ORGANIZING ROCKS
When we first arrived in Kiruna, early 2015, the downturn of the market was making its impact, inside and outside the gates. The mood in general seemed rather low. This song, “Stänger alla kranar” (in Swedish, roughly translated into “Closing all taps”), came out of how different people talked about the on-going and planned cost reductions in the company, but ended in a bricolage of more than just this. So, no one-liner about what it is about.
The general trend in the mining industry is to increase the use of contractors in order to be more flexible, adaptable and cost-effective. Whether this is achieved can be debated, but the trend is clear and although the markets for iron ore (the Kiruna case) and uranium (the McArthur River/Key Lake case) are different, they are both nevertheless highly influenced by ‘boom and bust’, ‘feast and famine’. Walking the fine line between stability and adaptability is highlighted in northern Saskatchewan, where companies like Cameco has to engage local firms and workers as part of the regional agreements (written about earlier on this blog). Interestingly, in some of the conversations, this is lifted as a competitive advantage from both sides of the table, and although more complex than this, the arguments boil down to ‘local knowledge’ and to ‘loyalty’. The first quote below is from a contractor owned by an indigenous band from the north and the second quote is from a manager at Cameco.
companies like Cameco learn that we can deliver and can count on our loyalty to mobilise quickly and to do it quickly as well because we understand what it takes to get it up there. We get to know the local people, it’s easier to identify with the locals. So after a period of time companies like ours starting to have a clear returning in investment back to Cameco.
I would say that the work we do with the contractors has become more stable over the years because we have pushed to have more northern content in our contracts, for workers as well. I think things like that have made Cameco more stable, has made it more stable for the contractors.
Next storyteller is a contractor who (just as many of the other contractors we’ve talked) used to work for LKAB. The quotes below are from the part of our conversation where this person reflects on how a shifting balance between using the mining company’s own employees and contractors impact LKAB’s performance.
– I think the easiest way for LKAB is to cut away more parts (of the operations), to sell out parts and place them with contractors. That’s the easiest way to turn the ship around. […]
– Is there any risk (for LKAB) with such a strategy?
– Yes, you loose the in-house competence and the long-term perspective. And if you let go of too much you risk ending up in that conflict again, “whose responsibility is this?”. So, it has to be clear that LKAB still is the client, whereas the performer could be somebody else.
Next storyteller is a man from Kiruna who have worked a long time above ground for the company, LKAB. During our conversation, the new CEO, Jan Moström, is brought up.
It’s turbulent because Moström, here he comes and, listen now, this is brilliant, because Moström is known as “The Butcher”, but no one has felt any butchering. I use to say in the sauna after [work], I use to say that ‘boys, have you noticed that Moström is a butcher?’. He just waves and cuts away all fat. He’s very good at facts, ‘this is how we’re doing’ or ‘this is how it looks’, and then just cuts away. No one points with the whole hand and says “Bloody idiots!”. He is very professional.
How do you notice this?
But that’s what I’m saying. I do notice it. People disappear, but no necessary people have disappeared. The best ones are still here. […]
If you were Moström and look at your own workplace, what would you do?
I wouldn’t not kick the poor man I just talked about [a man who ‘made sure the coffee pot was warm’]. I would ask what they would like to do. Ask where they would fit in. […] I would start with the weakest. Lets put it this way, you’re not stronger than the weakest link in the band.
On March 18, local newspapers report that two workers at LKAB:s iron ore mine in Malmberget (125 km from Kiruna) have been caught furnishing a secret sleeping room at work. On March 26, they are fired. Two other workers chose to resign.
On March 20, we arrive in Kiruna, and the first person we meet is the man delivering the rental car. He is born and raised in Kiruna, and used to work in the Kiruna mine when he was younger. About miners sleeping at work, also in the Kiruna mine, he just laugh: “Everybody knows!”.
Yes, we’ve also heard this from our many conversations with workers, managers and others in Kiruna, although we must state that we have never seen one of these sleeping spaces ourselves. We have, however, met those who said that they can point such a space out to us. Reactions in social media also reveal that “sleepworkers” seems to be a well-known phenomenon, although this is questioned by the company’s information manager as a way of talking without necessarily knowing that this phenomenon exists in practice.
Both a union representative and the company’s information manager state that sleeping during formal breaks is okay, but not when you’re supposed to work. Perhaps we have to be self-critical, the information manager adds, how this particular case could be allowed to happen.
Several questions are actualized by this event. Assuming that sleeping at work, to a large or small extent, is a real phenomenon,
Underground workers we’ve met talk about the importance of a good work morale and that those workers who work should be at work, nobody else (see the first video with Ronja from October 22, 2015, and the one with Göran from October 15, 2015, for example). We recently heard from an underground worker that they now work harder than ever in order to handle the pressure to increase productivity. In Swedish: “Vi sliter som aldrig förr”. But still, some workers are not.
Swedish sociologist Roland Paulsen, in his book “Empty labor” (Cambridge University Press, 2014), states that: ”sleeping employees represent a theoretical challenge to the supposed rationality of wage labor” (xiii). Empty labor, as “everything you do at work that is not your work” (p 5), is not only very common but also very under-researched, particularly if we see beyond collective ideas about idleness and workplace resistance and zoom in on how and why individuals manage to not work at work. After all, empty labor “can be a trap; it can be a way of coping, a personal pleasure, or a type of sabotage, depending on the organizational context and the subjective intent of the employee” (p 41).
Does sleepworking imply that organizational rationality has to be re-thought, so as to make room for (but not necessarily accept) sleepworking as part of a rational phenomena of organizations, or does it infer a stronger focus to defend the current, dominant discourse of organizational rationality? We lean towards the former (and towards studies – and others – that take such a perspective seriously).
A video interview on work and mining with professor Jan Johansson, Luleå, Sweden (11 minutes):
Load up north is an annual fair. What makes it a bit unique, the organizer states, is that the fair also targets recruitment, not only the exhibition of machines and tools.
We’re in Boden, Johan’s hometown, so he stops by the fair on August 27 and 28. He meets with a supplier we know very well by now, listens to keynotes arranged by Boden municipality, such as the ones by Peter Erkki and Tage Lundin from LKAB, Anders Sundström (chairman of the board for Swedbank and Kooperativa Förbundet), Inger Edlund Pedersen from Norrbotten Chamber of Commerce, Hans Wahlqvist from Mobilaris (providing solutions for how to track people and vehicles in the mine), and Johan Torgerstad from PON CAT (as in Caterpillar).
The mining industry is the perhaps most salient industry during the fair, at least when judging from the equipment exhibited and how the ‘talk of the fair’ goes. Overall, there’s optimism regarding the future of the mining industry in the county, although the iron ore price is low and will most likely remain on this level for a while. This is how a company such as LKAB motivates the need to lower the cost for each tonne of iron ore. Peter Erkki talks about investments in the logistic chain to accomodate more large-scale transports by rail and boat. Head of purchasing, Tage Lundin, talks about the re-negotiating of contracts with suppliers and the establishment of a new supplier manual, all in the context of the need to cut costs for LKAB. Ears are tense in the audience.
On recruitment, there are several private staffing agencies as well as a local high school present at the fair (the keynote by Torgerstad addresses PON CAT’s cooperation with the high school), profiling how their operations addresses skills needed in the mining industry (the most common skill has to do with driving large vehicles). One of the largest suppliers to LKAB is BDX and this company even shares a showcase with the staffing agency Adecco in the indoor section of the fair. It becomes clear that these agencies are important to our project, seemingly playing an important part in the labor process in the Kiruna mine.
The perhaps most surprising showcase at the fair is the one shared by the public libraries in the county of Norrbotten. In the fair magazine, a librarian is quoted saying: “The idea behind having a showcase at a machine fair is to inform and show some of the library’s range in order to arouse interest and promote reading, particularly among men. [—] We hope to inspire more men to become reading role models.”
Is there something special with the comradeship in labour processes in which members perform dangerous tasks, such as in underground mines? We believe so.
Ever since Henri Fayol’s famous book on mining and management (at that time called administration) from the early 20th century, the esprit de corps seems to be strong in mining companies. In those times the risks were, of course, higher (many examples from Karl Marx “Capital” are drawn from mining). But, is this valid today in the Kiruna mine, with fewer death accidents (over a decade since the last death accident), in an organization that emphasizes health and safety, and that are in the technological frontier to replace human hands with machines? With our scientific positioning (as narratologists), we cannot claim an objective, fact-based, answer to this, but we can listen and ask about stories told in the Kiruna mine.
From what we understand there seems to be a certain comradeship that resembles Fayol’s esprit the corpse. We take part in conversations revealing a certain kind of morale that enables workers to work for organizational goals (be efficient in getting the stones up to the works) despite harsh, back-breaking and sometimes rather dangerous work conditions. So we hear about how workers regularly take contact with each other over the com-radio to ensure that they are alright, or how they, after a seven-day shift, express their gratitude to each other for staying alive another week. We find ourselves taking part in conversations that reveal that underground mine workers have a – in their words – sense of belonging to a family (“a second family”).
There is also another, and in a sense a more intimate, story to be told. That of the kind of intimacy in conversations that workers seems to share with each others. They talk about things that are hard to talk about with family and spouses (that is, their primary family). A common story is sex in general, but sexual intimacy to partners in particular. But as one worker put it, this intimacy is, of course, not okay with everyone. Some workers keep a distance, but most of them seem to participate in intimate discussions – boys as well as girls, men and women. This kind of intimate discussions are commonly performed in collective settings, again over the com-radio.
We also hear about that work groups are asked to really consider what is okay to discuss over the com-radio. But it goes on, at least among workers sharing the same space, time and situations. So, not only is there a comradeship, or esprit de corpse, that enables workers with dangerous jobs to carry on to fulfill organizational goals, but there seems to be a spillover to the private sphere: Storytelling at work is important for workers’ private lives, that is outside work, and even encompass such intimate areas as sex and sexual relationships. We have a feeling that this also has to do with the harsh, back-breaking and rather dangerous work conditions, but also with the spatial fact that these people work underground. “What is said underground stays underground”, as one worker put it.
A new song from Organizing Rocks called Learning to labour. No videos, no pictures this time. Just the song (for lyrics, scroll down on this page). To listen, click here
Vocals: Erik Björkén
Backing vocals: Molly and Tommy Jensen
Music and instruments (except drum-loops): Tommy Jensen
Lyrics: Johan Sandström
Learning to labour
Worker, why do you sleep
Why do you slumber so deep
Time to rise, rise to work
You must labour to learn
Worker, you’re not a fool
Making out, behind the tool
Don’t fear the machine, just be lean
No ignorance here
The will to learn, learning to labour
The need to earn, to sell your power
The will to learn, learning to labour
The story is old, sent from the tower
Turn it around, labouring to learn
Reveal it all, the Tony Huzzard song
Some say you’re lazy by nature
They’re wrong, there’s a mirror on the wall
Worker, I see your true creature
Follow me and stand tall
Stories made, stories told
This one you might want to know
No need to hide, no need to pretend
I’m capital’s best friend
The will to learn, learning to labour
The need to earn, to sell your power
The will to learn, learning to labour
The story is old, sent from the tower
Turn it around, labouring to learn
Reveal it all, the Tony Huzzard song
Iron ore price down = profitmargins down = productivity up = efficiency up = excavation up = specialization up = ‘cutting programs’ up = number of staff down = learning down = esprit de corps down.
As a consequence of our talks to different people in and around Kiruna, this equation has been spinning in our minds. Then all of a sudden (at least for us) the CEO of LKAB, Lars-Eric Aaro, was fired! Here is the explanation given by the chairman of the board, Sten Jakobsson (translated from Dagens Industri, 2015-05-28):
“Six, seven months ago the market price was 70 percent higher. We are now in a phase where we have to use every ounce of productivity and cost efficiency to keep us afloat. Lars-Eric Aaro was good at markets, customer relations and brand management. He has also worked with cost savings, but we need to go a step further.”
The new CEO is Jan Moström, from another Swedish mining company, Boliden. A leading columnist in the largest daily newspaper in the county of Norrbotten, NSD, states that dark times now await LKAB and he gives the new CEO a nickname: “The Butcher from Boliden”.
The voice of a young Bob Dylan echoes – North Country Blues