be loud, be real loud!
June 9, 2021 1:21 PM   Subscribe

“One member suggested car alarms. We researched the township’s noise ordinance laws and found out that a car alarm can go off for 15 minutes before the owner of the vehicle would be cited for a disturbance. On our breaks—every single break—we turned on our car alarms for 14 minutes and 59 seconds.”
How one local union managed to win their best contract in years.
posted by MartinWisse (71 comments total) 41 users marked this as a favorite
 
MAKE SOME NOISE
posted by NoxAeternum at 2:02 PM on June 9, 2021 [9 favorites]


This strategy has huge Untitled Goose Game energy and I LOVE IT.
posted by All hands bury the dead at 2:03 PM on June 9, 2021 [34 favorites]


Thanks for sharing this. Very inspiring and creative tactics.

Sorry to read that they did not win the right to work from home though.
posted by rpfields at 2:41 PM on June 9, 2021 [3 favorites]


I'm sure the neighbors really enjoyed that and are 100% pro-union now!

I'm surprised they didn't get a brick through the windshield.
posted by madajb at 2:45 PM on June 9, 2021 [4 favorites]


hence the need for ear trumpets
posted by StarkRoads at 2:46 PM on June 9, 2021 [9 favorites]


I'm sure the neighbors really enjoyed that and are 100% pro-union now!

Much like BLM protests, a protest that doesn't disrupt is barely a protest, and easily ignored.
posted by zabuni at 2:53 PM on June 9, 2021 [111 favorites]


Unions push for better conditions that then become standard. It's the fault of management that disruptive protests are what it takes to get humane working conditions for everyone. It's not something unions just decided to do just because they're run by The Joker or something.
posted by bleep at 3:06 PM on June 9, 2021 [82 favorites]


I'm sure the neighbors really enjoyed that and are 100% pro-union now!

assuming sincerity, no. the neighbors did not enjoy car alarms. but the car alarms did draw attention to the union's struggle. maybe the neighbors were sympathetic, or maybe they weren't. the very nature of protest will make people uncomfortable.
posted by Time To Sharpen Our Knives at 3:09 PM on June 9, 2021 [18 favorites]


I'm glad they got some of their needs addressed, apart from the working from home thing. Maybe someone should have suggested to management that people working from home are less likely to picket your office and set off alarms during break times.
posted by Joe in Australia at 3:42 PM on June 9, 2021 [6 favorites]


I feel sorry for the neighbors who had to endure this who had no connection to the issue.
posted by Bee'sWing at 3:44 PM on June 9, 2021 [2 favorites]


Do y'all complain when a protest shuts down a street, too? Seems a bit... derailing, here.
posted by sagc at 3:52 PM on June 9, 2021 [24 favorites]


i did this once. the rental next door had a full size backhoe in the yard, idling for 12hrs/day for about 10 days. i asked the landlord to at least schedule some breaks. they hung up on me. so i parked my truck in front of their office and let the alarm rip.

my effort, however, failed. cops called, i was threatened with arrest, the cruiser followed me home, and code enforcement showed up the next day - to fine me for too-tall wildflowers.
posted by j_curiouser at 3:58 PM on June 9, 2021 [19 favorites]


All of these things were being done to demand safety from a deadly virus. Personally if I were in need of the services of a social worker I'd rather that person was feeling safe and comfortable while they helped me than trying to focus through fear.
posted by bleep at 4:00 PM on June 9, 2021 [15 favorites]


I'm sure the neighbors really enjoyed that

From TFA,
This went on for 10 straight days, until neighbors called the police. “Effective? Yes!” said Coffin. “The police only had to be called one time, and the Board was ready to address our health and safety concerns and settle our contract!”
So, no, the neighbors did not enjoy the car alarms, which directly led to the union getting what they asked for, ergo a very effective strategy.
posted by eviemath at 4:01 PM on June 9, 2021 [49 favorites]


The onus shouldn't be on us to find the exact right way to get rights it should be on employers to simply provide them without argument.
posted by bleep at 4:02 PM on June 9, 2021 [36 favorites]


The New Jersey context is likely relevant both to the intransigence of their management and to the outcome of the car alarms strategy, though.
posted by eviemath at 4:04 PM on June 9, 2021 [3 favorites]


to fine me for too-tall wildflowers.
posted by j_curiouser at 6:58 PM on

I gotta know what kind of fine for that is.
posted by clavdivs at 4:05 PM on June 9, 2021


I simultaneously would like to express empathy for any neighbors with tinnitus, already-high levels of stress, or similar and think that this should have been completely unnecessary in the first place.
posted by aniola at 4:06 PM on June 9, 2021 [5 favorites]


I gotta know what kind of fine for that is.

$50/day until compliance.
posted by j_curiouser at 4:08 PM on June 9, 2021


HONK
posted by Fiasco da Gama at 4:13 PM on June 9, 2021 [3 favorites]


Your boss is an asshole, so you harass the neighbors until they call the cops, who can't do anything because you're not quite breaking the law. And then you brag about it, and the union paper hails you as heroes! The neighbors were probably assholes anyway!

That is Jersey AF.
posted by nicwolff at 4:24 PM on June 9, 2021 [5 favorites]


The point of running the car alarms was likely to get neighbors to call the police.

If someone had called sooner the board likely would have began negotiating in good faith sooner.

Blocking highway traffic, forming lines in front of businesses that are hard to cross - these tactics of frustration and inconvenience have been needed for as long as unions have existed.

I extra appreciated that the members held their own banner over the empty words of thanking heroes that had been put up as a billboard.
posted by bilabial at 4:25 PM on June 9, 2021 [29 favorites]


The neighbors also are definitely impacted by the Union struggle. Social services are necessary for communities. I may have strong objections to many “services” and be aware of iniquities in access and distribution. But making sure families have enough to eat, can access healthcare, etc is beneficial to everyone in a community.

These disturbances bring the attention of the neighbors TO the situation that needs solving by highlighting they as annoying as cat horns are, they are not life and death dangerous like social workers being unable to make food security possibly more likely.

As a general rule, these tactics do increase support for the union when union folks are available to explain - it’s the old “now that we have your attention.”

Because getting a 15 second snippet on the news or buying an ad does NOT get or hold attention in the same way.
posted by bilabial at 4:30 PM on June 9, 2021 [13 favorites]


Some of y'all have never put someone's suffering ahead of your own convenience and it shows. If you want a picket to end quickly the best thing to do is join them.
posted by Mr.Encyclopedia at 4:33 PM on June 9, 2021 [74 favorites]


Much like BLM protests, a protest that doesn't disrupt is barely a protest, and easily ignored.

Like, say, silently taking a knee during a song.
posted by ricochet biscuit at 4:45 PM on June 9, 2021 [6 favorites]


the neighbors who had to endure this who had no connection to the issue.

Literally everyone has a connection to public safety/service workers being safe to do their jobs.
posted by toodleydoodley at 4:45 PM on June 9, 2021 [42 favorites]


I don't think it is a good strategy to spread the word about a good cause.

I'm pretty sure this wasn't their first go-to choice of action either. I can't imagine they *wanted* to be sitting there with an eye on the clock setting off alarms. But when peaceful, benign, ignorable actions aren't listened to/viable; then that leaves less-peaceful/benign actions.

Don't want that? Make sure there's avenues of redress people can trust to work. This is a lesson we seem to be relearning across many fields. The alternative to "people can't get justice through the system" isn't "people roll over and give up", it's going through extrajudicial channels. The alternative to "democratic system stifles public will" isn't "then everybody gives up and submits to apartheid rule", it's people giving up on electoralism as an avenue of change.

Don't want that? Make sure preferred options exist & work & can be trusted.
posted by CrystalDave at 4:54 PM on June 9, 2021 [25 favorites]


I'm pretty sure this wasn't their first go-to choice of action either

The article says that they scaled up their actions based on management's lack of response. If management had negotiated in good faith, the car alarms wouldn't have been necessary.
posted by donpardo at 5:03 PM on June 9, 2021 [23 favorites]


lol at the idea that car alarms are terrorism or equivalent in some way to shining your high beams into a random person's window.
posted by sagc at 5:19 PM on June 9, 2021 [21 favorites]


I remember when a BLM protest shut down a highway and one of my tired coworkers expressed frustration along the lines of, "people want to get home!"

Like, right. And now the protest has your attention. Asking nicely didn't work. Now we're here. Find another way home.
posted by prefpara at 5:21 PM on June 9, 2021 [21 favorites]


The government is happy to apply this sort of leverage to South Minneapolis with helicopters.
posted by wotsac at 5:47 PM on June 9, 2021 [11 favorites]


Has anyone been able to find video or audio of the car alarms?
posted by michaelh at 6:11 PM on June 9, 2021


Nice stories. One time in Flint, annual negotiations were going on between GM and the Local. One GM guy got his car parked on the middle of 3576 Trucks lined up for Transportation. Smack dab in the middle. In the 80s' UAW union halls put up "No Foreign Cars allowed" signs. So just stencil spray over it to read NO FO.
One shop steward showed up to work and his entire work area was gone...1000 SQ feet...gone. Later, it was found that his station was upgraded, early.
today, only a few of those halls remain. It's odd you can be pro worker and neutral on Unions or pro union and neutral on workers but low and behold if your vocally anti union, that was reserved for the suburbs country club monocle set. They are sharpening up as the last strike in Flint did little and everyone knows when management is out to "reclaim" the status quo unless told differently... Restaurants are going through that now or will, clamping down.
Normalcy is packed end caps and center isle displays back and bigger, cheaper and like a maze of corn chips and Faygo.
I support this honking because it is temporal, no waiting shit out as the concerns need to be addressed RFN. There's no long game here per say.


$50/day until compliance.
posted by j_curiouser

Flower box cops. Thats incredible. To break that thin bureaucractic ribbon of compliance based on economics seems the trigger point, like Banks making billions over small errors and access fees.
posted by clavdivs at 6:16 PM on June 9, 2021 [2 favorites]


Much like BLM protests, a protest that doesn't disrupt is barely a protest, and easily ignored.

I guess. 1/6 sure wasn't ignored.

the very nature of protest will make people uncomfortable.

Mission accomplished.

Do y'all complain when a protest shuts down a street, too?

Umm... yes?

Like, right. And now the protest has your attention. Asking nicely didn't work. Now we're here. Find another way home.

It's about time we stopped making a fetish of getting attention. You don't protest for the sake of protesting. Even though people often seem to frame it that way with much enthusiasm. And that's a problem, because outsiders who may be sympathetic to your cause can sense when the protest overshadows the cause. And when that happens, it gains a level of insincerity that one would like to avoid (something that plagued Occupy Wall Street). And this assumes the cause can gain sympathy among the general public to begin with.
posted by 2N2222 at 6:21 PM on June 9, 2021 [1 favorite]


As someone from ocean county NJ, pretty much everyone affected by the noise is probably an asshole to begin with.
posted by Ferreous at 6:22 PM on June 9, 2021 [7 favorites]


But seriously half this thread is "why won't social workers die quietly?"
posted by Ferreous at 6:25 PM on June 9, 2021 [53 favorites]


Genuinely, did you read the article? How are they protesting "for the sake of protesting"?
posted by nakedmolerats at 6:31 PM on June 9, 2021 [24 favorites]


Yeah man all these protestors just virtue signaling so hard like, are their motives even pure? Totally worried about all the many people who are super, super DUPER sympathetic to the cause unless of course they are in any way inconvenienced by a protest, in which case obviously you're going to lose them, so watch out. Watch your tone. Don't make me call the tone police. Here to nip the heads off of every daisy.
posted by prefpara at 6:35 PM on June 9, 2021 [28 favorites]


TBH the less attention worthy causes have, the better. Sunlight is the worst disinfectant.
posted by prefpara at 6:37 PM on June 9, 2021 [1 favorite]


Oh, I see you were referencing protests that shut down streets, which is perhaps outside the scope of this post.
posted by nakedmolerats at 6:41 PM on June 9, 2021 [1 favorite]


If you think 15 minutes of noise, three times a day, during business hours is worse than working in life-threatening conditions...

Well, what I want to say is probably a violation of community guidelines. So I'll just say congratulations on being so insulated from danger.

I hate loud noises. I despise car alarms. They do trigger my PTSD. But those workers were trying to find a way to protect themselves, each other, and the public for and with whom they work.

They did, and I salute them.
posted by Vigilant at 6:57 PM on June 9, 2021 [43 favorites]


Do not, my friends, become addicted to attention. It will take hold of you, and you will resent its absence!
posted by Mr.Encyclopedia at 7:01 PM on June 9, 2021 [6 favorites]


I remember when a BLM protest shut down a highway and one of my tired coworkers expressed frustration along the lines of, "people want to get home!"

"When Rosa Parks had already refused once, she should have gotten up and moved to the back of the bus. She'd made her point, and some of us have to get to the post office."
posted by ricochet biscuit at 7:14 PM on June 9, 2021 [29 favorites]


2N2222, what exactly is your ideal form of protest? Clearly, you know better than the rest of us how to judge both sincerity and appropriateness. What, exactly, is your definition of a protest that doesn't get attention? Because I'd call it a failed one.
posted by sagc at 7:19 PM on June 9, 2021 [8 favorites]


News flash: protest tactics can be used by anyone, including people you don't agree with! If we block all protest tactics that could be used by the other side, we have no more protest tactics except ones available to one side and not the other. And if you're an aggrieved party who has less power than the party you're fighting, that basically means giving up all your options and rolling over.
posted by chrominance at 8:17 PM on June 9, 2021 [2 favorites]


It's about time we stopped making a fetish of getting attention. You don't protest for the sake of protesting. Even though people often seem to frame it that way with much enthusiasm.

Bad take: the point of a protest is to force those with power to negotiate instead of ignoring it and letting it blow over. As the OP demonstrates.

News flash: protest tactics can be used by anyone, including people you don't agree with!

Worse take: this assumes people are protesting about skub or anti-skub as opposed to how they think the world works, which means that tactics that reinforce that world view are unavailable to those who fundamentally disagree. There is no vast left-wing misinformation network because the left do not value authority. Right-wing protests are always going to be a little hobbled by the fundamental belief that collective action has no value over a bunch of individuals freely choosing.
posted by Merus at 9:23 PM on June 9, 2021 [5 favorites]


The privileged NIMBYism is strong in this thread.
posted by Pyrogenesis at 11:34 PM on June 9, 2021 [16 favorites]


When I was in my first job post college, I was involved in organizing a union at a white-collar company. One morning the head of my workplace came in and discovered that someone had vomited on the outside wall of her office. The exec ran around trying to find someone who would clean it up for her but we had no cleaners during the day and none of the staff agreed to help. So she had to clean it up herself, which was probably character-building. No one ever admitted to this deed. It certainly wasn't me. Yuck.

But there are yuckier things than upchuck. Like refusing to protect the lives of your employees. Using car alarms in hopes it would get management to the table was brilliant! I salute the union's creativity.
posted by Bella Donna at 3:25 AM on June 10, 2021 [7 favorites]


Before I went on maternity leave I was sub-branch union president at my workplace. This quote is interesting:
The car alarms were timed to coincide with picketing outside. Quite a few members who would not join in the picketing did turn on their alarms. It was something they could do from their desks, and it was exciting—a noisy show of strength in numbers.
(Emphasis mine)

This is the biggest issue. We have a lot of members (basically it's a form of insurance as the union will fund lawyers to represent you if needed.) But not a lot of active members. Sometimes this is apathy, overwork (why we protest..) and sometimes genuine fear. So this kind of action that shows strength of numbers is important.

I also found it interesting that, for the first time in a while, the workers made no concessions! That's pretty huge.
posted by freethefeet at 3:47 AM on June 10, 2021 [17 favorites]


My last comment: in my view, this is like taking some awful, yet technically legal means of harassment one can get away with along the lines of what you might see trending on the r/UnethicalLifeProTips subreddit any given day and applying it en masse as a group to get your way.

That's the liberal worldview in a nutshell, isn't it? Goals don't matter, context doesn't matter, anything somebody can abuse for $INSERT_EVIL_OF_CHOICE[1] is bad regardless of who uses it and why. We need to make sure everybody is always comfortable with what we do especially if they're our enemies.

[1] Except for the filibuster.
posted by MartinWisse at 4:34 AM on June 10, 2021 [9 favorites]


It's about time we stopped making a fetish of getting attention. You don't protest for the sake of protesting.

Guess who didn't read the article!
posted by MartinWisse at 4:35 AM on June 10, 2021 [13 favorites]


As someone from ocean county NJ, pretty much everyone affected by the noise is probably an asshole to begin with.

Excepting, I presume, the strikers and their clients. My Ocean County parents were neither, and I take strong exception to the insult, indeed sir, I do.

I'd like to see the actual contracts. Surprisingly difficult to find for a public document.
posted by BWA at 6:29 AM on June 10, 2021


The fact the town accepted the terms means that they could have always accepted the terms, no? So the fact that the workers *needed* to protest to get what was available is the issue. Protests are a human reaction to a system that is not engaging properly so, in sum, this worked very well.
posted by zerobyproxy at 7:40 AM on June 10, 2021 [9 favorites]


If you're all "OMG the poor neighbours, how very dare they", you are part of the problem.
posted by Omnomnom at 7:58 AM on June 10, 2021 [7 favorites]


Love that a Labor Notes article made it to the blue <3.

One thing I'm learning as I get more into union organizing (and from reading Labor Notes) is that our assumptions about how we win stuff are often wrong. Hollywood and novels might give us the idea that we win stuff by getting 'positive attention' and 'winning people over to our side'. These things are relevant, sure, and should be a constant part of our work to win more people to the side of justice and socialism. But we win big stuff, and especially we win specific demands, by building and then flexing our power. Once we're more powerful than the boss, we can win. It's that simple.

It's irrelevant if people in this thread like the tactic or don't like the tactic. What the tactic did was, it created a large amount of pressure on the boss to succumb to worker demands. Would an informational picket outside do that? No. Would a letter to the editor do that? No. Would a hashtag do that? No. These organizers looked at what tools they had (a history of losing to the boss at the negotiating table, a fearful membership, not all of whom were willing to walk outside, but who were pissed enough to stir some shit up, and a lot of cars in the parking lot that can make a lot of noise) and they used what they had to set the dominoes in motion. A few fearful public workers does not scare the boss. A neighborhood full of irate neighbors who can call the police, complain to their electeds (the bosses bosses) - that is the amount of muscle they needed to win, and they cannily used it, and they won.
posted by latkes at 8:20 AM on June 10, 2021 [43 favorites]


I'm disappointed to see so much hand-wringing about these essential workers using a relatively benign protest tactic in order to secure reasonable safety protections that they were denied for nearly the entirety of the pandemic. They didn't even stop doing their extremely important jobs, despite the daily danger they were in. Perhaps we all thought clapping for them from our windows would be sufficient?
posted by rabbitbookworm at 9:35 AM on June 10, 2021 [14 favorites]


If they'd won after presenting their petition with support from churches and social justice organizations, everyone would be patting them on the back for being "good" organizers. Unfortunately, that didn't work and they had to escalate. They didn't want to! They tried doing the "right" thing. Management didn't care and had made employees afraid to picket. The car alarms are not the problem here.
posted by momus_window at 10:27 AM on June 10, 2021 [10 favorites]


"If you're all "OMG the poor neighbours, how very dare they", you are part of the problem."

this is important enough to say again.
posted by Time To Sharpen Our Knives at 11:53 AM on June 10, 2021 [12 favorites]


I don't know what to think. I want to be all "good on the workers" and at the same time I would have been homicidal listening to the car alarms. I have enough sudden racket around here without 14 minutes 59 seconds of that multiple times a day.

I never know what to make of situations where you just have to keep escalating the situation worse and worse and more and more unreasonable, until you're freaking setting off a nuke to make your point. It scares the shit out of me, personally. But then again, I will literally do anything to not have so much as the slightest difference of opinion with anyone, so what do I know.
posted by jenfullmoon at 12:38 PM on June 10, 2021 [1 favorite]


“Members range from receptionists to social workers, and help clients access benefits including emergency housing, welfare, and food stamps.“
Did they protest in their clients’ neighborhoods?
posted by Ideefixe at 4:08 PM on June 10, 2021


Quite possibly at a minimum but I’d say extremely likely that the neighborhood(s) where protests happened is/are home to clients! People needing social assistance live in all neighborhoods! Elderly folks who need help, people with visible and invisible disabilities, families involved in the “child welfare system” are some examples of clients.

Are you under the impression that there are limitations on where people in these groups might live?
posted by bilabial at 5:47 PM on June 10, 2021 [5 favorites]


Did they protest in their clients’ neighborhoods?

Serious question. Why would they? Do you think their clients have the political power to move the bosses?

This thread is why Americans can't have nice things. Ask nicely or enjoy covid. Don't inconvenience anyone. Be grateful for the crumbs.
posted by Mavri at 8:01 PM on June 10, 2021 [9 favorites]


Look, I'm autistic. Multiple car alarms going off multiple times a day would have had me in a constant state of sensory meltdown.
And I would still have been on their side. I would have brought them out tea and biscuits (with ear protectors on).
The point of protest is to make it more trouble to go on ignoring you than to start listening. They did that very effectively. Good on them.
posted by BlueNorther at 1:39 AM on June 11, 2021 [17 favorites]


As someone from the UK, your handwringing about the impact of Union action is hilarious.

You want to inconvenience the neighbors? How about you close down public transport to a major metropolitan city? Or, how about you stop Higher Education teaching for a few days? How about public sector workers going on strike, closing schools and cancelling hospital operations?

Support the workers, not the owners.
posted by Faff at 2:30 AM on June 11, 2021 [17 favorites]


Now that I'm in grad school for community development and basically learning about leadership theories this summer, I have to say that this approach is a genius-level strategy. It's inclusive of the membership, even those who were not able to physically picket, it is nonviolent (if you don't count noise as violence), it moves people to action (even if it pissed off the neighbors), and the labor leadership was able to remain firm in the negotiation process.

AND

My husband's office space is in our living room and when we have our balcony door open, he hates when his ears are assaulted by wailing car alarms and loud idling trucks. He has often vented in front of me about them, has yelled at them, and even idly wished he could egg the loud cars/trucks. However, I think that even he would applaud this approach for how creative it was.
posted by TrishaLynn at 10:26 AM on June 11, 2021 [6 favorites]


For all the union naysayers here: I hope you enjoyed your 8-hour workday and subsequent weekend!
posted by XtinaS at 12:53 PM on June 14, 2021 [5 favorites]


Uh, unions are super important, but partly because their influence has been declining, assuming that your average person works an 8-hour day Monday through Friday is maybe not messaging that conveys "clued in about the experiences and needs of modern workers".
posted by eviemath at 12:58 PM on June 14, 2021


Still though it's always worth saying that if you think weekends and 8-hour days are good, it's good to remember that the people who won those rights were willing and able to do worse than this, and we would not have those things at all if they were not.
posted by bleep at 4:49 PM on June 14, 2021 [4 favorites]



>>Much like BLM protests, a protest that doesn't disrupt is barely a protest, and easily ignored.

>I guess. 1/6 sure wasn't ignored.


Didn't the Senate just shut down the idea of a commission to investigate 1/6? Have we seen any real progress towards any insurrectionists (and those in elected office who supported 1/6?)

I find your argument unconvincing.
posted by a non mouse, a cow herd at 7:22 PM on June 14, 2021


Union influence has been declining because of committed efforts by conservatives to squash unions, the crabs in a bucket mentality of a lot of Americans, and people who care more about car alarms than social workers dying of Covid. If people don't have 8 hour work days, they could fight to get them instead of getting mad at the people who are fighting.
posted by Mavri at 7:06 AM on June 15, 2021 [2 favorites]


There's an important messaging distinction between "Unions: the folks who brought you the 8-hour workday and the weekend" (more generic so doesn't assume a specific listener has such a job, includes the implicit appeal that if you don't have those in your job, a union could help!) and "I hope you enjoyed your 8-hour workday and subsequent weekend!" (assumes the listener I guess doesn't work in restaurants or retail or piecework or a salaried professional position where overtime is expected, etc., thus of much more limited scope and likely to make other workers feel divided from unionized workers with such benefits and alienated from unions rather than encouraging them to join a union). For context (I had hoped it was clear enough from my previous comment, but I see this is a contentious issue where misunderstandings are easy to create): I am active in my union and efforts to help other people become unionized, and quite support and appreciate the successful strategy described in the FPP article.
posted by eviemath at 7:34 AM on June 15, 2021


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