In the course of their work, every shop unit will find itself in need of some kind of publication. Whether it is a single sheet that can be easily distributed throughout a large warehouse or a trimesterly zine for educators, every labor organization needs a central organ for disseminating information about conditions, proposing plans for united action, and discussing important political and economic developments. The purpose of this guide is to establish basic principles that the writers should adhere to in the course of their work.

The central problem of writing a shop paper is leaving the least room possible for opportunist distortions while reaching the widest possible audience. Many labor writers think only in terms of the latter, and consequently, their writing ends up an extremely vague sloganeering mess of labor-liberal and revolutionary terms. It is absolutely critical to establish a central thesis ahead of time. What is the point of the article? Why should any worker read it? The struggle against opportunism is the lifeblood of the shop paper. It is not an optional feature nor can it be an afterthought when writing for a shop paper. The editorial line must be for the proletariat and against the bourgeoisie and in particular against the representatives of the bourgeoisie within the ranks of the workers.

Specificity, specificity, specificity: this cannot be emphasized enough. This is why vague terms like “the bosses” should be generally avoided or omitted. It might seem like a no-brainer to rail against “the bosses” since everyone hates their boss, but such phrases are very unclear and can confuse or hinder attempts to build unity and political or class consciousness. Are you talking about the union bosses or company management? Are you talking about low-level managers, who are implementing corporate policy, or middle and corporate managers who are responsible for making it? It must also be noted that “the masses”, “the workers” and “proletarians/proletariat” are not synonymous. There is a great amount of diversity among all the wage earners and writers must be absolutely clear who they are talking about. An educated wage earner at an insurance company who makes 70k a year from the insurance racket sitting at a desk is not equal to a warehouse worker making less than half of that loading thousands of pounds an hour in sweatshop conditions–even if they are both technically “workers”. Where there are divisions, they should be noted, if there is grounds for unity across these divisions, they too should be noted. For instance, at UPS the package car and trailer drivers make way more money and are treated way better by the union and management than the inside workers. But there are legitimate grievances they have that make unity a possibility. (But not an inevitability!) The writer should always and everywhere defend and promote the interests of the “deepest and most profound” sections of the workers and write from their point of view. If your shop paper or shop unit does not currently have any members or contributors from the most basic and exploited divisions of your workplace, then special attention should be paid into making contact with, listening to, and integrating and building up workers from those sections, as well as workers who represent other oppressed or marginalized groups like women workers, immigrant workers, non-white workers, gay or trans-workers, etc. As a general rule, only the proletarians will be consistently revolutionary and only their interests will consistently coincide with those of the long term interests of the general working masses.

This means when privileged sections of the workers and even the petty bourgeoisie’s problems are dealt with–and they should be when they are relevant, many of the big warehouses and industrial plants have contingents of IT professionals and mechanics–the solutions offered must be compatible with the aims of the mass of workers. This means, for example, technological advances like automation and AI should not be attacked in principle as always bad. Instead, it must be pointed out that technological advancement has the potential to either lighten the burden of the proletarians, or be used to implement mass layoffs and drive the privileged workers down into the proletariat and that the well-being of both proletarians and the petty bourgeoisie depends on united struggle to control how such technology is implemented. Reactionary schemes, conspiracy theories, and Luddism must be exposed for their theoretical fraudulence (especially where they are popular among the workers) and a legitimate alternative provided.

Details must be included, sources listed, etc. For instance, don’t say “the union contract is bad.” Explain how a particular article empowers management and in what way. Name laws, specific people and organizations, dates, etc. Specific dollar amounts to executives and political parties, agreements, government committees, etc, all these are important details. Do not overlook the minutiae–the devil is in the details and the company wants its critics to be amateurish in their analysis. Such amateurishness must be avoided, and if this means poring over dry corporate documents and legal cases, then it must be done. At the same time, don’t get lost in these: it is important to compare the formal legal standards and agreements to their actual implementation, especially in the context of state union contracts, which are frequently “understood” by the company and union to be worthless or even completely opposite from what they say.

Overly rosy language and especially metaphors should be avoided if they are for purely literary purposes. On the other hand, if a direct comparison can simplify the issue, then do so. (For instance, many Teamsters compare their locals to an “old boys club”, since it really only functions for people in the right social circle.)

Scientific analysis: subjectivism must be avoided at all costs. Do not simply say “it’s a sellout contract”. Explain in the context of market trends, corporate history, previous union agreements, recent revenue/profits, inflation, etc why it is objectively a sellout contract. Quarterly earnings reports for public companies are a goldmine for shop papers, especially the company’s own analysis of its labor relations. These and any public statements from corporate should be thoroughly dissected.

Calls to action: way too often people think being revolutionary or an organizer is about picking an action and simply telling the workers to do it. This ties in to the problem of subjectivism and specificity. A specific problem should be identified, and it must be clearly demonstrated what particular action is best able to solve it and why, and most importantly, explain what the obstacles are and how they can be overcome. Most state union contracts explicitly ban slowdowns, strikes, etc during the duration of a given contract and will have clauses saying the union is not responsible for such actions. There are laws against insubordination at work. If you issue a call to action without explaining these things, and building the unity and organizational basis among the workers that would be necessary for such actions to succeed, that is agent provocateur-ism and adventurism. At the same time, never issuing a call to action amounts to rightism. It fosters nihilism insofar as it fails to put forward an alternative vision and promotes the idea that there is no way out other than to accept the status quo for the foreseeable future. Ideally, you should gather the problems of the workers, make a coherent plan and explain it in the shop paper, then follow up with the shop organization to see if your organization has been successful in building a solid embryo of workers interested in implementing the plan. The shop paper and the shop floor organization mutually reinforce each other in this way. You should be constantly fighting the theories of easy victory and inevitable defeat. Also, make sure the call to action is actually aimed at the readers. For instance, a particular Trotskyist group which had pretenses about organizing truckers, issued the slogans “nationalize Yellow trucking” and “nationalize the railroads”. Such a call to action is doubly wrong. In our current pre-revolutionary conditions, it is wrong to call for the means of production to be handed directly to the old bourgeois state, and it is wrong to tell the workers who currently have no say in state bureaucratic affairs to nationalize anything under the control and leadership of reactionary capitalist governments rather than their own leadership and the leadership of a revolutionary proletarian state. Such a call was wrong in that it objectively did not serve the interests of the workers and also objectively could not be carried out by them anyway—unsurprisingly, the call was completely ignored.

Clarity, specificity, objectivity, and correct class politics; these are the defining features of a well-written shop paper. Scientific investigation outside the shop floor and social investigation on the shop floor are key to producing quality writing befitting of a shop paper. The shop paper should echo the innermost feelings of the workers and elaborate their interests on a firmly scientific basis. The slogan of the class-conscious writers must be, “From the masses, to the masses!”