After attending today's Organizing For Power memorial to mark the passing of lead trainer Jane McAlevey, I decided to put my graduation certificate online as a little personal tribute and share some memories and hard-earned lessons of my own.

I discovered Jane's work at an organizer training event hosted by Vänsterpartiet Malmö, and by the time the course began I'd already read all her books. Getting to participate in a "fishbowl" exercise with her during one of the training sessions is a deeply cherished memory.

One of my few certainties about the Spotify campaign is that every aspect of it that fell short of my expectations can be understood in terms of this methodology and all the situations where enacting it would have produced better outcomes. It's a lesson I take every opportunity I get to pass on to other fledgling organizers.

Jane's belief in workers and their ability to win remains contagious beyond her death. The anecdotes at today's memoral about her commitment to raising up those around her filled me with determination of my own. At Spotify, you normally couldn't get the bosses to shut up about the importance of a "growth mindset". I still remember how jarring it felt in the captive audience meetings when they flipped that around 180 degrees to explain that the inexperience of the union representatives there would permanently hinder their everyday change management work if a union deal imposed an obligation to negotiate under MBL § 11. I take every opportunity I get to remind my former colleagues that they don't have to only have a growth mindset when the bosses tell them to. And it's a great inoculation topic that I always recommend organizers elsewhere not to skip over.

Jane's work rate and sense of urgency was almost legendary. I like Ethan Earle's take on this most of all.

For foes and friends alike, Jane had something of a magical aura about her. That said, she always sought to shed that perception. Everything she did was the result of hard work and practice — and all of it can be reproduced by those willing to put in the time that she did.

So, read her books and take her trainings, but not to deify her — nothing could be further from her mission. Take them so that you can put into practice the same methods that Jane McAlevey spent a lifetime practicing, modelling, and instilling in others. And then, as she would so often say at the end of a session: Go forth and win!

In truth, I've noticed a similar intensity of spirit in just about everyone I've met in the labour movement. And if you're in tech, given that you're surviving this industry's treadmill of eternal retraining as your old knowledge races ever faster towards obsoletion, you can take it as read that you have what it takes to learn how to build collective power and win.

The next Organizing For Power training program begins in February 2025. If you can put together a group of 10 or more in time for registration in December, you can get yourselves the best organizer training around and max out your chances of winning your own campaign. Go ahead and pre-register now and you'll be one step along the way already.

This was originally posted at https://666a.se/news/all-laws-now-up-to-date and has been migrated here since for long-term hosting.

A few weeks ago I mentioned that preparations for updating the English translation of the Work Environment Act were complete. Even more good news now: not only is 666a's English translation of the Work Environment Act now completely up to date, but so is the English translation of the Working Hours act!

As far as I'm aware, right now 666a is now the only place on the web where you can get an up-to-date English translation of Sweden's four most important labour laws. The ones on government.se are still out of date. And in the case of the Work Environment Act, more than a decade out of date.

My favourite thing I learned in the process of updating these translations was in Chapter 7 Section 16 of the Work Environment Act.

The market surveillance authority may procure a sample of goods under a hidden identity according to Article 14.4 j of Regulation (EU) 2019/1020 only if necessary to achieve the purpose of the inspection.

It grants Swedac the power to order stuff under false names in order to verify compliance with quality and safety requirements. This is an implementation of an EU law, and it just stuck in my head because you don't tend to think of quality assurance as a form of espionage, but it actually makes a huge amount of sense when you think about it!

Also found it interesting because I don't think it really seems to belong in the Work Environment Act at all. It certainly has nothing to do with anyone's work environment. I think it seems to have been shoehorned in here for convenience due to its similarities with e.g. Chapter 7 Section 5, maybe to avoid the work of creating a separate Market Surveillance Act or something. I think software engineers have more in common with the people writing laws than any of us might have thought!

Next up, I think I'd like to rescue the Parental Leave Act and the Annual Leave Act from the Swedish government's PDF compost heap. There's nearly a decade's worth of updates missing from the most recently published English translation of the Parental Leave Act too, so that one's going to take a minute or two to get polished and shipped on here.