This post will not mention specific names, companies, technologies, or other details in order to avoid problems for the author and the workers, whose supervisors might read this. If you’re interested in learning more, please contact the author at [email protected].

Half a year ago, I graduated from university for the second time. With a bachelor’s degree in computer science, I went on to earn a master’s degree in history. At the same time, my student activism in the Independent Student Union “Direct Action” came to an end, where I had spent three eventful years. After that, a simple question arose: what should I do next, if politics isn’t supposed to end at the university gates?

That’s when I became interested in the concept of worker intelligence: it’s neither journalistic reporting nor sociological research. It’s a political practice in which an activist goes to work in order to understand working conditions, conflicts, sentiments, forms of resistance, and the points from which a political organization might emerge.

The idea isn’t new: various left-wing movements have developed a similar approach, including the Italian operaisti of the second half of the 20th century. For them, the factory was not only a place of exploitation but also a space where new forms of labor, solidarity, and conflict are born. I, in particular, was inspired by the contemporary British collectives Angry Workers and Notes from Below. Angry Workers, who worked and organized for several years in the industrial areas of West London, are beautifully summarized in the book *Class Power on Zero-Hours* 1 AngryWorkers. (2020). *Class Power on Zero-Hours*. PM Press.

I knew almost nothing about the people in factories: how they work, what they fear, what they hate, and where they resist. That’s why I chose a factory specifically, rather than, say, a coffee shop: I wanted to understand whether a modern industrial enterprise remains a place where collective power can emerge. To do this, I got a job at a large Lviv-based company with several hundred employees that produces animal feed and yeast-based food products. The reality turned out to be much more complex than I had imagined.

The Workshop, Noise, and Exhaustion

When I arrived at my section, I was struck by its scale and complexity: six floors filled with various tanks, pipes, pumps, and other machinery. It all felt like some strange, surreal dream. In contrast, the control room and administrative building looked quite ordinary and even a bit “IT-like” in their modernity. Only the constant noise—which at times exceeded 80 decibels—the heat, and the musty, ammonia-like smell kept reminding me where I was.

The work consisted mostly of packaging products, palletizing, and cleaning—despite the initial promises of a high-tech profession. Later, I was sent to take samples from containers and manually add enzymes, vitamins, and other chemicals to the products, which sometimes resembled scenes from the TV series Breaking Bad. Later, I was also assigned to the drying section: no longer just for physical labor, but also to monitor part of the drying process.

Shifts lasted 12 hours, with regular night shifts and overtime. It was physically grueling: constantly carrying boxes weighing 25 kilograms caused pain in my joints and fingers; I’d get cuts while packing; my nose would get clogged with dust; and there was a constant hum in my ears. All this “fun”—for 20,000 hryvnias a month.

How is work discipline enforced?

There weren’t many people in my workshop: up to twenty on the day shift and up to ten on the night shift. Mostly production operators, mechanics, and automation technicians. There were almost no women on the shift, except for the supervisor, Maria, and a few cleaning ladies. The workers themselves explain this by saying that a woman “can’t haul sacks,” although, according to them, there were attempts to hire women in the past.

The section supervisor plays a key role in this story, as she is the one who is set upon the workers to ensure they work the way management wants. Most labor conflicts center specifically around her. Even in the first few weeks, when I was just learning the ropes and reading up on the company, she constantly monitored every minute of my time to make sure I didn’t, God forbid, check my phone or wander off somewhere.

She’s quite honest about her authoritarian approach. For example, she openly says that overtime is “voluntary yet mandatory”; or—as early as the first few days—she informed us that in the event of a shutdown at the plant, we might be assigned to work at another one, and management would view refusal as a sign of disloyalty. When I asked out of curiosity about the consequences of such disloyalty, she replied briefly: “There will be problems with reservations.”

Watching my colleagues silently listen to Maria’s latest tirade, I recalled my activism in the independent student union. There, we constantly protested, occupied university spaces, and mobilized hundreds of people, irritating and ultimately defeating the administration. Here, however, a completely different, quiet atmosphere of discipline and humiliation prevailed.

For most employees, having a reservation is very important—something the administration knows well and uses to intimidate them. Reservations have become a fundamentally new model of control: they keep workers in a state of fear not only of being fired but also of possible mobilization. It’s somewhat reminiscent of serfdom, where a peasant could not leave the land on which he worked. The topics of the TCC and mobilization are often on everyone’s lips: workers discuss how someone was tried to be rounded up or was actually rounded up. In particular, a worker named Julian says he successfully evaded the TCC twice. However, spots for deferment are limited, and not everyone gets one. That same Julian, despite the promises, never received his deferment, which is why he eventually quit.

None of the workers like their boss; they often curse her behind her back using all sorts of words. A worker named Boris once said that she’s only there to “take away bonuses and hand out fines.” Despite this, no one openly speaks out against her. Usually, they just listen to her in silence and meekly follow her orders. It’s easier for an employee to endure a few minutes of scolding or lose a bonus than to engage in open confrontation with unpredictable consequences.

The only exception to this rule is the operator Yevgen, who regularly cut corners and clashed with Maria. For example, when she said that we received bonuses for one of the months out of the management’s goodwill rather than based on actual production figures, he asked sarcastically, “Should we give them back?” Another time, Maria issued a strange order for additional—and, in my opinion, completely unnecessary—cleaning during downtime. Yevgen then quietly muttered something along the lines of, “The circus has left, but the clowns are still here.” She immediately flew into a rage: “How can you say that?! Who do you think you’re talking to?”—and he replied, “I’ll say whatever I want—it’s my right!” Maria then really started putting pressure on the “outspoken” employee, so I decided to intervene. I pretended not to have heard the conversation and asked, “What did he say that was so bad?” Then all her anger turned on me. They took me in for a sort of “interrogation”: they tested my knowledge of the production process while also asking why I “open my mouth” and things like that. Later, Yevgen thanked me for this—albeit small—gesture of solidarity.

To this day, I still don’t understand why he behaves that way. Although, when I asked other workers about it, I heard from the operator Artem that Yevgen might speak that way because “they [the bosses] depend on us, too.” However, his individual outspokenness invariably ended in failure: explanatory notes and apologies. Perhaps that’s exactly why the rest of the workers didn’t dare to openly confront Maria.

Who are today’s workers?

Throughout my research, I tried to understand who these people I work with actually are. It’s hard to fit them into a single sociological category (and it’s even harder to fit me—with my IT degree—into that category). They vary in age: there are a few young workers under 25, most are between 25 and 40, and a few are older—40 and up. They also differ in background: although most are from the Lviv region, there are also people from neighboring regions and internally displaced persons. I think it’s important to mention that I didn’t notice any conflict between people from the “east” and those from the “west.” Their educational backgrounds also varied: among the employees were young students studying biotechnology, chemistry, pastry arts, the arts, and even one former physical education teacher.

This diversity was best embodied by Julian—a 49-year-old artist and theater director from Kharkiv, a former lecturer at one of the art universities, whom fate first led to work as a janitor and later as a camera operator, just like me. Because of his tattoos, in the eyes of some colleagues, he looked more like a former convict than an artist. After several hours on his feet, packing 20-kilogram bags on the conveyor belt, he never missed an opportunity to talk about movies, David Lynch, and music. Because of this, we quickly hit it off. Later, I even let him in on my investigative plan, hoping to find a future activist. Julian was extremely socially conscious and spoke at length about the problems at the factory: the lack of shelter, the exploitation of cheap labor, and the absence of unions. Unfortunately, as mentioned earlier, he left the company because of a scam involving his shift schedule, so I lost a potential activist.

The contrast between the generations was clearly evident in the example of two workers on my shift—Boris and Valera—with whom I had the most opportunity to talk. Boris is a 52-year-old former entrepreneur who started out as a radio technician and later built his own business, earning hundreds of thousands of dollars from his products. However, after the economic crisis of 2013–2014, he lost everything and is still paying off debts, fearing that the tax authorities might one day audit his employees’ records from a decade ago. He has a large family for whom he works, and he happily talks about his grandson. Perhaps it was his entrepreneurial experience that instilled in him a certain perfectionism: for example, while packaging, he carefully wipes down every jar.

Valera is a 20-year-old biotechnology student who lives with his parents, has a girlfriend, and for now is just dreaming about the future. He doesn’t see anything interesting for himself outside the factory: he says he’ll just end up procrastinating at home anyway, so he might as well earn some money. Next year, he plans to go abroad to study. He doesn’t have any grand ideas; he likes to enjoy simple things—eating sushi or at McDonald’s, driving around, sleeping, and sometimes having a few drinks right at his workplace. The other young workers are much like him in many ways.

These two biographies clearly illustrate the difference in life priorities. While the older generation works primarily for the sake of their families, the younger generation is more focused on material things, such as money, food, housing, a car, and pleasure. However, Boris and Valera have one thing in common: the need to earn money, since both of these things require it. That’s why most employees are interested in a higher salary, especially those who have to pay rent (for example, in my case, almost half of my salary—8,000 UAH per month—went toward rent). However, there were exceptions: those who lived with their parents weren’t looking to earn more.

Among the workers most interested in a pay raise was 45-year-old Vasya. He constantly agreed to work extra shifts. With a higher pay grade, Vasya earned a relatively large sum—30,000 hryvnias—and with overtime, up to 40,000, which is quite a lot for a former physical education teacher. I never found out exactly why he needed this money; likely, the fact that he has young children played a significant role.

Reactionary Views and Radical Practices

During breaks and lunches, I heard various opinions; I listened to and asked workers not only about wages, working conditions, and life in general, but also about broader issues. Their worldview is a realm of its own—and probably not a very pleasant one for leftists. Boris, whom I’ve already mentioned, hates Jews and is convinced that they rule the world. This is just one of many conspiracy theories prevalent among older employees. Stas, a 30-year-old former florist, is a staunch misogynist and calls his wife a “old hag,” even though he used to work in a female-dominated team. Oles, 20, is convinced that labor unions don’t work because “this isn’t the 20th century” and “we’re not miners.”

There were plenty of such “reactionary” views, and because of this, it would have been easy to become disillusioned with the workers and go home empty-handed. However, I was researching their practices rather than their beliefs, so I didn’t let it bother me too much and tried not to argue. Paradoxically, views can be very deceptive: Oles, who didn’t believe in unions, had once organized a strike at another workplace, yet at this factory he participated in negotiations with the director. The opposite was also true: one young worker called the factory a “capitalist shithole,” while he himself meekly earned money and saved up for “his own business.”

The discrepancy between views and practices is most evident in attitudes toward the war. On the one hand, everyone is a sincere patriot and loves Ukraine. On the other hand, most do not want to fight. It reaches the point of absurdity: one worker has a tattoo of the Ukrainian coat of arms on his chest, but throughout the entire war he’s been hiding from the Territorial Defense Forces and constantly cursing them. Some, like Boris, consider the war “wrong” because of dangerous modern technology and drones, while Stas holds the unusual view that “there [in Russia] are people just like us.” Ultimately, this inconsistency is hardly surprising, considering that the factory itself—despite its declarative support for Ukraine—doesn’t pay taxes via a Cypriot offshore company. 2 Editor’s note: Details regarding the non-payment are not provided due to the author’s reluctance to disclose the company’s name.

The Night Shift as a School of Sabotage

After my probationary period ended, they began assigning me to night shifts, where I learned more about how workers operate and live without the direct supervision of management—which everyone hates. It turned out that they often violated safety rules and procedures: they cleaned machinery while it was running, even though the instructions required them to shut it down first; they stole products; they slept and drank when there was less work. And all of this—except for the drinking and sleeping—happened right under the cameras!

The workers weren’t afraid of video surveillance because, first, they believed that no one reviewed the footage except in critical situations, and second, even in the event of an incident, it’s difficult to identify the culprit from the recordings. There was one instance when someone threw a metal spatula into a container of liquid product, and after a whole day of reviewing the footage, they still couldn’t find the culprit.

The spatula could have been thrown accidentally, but much more serious incidents did occur. Once, someone deliberately shut off one of the critical valves, halting production and nearly destroying an entire batch of goods worth a huge sum. This “bioterrorist”—as Maria put it—couldn’t be found either! The workers themselves didn’t know who had done it or why—but they were genuinely grateful for the chance to get some extra sleep.

During the busiest periods, the work was extremely grueling: I had to spend almost the entire night or the whole day at the conveyor belt, loading and sewing bags of products. By the second month, I’d already injured my joints, my fingers were almost constantly numb, and my sleep schedule was thrown off. Often, the production process didn’t go according to plan: emergencies arose, machinery broke down, and we had to improvise and work under constant stress. We weren’t allowed to change the production plan—otherwise, we’d lose our bonuses and get a dressing-down. It wasn’t just hard for me. Valera, the senior operator, sighed one day: “It’s okay; this shift will end someday…”

Why isn’t there a strike?

Sensing the discontent, I tried to prompt the workers to reflect by asking questions about their health, workload, burnout, and free time outside of work. I was convinced that a simple, friendly conversation—rather than a lecture—could help us better make sense of what was happening to us. And it worked. After our conversation about health, Boris refused to work with hazardous alkalis and acids, demanded a respirator when working with dust, and reported to management all the places where injuries could occur. Sometimes they ignored him, and that’s when I stepped in, emphasizing that this wasn’t just Boris’s personal problem. And it worked!

When we first met, Valera was convinced that we had to approach work with motivation and a positive attitude. He urged everyone around him to do the same. However, as we went through difficult changes and had our lunch conversations, he came to the conclusion that the best motivation is a paycheck, and he stopped “tormenting” his colleagues with calls to stay motivated.

But what united us most wasn’t even our shared problems during critical periods—it was our shared secrets. Whenever an accident happened at the plant, we’d try to hide it from management to avoid unnecessary trouble. We also worked together to take “extra” products—sometimes right under the security cameras—agreeing on who needed how much and the best way to get it out. Valera described this situation half-jokingly: “We [the workers] are always right, and the bosses are never right.” That’s quite a level of class consciousness, isn’t it?

If workers understand so clearly that management exists to “skim off bonuses” and scold, while they themselves are “always right,” then where are the union strikes and factory occupations, as used to happen in the past and still occur elsewhere? There are various answers to this question. The most obvious one is that everyday class consciousness isn’t enough—it needs to be brought in from the outside: by talking about unions, finding activists in the workplace, demanding collective bargaining, and organizing a strike. And perhaps this is indeed the right approach, one that can work, especially at critical moments: when wages go unpaid, during mass layoffs, in cases of workplace injuries, and other crises.

However, from the worker’s own perspective, this game—at least under normal conditions—isn’t worth the trouble. Young workers are often satisfied with their wages because they have no rent to pay, while older workers are “bribed” by the combination of wages and job security. A strike or any other form of collective resistance would jeopardize the advantages they currently enjoy. In other words, these proletarians aren’t quite proletarians: they have something to lose. Therefore, existing problems—harsh working conditions, exhaustion, or conflicts with management—are resolved through other means. This includes “slacking off”—doing work halfheartedly, skipping some tasks, or passing them on to the next shift—as well as individual “time theft” through being late, taking smoke breaks, dragging out lunch breaks, trips to the restroom, and so on.

There was one exception to this pattern—displaced persons who had to rent an apartment. Working for a low salary was not an option for them. They truly found themselves in a position where they had almost nothing to lose. As an activist, it was quite easy for me to befriend them: they, too, were angry and ready to take action. I even managed to invite one of them, Serhiy, to “Direct Action” events in Lviv and introduce him to local activists. However, there were only two such people in my district. The second—Yulian—as mentioned above, quit his job.

Unable to form a union, at least in the short term, I decided to nurture what was here and now. I encouraged my colleagues to argue with management the “right” way—at least not to stay on the sidelines of the conflict, which helps a lot psychologically. Once, Vasya even shook my hand and thanked me simply for liking his post on Viber during an argument with management, because I was the only one who supported him at the time. I helped out with work when someone was running late or wanted to take a nap. For older people, this was sometimes critical. In general, sleeping on the job—even in the eyes of the employees themselves, such as Boris—remained something “wrong.” So my task was also to gradually, through conversation and action, counter the employer’s logic with our own. It’s not “the one who’s tired who’s at fault,” but rather the system of work organization that drives a person to that state. Instead, our logic had to be based on mutual support, respect for the person, their work, and their fatigue.

“Slacking off” and “time theft” actually emerged a long time ago—back in the Soviet era, amid constant pressure to increase productivity and the absence of real trade unions. 3 Gorbach, D. (2019). Underground waterlines: Explaining political quiescence of Ukrainian labor unions. Focaal, 2019 (84), 33–46. https://doi.org/10.3167/fcl.2019.840103. However, today, when union activity can be conducted more freely, these methods should evolve into a conscious strategy of non-compliance and, consequently, a reduction in production quotas as a form of resistance. In fact, if we can agree on such a strategy with two or three other shifts, isn’t that the very seed of a labor union?

What should be done?

I would summarize my experience as follows: the working class has indeed changed. The modern industrial worker does not always fit the classic image of the proletarian. He may have a car, a house, family obligations, a pension plan, or a relatively stable salary. But this does not mean that exploitation has disappeared or that workers have resigned themselves to it. Dependence on wages, pension plans, and a lack of experience in collective action prevent workers from fighting for their rights. However, it is precisely under these conditions that we should look for new forms of worker resistance. Not always in strikes or revolutions, but in everyday practices of mutual aid, evading excessive control, slowing down the pace of work, and protecting one another from the arbitrariness of management. The workers at this factory aren’t very familiar with the old methods of struggle, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t fighting at all—rather, they do so in their own, less conspicuous way.

My initial expectations didn’t pan out. I had imagined extremes: either the workers had completely given up and weren’t ready to fight, or they were already ready to take to the barricades and were just waiting for the starting signal. The reality turned out to be much more nuanced. Workers’ intelligence is precisely what’s needed to dispel such misconceptions! Who knows what conditions for struggle exist at other workplaces? Until you check for yourself, you can’t say anything for certain.

The research also revealed one possible path for building a union. This isn’t about outdated “enlightenment” in the spirit of “coming in and explaining how to live properly.” That approach hardly ever works. If I had focused solely on the workers’ “reactionary views,” I would have quickly reached a dead end. Instead, active listening to colleagues, emotional support, helping out at work, and gradually becoming part of their daily lives turned out to be far more important. This means not just talking about pay or working conditions, but also taking an interest in their families, attending birthday parties, staying in touch outside of work shifts, sharing funny posts on Instagram, and generally being there for them—not just during times of conflict. It is precisely from these seemingly small details that trust is born. And on that foundation, a strong network of solidarity can emerge, capable of standing up to the arbitrariness of management.

In future efforts, I would improve two things. First, don’t go alone: it’s better to visit the workplace as a small group of at least two or three activists. Building a network of solidarity this way will be much faster and easier than going it alone. Second, I realized that one shouldn’t provoke conflicts too early, as happened in the story with Yevgen. Aside from emotional connection—which can be achieved in other ways—this accomplishes nothing, but it will prematurely turn management against you.

It is for this very purpose that my comrades—both male and female—who recently left “Direct Action” and I founded the “Workers’ Perspective” initiative. Its mission is to investigate workplaces, understand working conditions, and strengthen workers’ resistance. We want to conduct our own investigations at various workplaces, map working conditions across different sectors, and seek out and support people like Julian or Yevgen—those who are already resisting, but so far in a spontaneous and unorganized way. This article isn’t about a completed project that you can read and then forget. I hope it will inspire others to conduct their own investigations at their workplaces—whether in collaboration with “Workers’ Perspective” or on their own initiative.