Monthly Archives: September 2014

Sep 27 2014

BURNILEAKS: Workers Want Rights

Thanks to Anonymous Burner for bringing this to our attention.

 

Burning Man Worker Rights

List of Grievances

READ THIS FIRST (yes you)

my life is better than your vacationIn August 2014, members of DPW upper management, referred to as “The Council of Darkness”, were informed that the Burning Man workforce was unhappy and seeking to organize for more fair treatment.

This came as a surprise to the Council, some of whom have requested a list of issues with examples provided so they can start making improvements.

The Council promised no retaliation in response to members of the dpw airing their work related issues; a threat perceived by many, that has kept us silent. The meeting was recorded by the human resources department. Let’s move forward in full faith and present our grievances – the things we believe are wrong and should be addressed.

…[SNIP]…

This form is meant to help create a list of grievances; Issues that you can choose to either agree or disagree with and a box at the bottom of each issue for you to contribute a relevant example. The grievances with the highest amount of “agrees” will be brought to our leadership with requests and recommendations for action.

You may propose solutions to these issues. Please add them in the “solutions” section at the end of the form.

We need DPW workers, volunteers, and management to speak up with concise examples in order for our grievances to be taken seriously. Some of the instances of unfairness are self explanatory and matter of fact. But others need further example. Remember that there has been a promise, recorded by human resources at the meeting between the Council of Darkness and two members of the DPW, that no retaliation shall be pursued for serious testimonials of instances of unfair labor treatment. You do not need to name specific persons, you can explain their position in the organisation and the circumstances as well as relevant facts. Please try to maintain appropriate discretion. We genuinely believe the members of the council will keep their word to diligently address issues to the best of their ability without punishing those who speak up.

This document is for past and present DPW members only. If you are a not member of the DPW, please do not participate here. We will release a petition when the time is right, and we will need your support at that time.

Below is a tentative list of grievances from the DPW community. You can and should add your own, by submitting them on the form you will find a link to at the bottom of this document. After a final edit, we will present this document to the council.

Read these issues carefully and then use the form to voice your support for these issues being aired. There is a group of us devoted to making a final edit, taking in consideration your input, for presentation to the council.

Issues relating to common labor rights

These are things that break federal or state labor laws.

1. Workers are often paid far below minimum wage for manual labor, and do not receive overtime pay.

2. Workers often do not receive forced breaks or the correct amount of days off.  Some worked weeks straight, and were on-call at night.

3. Workers are discouraged from sharing information about pay with each other.

4. Workers are not provided with adequate safety gear or training.

5. Workers are discouraged from organizing and in some cases, intimidated in response.

Examples:

  1. I was treated with serious disdain, after presenting my ideas about organising the DPW, by a member of upper management. I felt talked down to and treated as a moron, and in the weirdest turn of events, I was then accused of being aggressive and threatening towards them.
  2. In reference to a person who was involved in organizing the DPW, I was told by a DPW manager that they would like to fire that person, but since they were not able to fire them, they would not promote them.

6. Volunteers may work for many years without reimbursement or consideration for the value of their experience.

Examples:

  1. Compensation and workload vary dramatically within DPW.  I have witnessed many people on many occasions express anger and frustration about the discrepancies.  It erodes morale.

7. Budgets and pay rates stay the same every year and are not adjusted for inflation, but workers are asked to do more every year – meaning that every year the entire paid workforce effectively receives a pay cut.

Examples:

  1. My workload increased tremendously this year and though I was given more responsibility, my pay stayed the same from last year. I was told by my manager that they simply were not given a budget that would allow an increase in my pay.
  2. Manager would like to give long term (5+) Assistant Manager pay increase.  Payroll budget actually decreased so was unable to.

8. Managers, Board members, and crew members are allowed to get away with harassment and assault of other crew members and keep their jobs

Things that go against Burning Man principles

The worst offenses are those that fly in the face of Burning Man’s Ten principles. List things that are unfair, unequal, and hypocritical here.

1.  Repeat and long-term (over three consecutive weeks of labor performed) Volunteers are not allowed to eat during the week of the event – how much money does this even save? How can you expect unpaid people with no access to a grocery store for three weeks to then provide their own food for a week?

2. Founders, many of whom no longer work in any capacity for the production of the event, have deluxe trailers, their own camp, a private gourmet kitchen, servers, and other luxuries, which are paid out of the same budget that could provide compensation to the workforce.

Issues that affect general morale and worker happiness

These are issues that relate to how special and different the experience of working DPW is and how it can be protected or improved.

1. In the decision making process of firings, because of interpersonal issues, those closest to the parties involved are not consulted enough. This results in misconceptions, and perceived poor treatment of those that are let go by people they do not know, and for reasons that may be unclear to those being fired. This in turn can cause mental distress and insecurity within the crew.

Examples:

  1. One crew member [in a managerial position] was not asked back the next year.  This “firing” was due to behavior that was unacceptable to his bosses.  However, the behavior in question was not unacceptable to the rest of DPW. Also, the nature of the behavior was such that had he been asked to change it, he could’ve.  He did a great job and enjoyed it very much.  It distresses me that this type of firing takes place when other managers are true jack-asses in their manner, yet remain in their position of power indefinitely.

2. Psychological help for DPW could be improved. Every year we see mental breakdowns and in the worst case, suicides. There could be more focus and attention paid to the mental wellness of people who sacrifice 6-10 weeks of their lives to labor very hard, for very cheap, in a very harsh environment.

3. Worker freedoms and our general ability to have fun are being eroded. More rules, regulations, and restrictions are being unfairly imposed on the DPW, decreasing morale. There seems to be a lack of understanding or consideration about how these decisions affect us.

Examples:

  1. The decision to ground all DPW vehicles for duration of the event was not only unfair and unnecessary, it was counter-productive to those of us that still have to work during the event. We have always chosen sober and responsible drivers to take a large groups on a tour of the event that we have worked ourselves into the ground for. It’s hard to want to walk or bike everywhere when you’ve been working the way we do for the amount of time we do it in. The DPW taxi program was a brilliant idea; it insured that there would be a sober driver and people would not abuse their work vehicle privileges.
  1. The last minute addition of required OSHA 10 certification was poorly timed and caused added stress to a workforce that is far from resources, short on equipment, and short on free time to devote to additional last minute requirements.

4. There is no clear and established process by which someone goes from being a volunteer to being an employee and getting paid for their work during pre event. There is no official path, and no rhyme or reason to who gets paid. If there is a rhyme or reason it seems to have a lot to do with favoritism, being liked, and knowing the right people. Many people work years volunteering during pre event without getting paid. It seems like there should be a standard path to employment and a logical and fair pay scale in pre event for repeat DPW members.

5. Considering the length of time workers spend in such a brutally harsh environment, it is surprising that more suitable housing is not provided for staff.  Some people seem to get housing (living container or trailer) provided if requested, and some do not.  Whether or not you are provided housing does not seem related to length of time on playa.  Again, the only reasoning here seems to indicate nepotism.  6 weeks or more in a tent is a long time.  Providing a dark, cool space for people to sleep would benefit the crew both physically, emotionally, and mentally.  If a worker is already able to provide their own housing, assisting with storage over the off-season would also be helpful.

Examples:

  1. Manager requested housing for Assistant Manager who was to be on playa for total of 6+ weeks.  Was refused with the statement “housing is only for mission critical employees”.

6. There have been instances of theft in the past.  For workers without a vehicle or container to lock their belongings inside of, a set of crew lockers with posted accessibility hours would be helpful, perhaps located at the Depot.

7. There seems to be a disparity in how the work day is divided.  Most crews work during the day.  If a crew member is injured on the job site in the evening, it is considered “personal time” and not covered by worker’s compensation.  However, a worker can get terminated for activity that occurred during the evening.  That seems like a double standard.  In reality camp, if someone gets into an altercation at the pub after work, they do not get fired the following day.

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Proposed Solutions

If you have ideas for how Burning Man can address any of the above issues, please submit them on the form and they will be added here.

  1. Implement a system of representation for the workers that empowers us from the bottom up (people we vote to represent us), so that we may contribute and be heard regarding the decisions that affect us.
  2. Create a clear and transparent system of pay with a standardized system of promotion in the company. Give DPW a fair wage with a clear path to sustainable employment.
  3. Create a forum for workers to express their concerns and ideas to management before the issues fester.
  4. Publish a budget online that not only includes expenditures, but also the income of Black Rock City LLC.
  5. There should be a formal procedure for hiring and firing.  There should be a clear and defined way to apply for any and all paid positions.  In order to be fired during the work season a pre-defined protocol, agreed to by DPW as well as the Council of darkness should be followed for each and every instance, regardless.  Any off season firings (pre or post) should follow a similar protocol and give written notice of the decision to all concerned parties.  A meeting with HR should be permitted if requested.

 

Sep 26 2014

The Psychology of Gifting

4 days to go!

The Guardian has a story about Gifting at Burning Man, and what it all means.

 

Source: The Guardian ; emphasis ours

 

Gifts in the desert: the psychology of Burning Man

At the Burning Man festival, kindness flourishes and generosity is widespread. Research on the psychology of human altruism helps explain why

What happens to groups of people in harsh physical environments, away from all of the trappings of modern civilization? Tales of shipwrecks, adventurers and post-apocalyptic worlds explore this question, and usually these stories do not end well (recall the descent into anarchy and violence in Lord of the Flies). The political philosopher Thomas Hobbes warned that outside of civilized society, humans are nasty brutes who would sooner step on another’s face than share scarce resources.

Burning Man is a massive weeklong public arts festival held every August in Black Rock City, Nevada. You might imagine this event, where 65,000 people converge in a blazing desert devoid of water, food or electricity, would be a recipe for disaster.

But what happens at Burning Man might surprise even the cynics. Somehow this environment brings out the very best aspects of human nature. There, kindness flourishes and generosity is widespread. How does this happen? Research on the psychology of human altruism offers some clues.

…Subtracting money from social interactions could be a key contributor to the spirit of generosity that permeates the atmosphere. An influential set of studies showed that even just thinking about money makes people less likely to help others and less interested in spending time with others. Subsequent research found that university students were more likely to cheat after seeing 7000 dollar bills than after seeing only 24. It seems that being around money brings out the worst in us.

2014 caravansicle

So what exactly is it about money that dampens our taste for generosity? One possibility is that when we participate in financial transactions, we follow different social rules than when we share our resources communally. Drawing from anthropology research, scientists James Heyman and Dan Ariely proposed that there are two types of human transactions. In monetary markets, people pay money for goods and services: imagine you own a restaurant, and your customers pay you for their meals. Meanwhile, in social markets people help and share with one another out of kindness: imagine inviting a close friend to your house for dinner.

Because these two different markets exist, people will sometimes paradoxically expend more effort for no payment at all (in a social market) than for a small payment (in a monetary market). For example, you might agree to help a friend move house as a personal favour, but if he offered to pay you £1 for your services, you would be insulted and refuse.

Since nothing is for sale at Burning Man, this means virtually all human interactions take place in social markets, where sharing and caring rule the day.

The culture of generosity that defines Burning Man doesn’t simply appear out of thin air. Participants are urged to follow the Ten Principles, a code of conduct that includes gifting, communal effort, and civic responsibility. These guidelines are published front and center in the festival programme, re-iterated in public service announcements on the festival radio station, and often pop up in conversations in the city. They are impossible to ignore.

These public declarations of the prevailing social norms likely play a central role in spurring the widespread cooperation in Black Rock City. Countless studies have shown that humans are not blind altruists, cooperating regardless of what others do, but rather are conditional cooperators: we prefer to cooperate only when we are reasonably certain that others will too. So telling people that their peers are cooperating is one of the best ways to get people to cooperate themselves. For example, hotel guests are more likely to re-use their towels if they learn that previous guests re-used their towels – even more so than if they are told that re-using towels helps the environment.

In Black Rock City, the highly visible constant stream of gift-giving not only reassures you that others are cooperating, but also motivates you to pay these favours forward. This is formally known as generalized reciprocity,and researchers have shown that paying generosity forward is most likely to evolve when communities are interdependent and contain smallsubgroups. So the social structure of Burning Man, where everyone must work together to stay safe in the harsh desert and ‘leave no trace’ environmentally, and where people are organized into small camps, provides the optimal conditions for generalized reciprocity to take hold.

Many studies have shown a link between positive mood and generosity. When we are happy we are more likely to help others. Herein lies another explanation for the prevalence of altruism at Burning Man. The general mood there is positively giddy. You might think this is merely a side effect of euphoric drugs, but in fact at any given time most people at Burning Man are not high on drugs. [REALLY? WHERE DID THEY GET THAT INFORMATION? – Ed.] Their high is entirely natural, and recent research can help explain why.

A study led by neuroscientist Robb Rutledge showed that feeling happy depends not on how well things are going in general, but instead whether things are going better than expected. In other words, pleasant surprises have a big effect on happiness – and these abound in Black Rock City. Hardly a minute goes by without some sort of weird and wonderful episode, like spotting a giant mobile octopus spouting flames from its tentacles, or encountering a man offering you a giant platter of delicious grilled steak, or stumbling into a glass dome rigged with colourful LED lights that give you the sensation of being inside a rainbow.

It’s no surprise, then, that this environment puts people in a good mood, which then boosts kindness and generosity. And it turns out the causal arrows also run in the reverse direction. Work by Elizabeth Dunn, Lara Aknin and Michael Norton has shown that being kind to others promotes happiness. So happiness increases helping, and likewise helping increases happiness, creating a positive feedback loop of warm fuzzy feelings (and their associated neurochemicals) in oneself and in others. And these natural neurochemicals could well be habit forming. Census data show that 60 percent of this year’s visitors were repeat customers.

Scientists have been studying altruism in the lab since at least the 1950s. This work has identified many factors that promote or reduce altruism. But these studies can’t tell us everything, in large part because they use highly simplified models of altruism. For example, one popular research tool is the dictator game, where one volunteer receives some money from the experimenter – say, £10 – and then must decide whether to share any of this windfall with another volunteer. Lab studies using the dictator game consistently show that people are willing to share some of the money, but a recent study observed almost no sharing whatsoever when they had people unwittingly play a real-world version of the game at a bus stop in Las Vegas. Some social scientists question whether altruism in the lab accurately reflects altruism in the real world.

Burning Man is of course radically different from the real world. Nevertheless, it’s encouraging that a lot of what we know about altruism from lab studies does seem to generalize to human behaviour in the wild. If social scientists were to build a new society designed to promote cooperation, based on evidence from lab studies, it would probably look a lot like Black Rock City. Indeed there is a growing research community whose members have been studying Burning Man for years.

The question that remains for scientists and laypeople alike is how we can translate these lessons – both from the lab and Black Rock City – back to the world we all inhabit the other 51 weeks of the year.

See original story and images at The Guardian.

Sep 26 2014
Video

The Way I Won Burning Man

If you didn’t win it, you’re doing it wrong. Check out this promo video for Hangover Pictures, by B3BR: