful when it comes from a supervisor: someone we’re supposed to trust, who’s supposed to look after us.
• With the capacity for one individual to make life a misery for many colleagues, this leadership failure can lead to a toxic workplace culture.

Authentic leadership ‘in the trenches’

• With colleagues Stephen Teo and David Pick, I’ve surveyed 230 nurses across Australia about the leadership qualities that help reduce incivility.
• Our research shows that authentic leadership promotes workplace cultures with less incivility and better well-being.
• Such authentic leaders are aware of their own strengths and weaknesses, act on their values even under pressure, and work to understand how their leadership affects others.

What can you do?

• If this is happening to you, or others in your workplace, avoiding it won’t help you or your colleagues.
• Putting up with incivility is emotionally taxing, entrenches feelings of resentment and will likely lead to bigger conflicts down the track.
• One approach recommended by psychologists when dealing with high-conflict personalities is known as the BIFF technique: be brief, informative, friendly and firm.
• You don’t have to go at it alone either: consider inviting colleagues who can support you, and your claims.
• If your manager is the perpetrator, contact your HR department first (if your organisation has one) or else your union.

• This month the index forecasts that the lack of an agreement between the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) and the Pacific Maritime Association (PMA) is still cause for concern within the industry as West Coast ocean bookings are being impacted.
• “With volumes where they are now on the West Coast and the diversions to the East, the ILWU is not in a strong negotiation position.
• Ocean and domestic container rail ramp operations are also highlighted in the index for both the West Inland and East Inland regions.
• Visit here for a full comprehensive copy of the index with expected forecasts for the US port and rail ramps.