What happened next was something I’ll never forget. At the time I couldn’t quite follow it, so many questions, doubts and intensities through which I viewed the situation. Each person who spoke, with or without translation, doubled down on their commitment to this plan and their desire to win these demands at all costs. These three demands were repeated again and again, and each time they seemed more possible, more obvious, more like something we all must do. Something felt clear to me, the mentor was a voice we had been waiting for. I’m not sure I’d ever had a feeling quite like that, a feeling, almost overwhelming, that there was actually strength in numbers. That there were enough of us here in the dust to win. After everyone had their say (we must have spoken for several hours) I found myself walking along the outer edge of the field with the mentor. We were both supercharged, I could sense this energy coming from her and between us. But as we continued to walk in silence, she was also growing pensive, lost in thought, as if the intensity of her earlier speech was now draining away, leaving her with nothing. I was about to ask if she was all right when she started.
— That didn’t go how I thought.
— How did you think it would go?
— I thought there would be more resistance. That they’d resist more.
I considered what she was saying. When I first stumbled upon the field, when I first proposed the idea of a union to avoid having to explain how I ended up here, I was expecting to be told it was impossible, a stupid idea, that I should go back where I came from and keep my stupid ideas to myself. But almost the opposite had happened. People here were ready for the gust of fresh air that our arrival represented, ready for a fight, to stand up for themselves. I wondered if it had anything to do with something I had felt since arriving, something I was never quite able to put into words. I now found myself wondering if this wordless feeling had to do with having nothing left to lose. A cliché that here in the fields felt worse than true.
— You wanted them to resist.
— I didn’t want anyone to do anything. I wanted to test the waters. See what was possible. And right away I learned something that frightens me. The waters are favourable. Just about anything is possible.
— Why does that frighten you?
— I don’t actually think we can win.
— Why not? What else do we need?
— I keep asking myself what my husband would do. But he’s dead. And he never had to deal with anything like this. We used to strategize together. I always felt I knew just as much as he did. Perhaps that’s why I came to find you. I wanted to put that feeling to the test. I wanted my chance.
— What would he have done?
— We need a war chest. We need resources. We need food and water, enough for the strike to last months, enough for as long as it lasts. Do you know anyone?
It was then I told her about Emmett. I didn’t tell her everything. I sketched in the details as lightly as possible. I tried to stay focused on the fact that I was planning to call him, that he was someone who wanted to help (which might have been a lie, but I was hoping it was true). She was also brainstorming who she could call, friends and colleagues of her husband. People who might send food and water, but also who might come here, fight alongside us. She was listing names as we walked. Her husband had had many friends.
1.
Everyone is replaceable. If one million workers go on strike, we get rid of them and find one million more. Some of those workers might find new jobs, end up all right, while others might fall on hard times, have difficulty making ends meet, starve or even die. But we all die sooner or later. Of course, if they replace me, it releases the golden parachute and nothing in my material life suffers or changes. But apart from that slight difference it’s the same. They can replace one million workers just as easily as they can replace me; no matter how talented, qualified or indispensable I think I might be, there’s always someone else who can do the job.
These questions of downsizing seem to be filling my mind because, here on the flight, I’ve been reading about strikes. It seems we are living in a new golden age of strikes, a new wave of divisions and subdivisions that suddenly feel it’s their God-given right to unionize. The report is awash with statistics: ten years ago there were seventy-two strikes, five years ago one hundred and twenty-eight, last year, which is the focus of the report, there were apparently two hundred and thirty-six. I sit on the plane reading all this, trying to understand what it means, wondering whether I should simply put the report down and return to one of the poetry books.
I stare at the report, at page after page of charts and statistics, and think to myself that it is a document about a zeitgeist. I know enough about labour history to know that workers strike when they have good enough reason to believe they can win something: more money or better conditions. What is it in the air that once again makes those bastards believe they can win? What I notice most is the degree to which these work stoppages appear to cover more and more distance over time. There is a map on page eighty-two of the report, each dot representing an instance of labour trouble that occurred over the past year, and the dots seem so evenly spread out across the surface of the globe. What we have traditionally done, moving production from one part of the world to another in order to avoid labour unrest, no longer feels as convenient.
Considering how many divisions actually fall within the auspices of the organization, two hundred and thirty-six strikes actually aren’t that many. In the conclusion of the report, I learn that one hundred and fifty of them were put down without any union formation, and one hundred of those without making any salary or workplace concessions. So last year there were in fact only eighty-six successful strikes, a pittance, and yet still the zeitgeist so clearly seems to be saying: we believe we can win. Last year it was two hundred and thirty-six. In five years will it be five hundred, or in ten years a thousand? What if all the divisions and subdivisions manage to come together and strike at the same time? This seems impossible, but sitting here on this intercontinental flight, perhaps feeling more than a little paranoid, I have the strange feeling that nothing is impossible.
Then I turn the question around and come at it from another angle. The organization as a whole makes a certain margin of profit. If we give more to every single worker in every single division, this margin of profit would be reduced. But how much could it be reduced before the organization was no longer profitable? What’s more, if on top of this you were to take a small percentage of the salaries of all upper management, such as myself, let’s say three or four per cent, and redistribute it among the workers, to what extent would this gesture ameliorate their protests or concerns? Clearly there was almost infinite room to play, cat and mouse or any other game we felt up for. Every zeitgeist is perhaps also a game, and this game is being played on a field we could clearly call our own. I wondered if this might be my road back into the limelight: the great dealmaker, the negotiator, riding the crest of the zeitgeist towards a new era of labour-management relations. But it was also a dangerous game, showing my throat to more reactionary forces within the organization who want little more than the most possible work for the lowest dollar. If they have a chance to do me in, there is no question they will not hesitate for a moment.
I’m still thinking about what that Italian kid said about virtuosity, that his generation are virtuosos who will use their virtuosity to reorganize the means of production to their greatest benefit. If this can even be considered a legitimate threat, one possible recourse might be to simply make them an offer they can’t refuse. I worry I’m becoming desperate, going soft, willing to consider any option that might fully reenergize my drifting reputation. I put down the report and pick up one of the poetry books. Flipping absentmindedly through the pages, I have this feeling I often have trying to read poetry: all these poets are the same. When dealing with something one apparently doesn’t want to actually deal with, this is always the easiest way out: it’s all the same. They all look the same, they all say the same things, they are a cliché of a self-parody of a cliché. All the poets searching for some clear, striking phrase or image that will more precisely reflect their position or some aspect of their lives. All the strikers demanding more money, more rights, more consumer goods, more dignity. I stare at the pages of poetry but feel distracted, unable to focus.