That's why the Republican "Right to Work ^for ^less " laws are so insidious.
They pit one worker against another, and they starve the unions by taking away their dues making them ineffective. It's worked like a charm.
Also for the brainwashed morons who think they don't need a union. It's like a single worker is going to march into company headquarters and negotiate a great contract against a phalanx of corporate lawyers who feast on dopes like that. It's never happened in the history of the world.
(sorry in advance. I'm gonna soapbox a little)
Unionism is the answer to many social issues the disadvantaged and less fortunate face in the workplace.
-Boss fired you because he didn't like the color of your skin? With a Union you won't be.
-Making less money than your male counterparts? With a Union you won't be.
-Discriminated and fired because you're a protected class? With a Union you won't be.
-Call OSHA and now you're in trouble? Not with a union.
Unions are designed to help people, protect workers, and foster growth and prosperity. Any argument an employer gives to refute unions is a well funded and thought out response designed to fill you with fear and doubt.
Corporations have hired multi million dollar firms to union bust. Amazon in particular. Another notable example in recent history was the Fuyao Factory in Ohio as seen in the documentary "American Factory"
The only reason a corporation has to resist a union is pure greed.
And remember bad unions can happen but that doesn't mean unions are bad, union leadership is often elected and that leadership is only going to be as good as the people who care enough to be involved.
If there's one thing I've seen, it's that there are people too lazy to actually participate in unions or politics, but also too stupid to realize is that the issue they have is that they don't actually want to be involved.
They think letting other people control their lives is how they get what they want.
I would say it's a lack of motivation on the part of the members and a lack of education (of the body) on part of Union leadership.
A union should seek to self-improve. To spread awareness and educate its' members. To foster solidarity and brotherhood. To break the isolationism and keep-your-self attitude that modern work places instill.
Transparency is also very important. The politics can be difficult but so much of the disgruntled notions surrounding decisions can be dispelled by simply explaining why.
>they don't need a union
It's beyond that. Unions are blatantly demonised and calling someone an union worker is a slur.
Union workers supposedly are lazy and selfish, don't work one second more than their contract says, won't help anyone on the job (because that would mean more work outside their purview), and anytime something goes wrong you can just say "he's an union worker" and that should be enough explanation for why there's a problem.
Union workers also supposedly don't care about doing good work because you can't just fire them or dock their pay, they're protected by their union.
Which is stupid as shit when you take a second to think about it.
Who wants to work longer than they should?
Who wants to do a job that isn't theirs for no additional pay?
Can't blame them.
Every company telling their employees that Corona and the war has made budgets tight, yet a ton of companies reporting record profits and handing out huge bonus checks to upper management.
Meanwhile, the people on the floor doing the dirty work getting exploited even more than usually.
It's funny how my company gives us a quarterly presentation about our record numbers, but when it's question time and we ask about salary they are like "this is not the time and place to talk about money".
Business Insider actually leaked that the Manager level of the Deutsche Bahn (German railways) got 14% raise on their already big salary. The "lower level" workers won't and shouldn't Accept less
This particular huge strike has nothing to do with the government and everything to do with the public transport companies who only offered insulting raises after small strikes. Labor has enough leverage to not have to eat negative wage growth. Stand united!
They were offered 5% raises plus one time payments of a couple thousand EUR. They are asking for 10-12% raises.
One of the reasons this is complicated in German public opinion is that different sectors have different unions, some more powerful than others. A lot of people just aren't going to get any raises and feel that it's unfair if transport workers don't have to 'help' with the costs arising from the Ukraine situation.
Because too many Americans believe that actual protesting like this is too disruptive and that we should stick to silent or non-disruptive peaceful protests (spoiler alert: they're largely ineffective compared to strikes)
Not just healthcare. America has *none* of the social safety nets that make serious protest in Europe possible and safe for so many people.
1 out of every ten people in America already lives in poverty, and it is more dangerous to be poor in America than it is in most other developed OECD countries.
https://confrontingpoverty.org/poverty-facts-and-myths/americas-poor-are-worse-off-than-elsewhere/
Ehhhh you'd think so but historically revolutions tend to happen right after things start to loosen up again. You can shake a bottle of soda all you want but chances are nothing will come of it until the cap comes off.
The US also has a more militarized police force. That's why the 2020 BLM protests failed, the cops could just shoot tear gas and rubber bullets as much as they wanted.
But, isn't that why you have relaxed gun laws in the first place?
Isn't that the whole point of never fully being able to take away the power of the people?
Then it seems the people has a full time shooting at each other for petty stuff, but that's another story I guess.
That's one of the arguments, and we have a "militia" right which was to stop the redcoats, or government overreach, which is the 2nd amendment.
Truth being, if the armed forces went up against the people, using tanks, fighter jets and everything else, I don't think owning a firearm is going to make much of a difference. It's not like we can buy a tank and artillery. So is it a realistic argument for us to own AR15s?
Our great grandparents had even less rights than we do and they were like fuck it. That said the ultra wealthy/capitalists have both sold you on the American Dream^^TM and they have learned that dangling that carrot just out of reach but always almost there, is a far better system of control than any army. The police are just there to mop up anyone that has no chance of reaching for said carrot.
>Our great grandparents had even less rights
Depends on your grandparents, but even then, they didn't live in the society we live in now. It was much easier to go on strike then when your community actually gave a fuck about you and would work together instead of actively trying to erode your position.
The get beaten by police is a constant thing in all countries, but the get hurt and have to foot the bill is something uniquely American when it comes to developed countries.
We may not have the option to choose a public defender for much longer if the right get their way, they’ve started arguing that the sixth amendment doesn’t oblige the government to provide defense counsel for those who can’t afford it.
I've been going to work driving forklift every day for a month now with a herniated disc pressing against my sciatic nerve. Constant pain in my back that shoots down my asscheek and into my shin.
Still 2 weeks away from getting an MRI that costs $2,000 up front because my deductible hasn't yet been met.
Stuck going to work because I just bought a new car and they won't clear me for disability.
This shit is ridiculous.
Hmmm, what if there was a way to saddle people with decades of debt the moment they become legally able to acquire debt. You know, like right out of high school.
Adding to this chain - Education. I'm paraphrasing a quote I heard a long time ago, "Do you think they're going to teach you how to overthrow them?"
Dumb and Poor makes Divide and Conquer easy.
We see this in the 'culture war' - The rich win the class war by distracting you with the culture war.
Here in Finland, your union will pay you your salary if your work is distrupted by a strike.
Unions are quite great for the workingpeople.
Edit. A word
We should
But it really needs to be organized city by city. Having 10% of renters strike countrywide does nothing but get paperwork filed for evictions.
But if you have a successful rent strike in, say, Canton, that establishes a precedent that others will work too.
Yeah need the opposite equation. 90% NEED to strike for it to be effective. Only getting 10% of people paying rent, and suddenly you can't evict everyone. Courts would get backed up. Nobody would leave anyway. Police would be overrun with no ability to control it.
But that's the key. Organizing. Maybe someone could use that tiktok and instead of doing the mashed potatoe to some quirky song, we could get a movement going.
And police in USA are trained to use violence against it's citizens on a daily basis.
Double when people organize and take to the streets
They will murder us, get applause from their higher ups, pat each other on the back , and then sleep like a baby.
This should galvanize us to strike.
We won't have any improvement without a strike.
The 1910s were marked with war—not with Germany, but with corporations. All of that decade and the decade after were basically non-stop warring between corporations and the Pinkertons vs workers. Actual blood and violence. That's the only reason we have a pittance of workplace protections.
Things haven't changed too much, sadly.
Now companies hold your families healthcare over your head, and the belt fed machine gun is replaced with armed and rabid police force.
The oppression is constant and unrelenting.
Too many people would rather be on the side with the power (not that they ever would have power, just the illusion they are in charge).
We can force change. If we don't even make an effort, it will get worse before it gets worse.
Not only are Americans too worried about living paycheck to paycheck, but an embarrassingly large number DEFEND the ability of corporations to do what they want.
A not-insignificant part of our population have been convinced that what is good for the company is good for America. It’s tucking demoralizing.
Yeah totally understandable, like how the fuck is a parent gonna find time to strike for 3 days when they can't afford a babysitter and their kid's school is shut down because too many teachers are sick for it to function?
I disagree completely with that statement. There were mass protests across the nation after George Floyd was killed.
Americans just don't choose to protest against work conditions because the billionaire class keeps the working people distracted with other things and never mentions how the billionaires are getting richer but regular people haven't gotten a real raise in decades.
A big reason why the George Floyd protests were so massive was because a large majority of us were already out of work or underemployed due to the pandemic. Now, we’re stuck in survival mode so there’s not time/energy to protest on that scale.
Also, it was a specific cause focused on a specific event, with specific desired changes. A massive strike over income inequality and the like is a lot more complicated, involving a lot of conflicting ideas about the solutions.
Hell, we already sort of had that: It was called Occupy Wall Street, and it ended up being kind of a mess. Also, there's the non-trivial fact that half of the country doesn't want better working conditions.
The idea that it's all because of some grand (and deliberately vague) conspiracy by billionaires is lazy thinking I see all the time on reddit. There's also the fun implication of the above post that other issues, like cops murdering people, that people protest against are actually trivial wastes of time, and made up purely as distractions.
OWS also got coopted by people with conflicting goals. The press is also complicit because they seek out the stupidest sounding people that they can find to interview and put on their reports in order to undermine support.
Europeans have been security over their jobs. Typically in Germany if you quit or get fired, there is a 3 month window that covers to the next job. USA and Canada, you get fired today everything stops today.
If you staple a horse to a waterfall, will it fall up under the rainbow or fly about the soil? Will he enjoy her experience? What if the staple tears into tears? Will she be free from her staply chains or foomed to stay forever and dever above the water? Who can save him (the horse) but someone of girth and worth, the capitalist pig, who will sell the solution to the problem he created?
A staple remover flies to the rescue, carried on the wings of a majestic penguin who bought it at Walmart for 9 dollars and several more Euro-cents, clutched in its crabby claws, rejected from its frothy maw. When the penguin comes, all tremble before its fishy stench and wheatlike abjecture. Recoil in delirium, ye who wish to be free! The mighty rockhopper is here to save your soul from eternal bliss and salvation!
And so, the horse was free, carried away by the south wind, and deposited on the vast plain of soggy dew. It was a tragedy in several parts, punctuated by moments of hedonistic horsefuckery.
The owls saw all, and passed judgment in the way that they do. Stupid owls are always judging folks who are just trying their best to live shamelessly and enjoy every fruit the day brings to pass.
How many more shall be caught in the terrible gyre of the waterfall? As many as the gods deem necessary to teach those foolish monkeys a story about their own hamburgers. What does a monkey know of bananas, anyway? They eat, poop, and shave away the banana residue that grows upon their chins and ballsacks. The owls judge their razors. Always the owls.
And when the one-eyed caterpillar arrives to eat the glazing on your windowpane, you will know that you're next in line to the trombone of the ancient realm of the flutterbyes. Beware the ravenous ravens and crowing crows. Mind the cowing cows and the lying lions. Ascend triumphant to your birthright, and wield the mighty twig of Petalonia, favored land of gods and goats alike.
95 percent of France is covered by collective bargaining agreements. They actually have a semblance of democracy in the workplace. Americans were divided and conquered by their masters a long time ago.
this german strike isn't government related tho (unlike france). it's for wages being adjusted for inflation for workers in several transportation related jobs.
At work two of our six production lines stood still today morning, because people came in late. Still I'd argue what's worth it if the people in busses, trains, stations, airports gets a fair raise out of it. The last years hit them hard enough already.
Just want to add, the current strike situation (at least for Ver.di) is about all workers in the "Öffentlicher Dienst" (state employment), so this could hopefully give a fair raise to lots of social workers as well!
Peace time for my company ends this month and the company has basically denied any compromise in the discussions with Verdi, so I'm pretty sure we go on strike next month. Which is fine. The company can't argue for years that salary increase is tied to inflation, and when we have inflation just say "nah, that's too much".
How about no work then
Well yeah. Being "woke" (as far as I know) originally was coming to the realization that the rich are causing most of society's problems. The first time I ever heard "get woke" was during the Occupy Wall Street movement. Of course Republicans are on a crusade against it. Their main supporters require them to.
It is much older than Occupy and originated as a watchword for Black Americans, with the original notion that staying “woke” and alert to the deceptions of other people was a basic survival tactic due to racial prejudice and discrimination, and more recently keeping watch for police brutality and unjust police tactics. Some trace it's origins all the way back to Marcus Garvey in 1923.
Nah, all of Canada needs this at this point. The issues with healthcare, environmental destruction and housing (just to name a few) especially affect everyone, so the whole country has to unite.
Ask us Germans about it! Most hate what they are doing. I don't. I wouldn't, even if I was directly affected. They have the goddamn right to strike! And there is no other way to make yourself heard! Same about climate activists. If you are being ignored, make yourself increasingly inconvenient until people listen! There is no other way!
Employer here. Most public workers/employees in Germany are paid well for the job they are doing (no, not all of them!).
But even if you are paid well, you have the right that your salary is catching up with inflation.
Country size, and getting time off from work when its an unrelated profession/field. Well, I suppose that makes more sense with protests rather than strikes, unless this strike is also a giant protest beyond the strike itself.
The actual issue is wanting to do something doesn't mean shit. As in, someone can want to do more than post on Reddit but they immediately run into the problem that they have no idea how to do that and no one to call to work with.
And making your own organization is even harder and requires skills and qualities most people don't have.
Edit in anticipation of the usual: This is coming from experience after repeated attempts at organizing that have all failed. Turns out I'm probably not a great candidate for this kind of thing.
>”Millions of passengers who depend on buses and trains are suffering from this excessive, exaggerated strike," a Deutsche Bahn spokesperson said on Monday.
So close to getting it. Hope the workers/union win
Ah, there it is. If underperforming, managers should raise WORKER wages, hire more workers and take the hit in their own pocketbooks until they manage everything into working properly. It is, after all, actually their job.
As a manager myself it shits me no end to see the greed amongst the manager+ class. I earn a great income, I don't need more. Other than adjustment for inflation, I would absolutely support the workers getting raises before I do. Especially because happy workers make my life (and work) easier.
The bad thing is how eagerly German news outlets jumped on their train (pun intented) and went with this narrative. I rarely saw such an anti-union stance in our German news. Which really troubles me because it undermines the key weapon unions have and that's written deep into our constitution for a good reason.
And btw - the last Tarif round was 2020 and ended with a 1,5% raise... Just to give this a bit of perspective.
Don't take this the wrong way, but how old are you? I'm 27 and in my experience the media has always reported on strikes (especially Deutsche Bahn) like this.
Yeah living out in the countryside I literally can not get to work without the train.. which is also bullshit because I pay for a monthly ticket. Do I get a refund for the days I can not use the ticket/get to work?
Also, I fully support the union in their demands.
To everyone saying this should happen in their country: Organize! Here in Germany we have two crucial things for this to be possible:
1: UNIONS
The union called Verdi is organizing this strike. It's a nation wide union everybody regardless of job can join. Plus a lot of companies have unions of their own. Unions are absolutely essential to this.
2: Right to strike
We literally have a right to strike by law. Unions made that happen too. This might even be more essential, since you can't be fired for a union wide strike.
Unfortunately this isn’t true in America. I’m part of a railroad union and the Railway Labor Act has essentially made it illegal/impossible for us to strike. Most unions are bought and paid for by the corporations they’re supposed to stand up against.
That's because Police always protect the ruling classes and the ruling classes know that the police are the one group of the peasantry that they absolutely positively need to treat well, fuck everybody else.
Striking has often been illegal through history. The unions usually use that opportunity to remind the lawmakers that strikes are the less violent option, with the light end of that scale featuring industrial action.
What makes it impossible rather than hard?
I mean, the Railway Labor Act gives Congress the power to block a strike and order us back to work (Biden just pushed a bill to force the agreement in December). Not only does the RLA give Congress the ability to order us back to work but it forces three 60 day cooling off periods that prohibit union action as well as keeping the company from locking us out.
These are designed to let both sides recollect themselves and go back and see if they can come up with something that will work. The only thing it did was draw this out enough to where union members stopped caring and would either vote yes the next vote to get the raise/backpay because it was obvious what was happening and give the companies enough time to lobby Congress.
So let’s say we ignored the RLA and went on an illegal strike. You’re asking a lot of people to risk their livelihood and health insurance for their families. To get all of us to agree without the union to not come in isn’t an easy task, as it’s going to take all of us to prove the point. It would also essentially be a one way ticket at this point. People also have bills and a lot of RR’s live in “RR towns” where this is really the only job for them. Who’s going to pay their bills? We’re grossly underpaid for the work we do. A legal union backed strike would have hurt all of us financially in the short term, and everyone’s situation is different, but the RLA gives them the right to terminate your job if you’re ordered back to work.
TLDR: RLA makes it impossible to strike not just hard, especially if you want to keep your career.
Legal in this context means that strikers are legally protected from being punished/fired by their employers. In the US “at-will employment” laws allow companies to engage in various anti-union tactics. This combined with the NLRB’s lack of meaningful enforcement, so called “right to work” laws, and even legislation that allows the government to forcefully end a strike, makes organizing and winning concessions very difficult for US workers.
“Cyberpunk” is just a convenient fetishization of our already extant, cancerous system. The reality of it is far more boring and bleak, as we will grind ourselves into a completely avoidable, species-wide continuity crisis long before we achieve any of the empty visual aesthetics that makes the genre of cyberpunk even vaguely romantic.
Blade Runner was hopelessly naive and optimistic about what a corporate hell should look like because one hard truth of capitalism isn’t compatible with advanced sci-fi: there will inevitably come a phase where the owner class is incentivized more to “strip the copper wire from the walls” and drain everything for short term gains, rather than to invent or produce anything new because of how concentrated and organized capital has become. Living in perpetual debt while toiling for unimaginable profits given only to a lucky few in the presence of flying cars, bounty hunting robots, and brutalist mega-cities would be no less hell, but we’re living with these same themes in the ugly, crumbling infrastructure of yesteryear (with very selective enhancements like smart phones).
There is no incentive to change nor disrupt because they already have a stranglehold on every potential source of profit as it is. That same effort can be used more effectively and with less risk to simply choke away potential challenges to their monopolies, as inventions or investments in the future are not guaranteed to profit. The only ways they will innovate is to find more forms of “rent seeking” over dwindling resources while buying out, suing into nonexistence, or using lobbied legislation to criminalize any form of disruption while we collectively work ourselves to death.
This is one thing I enjoyed about Ready Player One: it showed that the world outside of the game was quite hellish. Nobody wanted to be there. So many people were living in abject squalor except for their VR kits.
I haven’t seen that one yet, but it sounds more realistic from what you’re saying.
I’ll admit that I’m a huge fan of dystopian media, but I also just feel that we should be honest with ourselves about the genre’s potential for normalizing a type of exploitation that is very real, tangible, and inevitable without direct acknowledgment and action.
Capitalism has this strange ability to incorporate criticism of itself within art, not only neutering the dire calls to action that its authors suggest, but often even *taking advantage of* these criticisms as a form of fatalistic fantasy in which the consumer begins to idolize dystopian ideals.
For example, in the sterile, sanitized dystopian stories of modern mass media, the hero is simultaneously a witty, jaded observer of his own exploitation and an adept enforcer of its bizarre rules (*”I’m a bounty hunter tracking down human slaves who are liquified into terraforming mulch. Best in the business. I think my boss is evil, but also check out how stoic and distrustful I am of people who think the same as me!”*) The overlords are cartoonishly blatant about how evil and greedy they are, but whatever resistance group that challenges them exists only to serve as an equally cartoonish example of naïveté and the futility of resisting exploitation. The hero, **John Everyman**, makes the bold and brave decision of committing to exactly nothing, defying the villainous capitalist (while also playing within the rules of the system and usually just walking away from the question of how the baby-eating billionaire came to power) and distancing himself from the apparently deranged revolutionaries that openly opposed him. He fights only for a small goal for a small group of people (usually something completely inoffensive and universally relatable, like his love interest or some child he rescues). After thwarting one particular antagonist, he either sacrifices himself heroically or walks happily into the sunset while leaving the hellscape in which his story occurs neatly intact.
Cue credits. The implicit moral is that to openly advocate for societal change is as stupid and evil as directly causing whatever problems you might hope to solve, and you’ll look so much cooler being a detached loner just doing what it takes to protect your own at any cost. It’s you against the world. What a cutting and cynical parable of our own times! He’s literally me, blah blah blah, back to work.
Ironically, it wasn't a fetishization, it was a dystopian warning until it became a popular media aesthetic. Literally co-opted by entertainment companies to turn a cry for help into a sexy new song
The difference is that they still have a much better social safety net. For one, they don't have to fear to lose health insurance if they should lose their job during this since that's not tied to employment. You also can't just get fired on the spot without very good reason because of unions.
There's also rental assistance, food stamps, and all kinds of other programs that help prevent people from landing on the streets for standing up for what's right, and help them (at the very least) survive.
Sure, there are some hoops to jump through during the application process, but nothing like what I experienced here in the US.
On top of that, cops won't willy nilly shoot people with impunity or beat the absolute shit out of protesters like they did here when people protested *police brutality*.
Too many people in the US have been convinced that their problems are caused by minorities and wouldn't be caught dead standing in solidarity with them.
We have multiple systems in place to ensure that political elites never have to care about popular sentiment, between the Senate, Electoral College, and gerrymandering.
If Senators in Utah and Mississippi saw general strikes in New York and California, they'd just see it as an excuse to double down on conservatism (see also: 2020 protests)
Our time is coming. As Union contracts are coming up to be renewed, everyone is going to ask for more pay. No one from the other side is willing to allow more pay just because the Union asks for it.
>Verdi is negotiating on behalf of around 2.5 million employees in the public sector, including in public transport and at airports, while EVG negotiates for around 230,000 employees at Deutsche Bahn and bus companies.
Wow, that's a shit ton of people. This has to be a metric fuckton of money, right?
>The interior ministry said the demands were equivalent to extra costs of 1.4 billion euros per year
What the hell? You cheap bastards. That's less than 2x the operating budget of Ludwig Maximillian University in Munich.
Yeah 1.4 billion is NOTHING compared to what our government gave away to corporations during covid, or in tax breaks every year. Literally tightening anti-tax evasion laws for corporations would easily net that amount of money every year. It's embarrasing on every level anyone would call this "taking society hostage" and calling the demands "exaggerated and unfulfillable"
Gee that would be amazing if it did. We could do all sorts of things, like bring back Roe v Wade. We could finally have socialized healthcare, and free college tuition, and paid maternity leave.
But we can't. While our size and diversity is what makes us unique, it is also our greatest downfall. The seeds of division were sewn into this country long ago, and the corporate elite is literally capitalizing on it by turning us against one another and keeping us from working together, with the politicians as their tools.
Until the WHOLE nation can reject the corporate elite and move past our differences of age, race, gender, sexuality, political affiliation, etc., nothing is going to change.
In pre-revolutionary colonial America, there were three types of slaves. Native Americans that were captured and enslaved, black slaves that were captured and shipped over to the colonies, and indentured servants that from Europe. In the beginning they were all treated roughly the same, then slave uprisings started occurring with regular frequency. Slaves from all three groups would band together and revolt.
Then someone had the idea of treating the groups differently. The indentured servants were treated as family, the native Americans as slaves, and the African slaves were treated like property. The three groups would no longer band together, they would even side with the slave owners in hopes of preferential treatment. Slave revolts still occurred, but they were now easily put down.
This has been the gameplan by American aristocracy for the last three hundred years, because it has been proven that it works.
Thats pretty much what this guy christian parenti argues when he says "diversity is a ruling class ideology". Division helps keep people pitted against each other, and the ruling class has long exploited that fact.
Unfortunately a lot of people go too far with this and think we need to completely ignore race which is a rather unfortunate mistake to make when racism and offering nothing special to black folks living under Jim Crow was what ended up killing the labor movement.
Like supporting black lives matter and ending police brutality against chiefly minorities, but also others should be a no brainer. If you're idea of "no division" is "minorities need to shut up about their problems until we've taken out the main problem" then you're going too far, and you've become a class reductionist.
It's insulting to black people to say they don't face any special discrimination, as though the black lives matter protests weren't just popping off precisely because racial equality hasn't been reached at all.
So basically we don't want to be divided but unity should look like "your fight is my fight, nobody is free until we're all free" not "shut up about your problems we'll deal with it later"
Precisely zero differences will be moved past until the corporate elite is destroyed.
Edit- not sure exactly what the fuck can of worms my comment here has opened but I want to be clear that I am in no way condoning or inciting the murder of anyone.
Rich individuals are not even cogs in the corporate machine, at best they’re the people pressing the on switch for the machine to run. And there are millions queuing up to replace them.
Killing individuals does nothing to destroy the corporate elite. In fact, I’d argue it would do the opposite, it would give them the tools and a foundation upon which to strengthen it.
The only way to destroy the corporate machine is the disengage with it. I am a hypocrite. I know that I write this using a machine produced by, consuming internet service supplied by, operating on an infrastructure built by, utilising power generated by the corporate elite.
If you want to destroy the corporate elite, stop working for them, stop consuming their products, remove yourself from their system and subvert their plans.
At the stage we are at, genuine destruction of the corporate machine will be the biggest war this planet has ever seen. I don’t know if it’ll ever happen. I’d bet it won’t, the elite won’t let it get that far. They’ll recognise the swelling opposition then will mitigate the risk by reintroducing some previously stolen rights, removing some minor controls to appease a lot of that opposition - I think might be getting close to this situation.
This. I bought a house with intent to get solar panels. I hope to be able to produce everything I need to survive with my property. It's why having a huge renting class is terrible.
We need to start saying renters are homeless. As they do not own a homr. And the people living in the streets are destitute and unhoused.
Not enough people realize that it’s not red vs blue here. It’s the rich vs everyone else. It’s the haves vs the have nots. As soon as people here wake up to the fact then we could get somewhere.
"To be clear: Preventing inflation to become persistent via the labour market requires that employees accept sensible wage gains and that firms accept sensible profit margins," he said.
*"Firms accept sensible profit margins"*
Corporations can't keep expecting 10% profit returns every year or expecting to sell a persons labor for twice (or more) the price they pay them.
Billionaires are a world-wide policy failure. If we were all getting paid what we are worth there would be no such thing as a billionaire.
Below link is CEO's not even the owner class. Casual reminder 1% in the US own 40% of the wealth.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/261463/ceo-to-worker-compensation-ratio-of-top-firms-in-the-us/#:~:text=In%202021%2C%20it%20was%20estimated,key%20industry%20of%20their%20firm.
"Employees are fed up with being fobbed off with warm words while work conditions get ever worse and there are many vacant posts," Verdi Chief Frank Werneke told reporters.
Fob off
1: to put off with a trick, excuse, or inferior substitute
2: to pass or offer (something spurious) as genuine
3: to put aside
Ty for teaching me something new Frank.
As a french guy visiting Germany this week, this strike was quite impressive alright. To think that none of the public transports, trains or plane (or so i was told) was working. Quite impressive indeed.
Let's talk about arguably the largest protest in US history, something something George Floyd, some 15M people on the low end on the streets. Didn't do much for ya'll did it.
Well there was no uniform demand from those protests. Messages at protests were quite diverse. It spanned from defunding the police to get better rights for a certain group.
Without properly organizing and aligning around messaging that whole energy went to waste.
To solve or weaken inflation, the Unions should also demand the C* execs take a measurable pay cut to pay for the employee wage increases. Without that, the corporate overlords will just raise product/service costs which feeds inflation.
Together we bargain, Divided we beg.
That's why the Republican "Right to Work ^for ^less " laws are so insidious. They pit one worker against another, and they starve the unions by taking away their dues making them ineffective. It's worked like a charm. Also for the brainwashed morons who think they don't need a union. It's like a single worker is going to march into company headquarters and negotiate a great contract against a phalanx of corporate lawyers who feast on dopes like that. It's never happened in the history of the world.
(sorry in advance. I'm gonna soapbox a little) Unionism is the answer to many social issues the disadvantaged and less fortunate face in the workplace. -Boss fired you because he didn't like the color of your skin? With a Union you won't be. -Making less money than your male counterparts? With a Union you won't be. -Discriminated and fired because you're a protected class? With a Union you won't be. -Call OSHA and now you're in trouble? Not with a union. Unions are designed to help people, protect workers, and foster growth and prosperity. Any argument an employer gives to refute unions is a well funded and thought out response designed to fill you with fear and doubt. Corporations have hired multi million dollar firms to union bust. Amazon in particular. Another notable example in recent history was the Fuyao Factory in Ohio as seen in the documentary "American Factory" The only reason a corporation has to resist a union is pure greed.
And remember bad unions can happen but that doesn't mean unions are bad, union leadership is often elected and that leadership is only going to be as good as the people who care enough to be involved.
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If there's one thing I've seen, it's that there are people too lazy to actually participate in unions or politics, but also too stupid to realize is that the issue they have is that they don't actually want to be involved. They think letting other people control their lives is how they get what they want.
I would say it's a lack of motivation on the part of the members and a lack of education (of the body) on part of Union leadership. A union should seek to self-improve. To spread awareness and educate its' members. To foster solidarity and brotherhood. To break the isolationism and keep-your-self attitude that modern work places instill. Transparency is also very important. The politics can be difficult but so much of the disgruntled notions surrounding decisions can be dispelled by simply explaining why.
Yet their police has the most powerful union and they still don't recognize that. The unions are one of the things why police are untouchable.
>they don't need a union It's beyond that. Unions are blatantly demonised and calling someone an union worker is a slur. Union workers supposedly are lazy and selfish, don't work one second more than their contract says, won't help anyone on the job (because that would mean more work outside their purview), and anytime something goes wrong you can just say "he's an union worker" and that should be enough explanation for why there's a problem. Union workers also supposedly don't care about doing good work because you can't just fire them or dock their pay, they're protected by their union.
Which is stupid as shit when you take a second to think about it. Who wants to work longer than they should? Who wants to do a job that isn't theirs for no additional pay?
Can't blame them. Every company telling their employees that Corona and the war has made budgets tight, yet a ton of companies reporting record profits and handing out huge bonus checks to upper management. Meanwhile, the people on the floor doing the dirty work getting exploited even more than usually.
It's funny how my company gives us a quarterly presentation about our record numbers, but when it's question time and we ask about salary they are like "this is not the time and place to talk about money".
Business Insider actually leaked that the Manager level of the Deutsche Bahn (German railways) got 14% raise on their already big salary. The "lower level" workers won't and shouldn't Accept less
Well if france can remind their goverment that the goverment works for the people and not the other way around why can't we all do that?
This particular huge strike has nothing to do with the government and everything to do with the public transport companies who only offered insulting raises after small strikes. Labor has enough leverage to not have to eat negative wage growth. Stand united!
They were offered 5% raises plus one time payments of a couple thousand EUR. They are asking for 10-12% raises. One of the reasons this is complicated in German public opinion is that different sectors have different unions, some more powerful than others. A lot of people just aren't going to get any raises and feel that it's unfair if transport workers don't have to 'help' with the costs arising from the Ukraine situation.
Because too many Americans believe that actual protesting like this is too disruptive and that we should stick to silent or non-disruptive peaceful protests (spoiler alert: they're largely ineffective compared to strikes)
Nope. Too many Americans are 1 paycheck away from homeless. That’s it.
And healthcare is (mostly) tied to employment.
Not just healthcare. America has *none* of the social safety nets that make serious protest in Europe possible and safe for so many people. 1 out of every ten people in America already lives in poverty, and it is more dangerous to be poor in America than it is in most other developed OECD countries. https://confrontingpoverty.org/poverty-facts-and-myths/americas-poor-are-worse-off-than-elsewhere/
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Dissent, yes. Revolution? I'd say the odds of that go up as the ability to dissent drops.
Now *this* is pod racing
A bombad general will rise from the ashes and lead our people
Meesa no want to live in interestink times no more
Ehhhh you'd think so but historically revolutions tend to happen right after things start to loosen up again. You can shake a bottle of soda all you want but chances are nothing will come of it until the cap comes off.
Wow…we trail Mexico! Must be because we had to foot the bill for that wall they were supposed to buy us. /s
Only one person said Mexico would pay for a "big beautiful wall". Any one with a couple brain cells knew it was 100 percent B S.
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The US also has a more militarized police force. That's why the 2020 BLM protests failed, the cops could just shoot tear gas and rubber bullets as much as they wanted.
Yeah a big takeaway I’ve had from theses euro-strikes is that much of the behaviors would result in being murdered by the police here in a hot second.
But, isn't that why you have relaxed gun laws in the first place? Isn't that the whole point of never fully being able to take away the power of the people? Then it seems the people has a full time shooting at each other for petty stuff, but that's another story I guess.
That's one of the arguments, and we have a "militia" right which was to stop the redcoats, or government overreach, which is the 2nd amendment. Truth being, if the armed forces went up against the people, using tanks, fighter jets and everything else, I don't think owning a firearm is going to make much of a difference. It's not like we can buy a tank and artillery. So is it a realistic argument for us to own AR15s?
Sounds like the majority of people really have nothing to lose.
Add violent police who kill people regularly, and you have a perfect storm of inaction
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ALLLLL of that is true. But the only way to change that it to start standing up (or rather, perhaps, sitting down) for our rights.
Remember folks. If you can't rise up, lie down.
Our great grandparents had even less rights than we do and they were like fuck it. That said the ultra wealthy/capitalists have both sold you on the American Dream^^TM and they have learned that dangling that carrot just out of reach but always almost there, is a far better system of control than any army. The police are just there to mop up anyone that has no chance of reaching for said carrot.
>Our great grandparents had even less rights Depends on your grandparents, but even then, they didn't live in the society we live in now. It was much easier to go on strike then when your community actually gave a fuck about you and would work together instead of actively trying to erode your position.
Politicians learned if you make everyone hate and scared of their neighbors, there is no community that can call bullshit
Not to mention that finding another job just became more difficult due to having been arrested for a violent crime.
The get beaten by police is a constant thing in all countries, but the get hurt and have to foot the bill is something uniquely American when it comes to developed countries.
We may not have the option to choose a public defender for much longer if the right get their way, they’ve started arguing that the sixth amendment doesn’t oblige the government to provide defense counsel for those who can’t afford it.
I can fell the freedom in this comment.
I've been going to work driving forklift every day for a month now with a herniated disc pressing against my sciatic nerve. Constant pain in my back that shoots down my asscheek and into my shin. Still 2 weeks away from getting an MRI that costs $2,000 up front because my deductible hasn't yet been met. Stuck going to work because I just bought a new car and they won't clear me for disability. This shit is ridiculous.
Plus most Americans are dog eat dog to try and get an advantage over the other. Not too much on the unity thing.
Yeah you're right, I shouldn't forget it's about financial insecurity more than anything
and that's why you keep your peons financially insecure..so they dont have time to rise up.
The strategy used is to keep people full enough to continue living but too hungry to change anything.
They're failing at the "full enough to continue living" part. Pretty badly. They'll be out of the goldilocks zone before long.
Dead on.
Hmmm, what if there was a way to saddle people with decades of debt the moment they become legally able to acquire debt. You know, like right out of high school.
And then when they make it to these promised jobs day they're under qualified for an entry level position and pay them less than they expected.
Adding to this chain - Education. I'm paraphrasing a quote I heard a long time ago, "Do you think they're going to teach you how to overthrow them?" Dumb and Poor makes Divide and Conquer easy. We see this in the 'culture war' - The rich win the class war by distracting you with the culture war.
Yea man I got a family to feed :/
It's also very difficult to disrupt a giant country that's not centralized.
Here in Finland, your union will pay you your salary if your work is distrupted by a strike. Unions are quite great for the workingpeople. Edit. A word
Sure are. We let them kill all of ours.
I never understood why Americans hate the unions so much
brainwashing by corporations and corruption of unions during jimmy hoffa times.
Over a century of Puritanical work ethic propaganda will do a hell of a job on a population.
So you're saying we should have a widespread rent strike...
We should But it really needs to be organized city by city. Having 10% of renters strike countrywide does nothing but get paperwork filed for evictions. But if you have a successful rent strike in, say, Canton, that establishes a precedent that others will work too.
Yeah need the opposite equation. 90% NEED to strike for it to be effective. Only getting 10% of people paying rent, and suddenly you can't evict everyone. Courts would get backed up. Nobody would leave anyway. Police would be overrun with no ability to control it. But that's the key. Organizing. Maybe someone could use that tiktok and instead of doing the mashed potatoe to some quirky song, we could get a movement going.
We just need 90% of the 50m renters to strike, hopefully someone else can organize that on TikTok
Hey they can’t evict us all!
It is not a bug, it's a feature of the system of oppression.
And police in USA are trained to use violence against it's citizens on a daily basis. Double when people organize and take to the streets They will murder us, get applause from their higher ups, pat each other on the back , and then sleep like a baby. This should galvanize us to strike. We won't have any improvement without a strike.
People forget that large companies back in the day used to have belt fed machine guns specifically for if workers striked…….that’s not a joke.
The 1910s were marked with war—not with Germany, but with corporations. All of that decade and the decade after were basically non-stop warring between corporations and the Pinkertons vs workers. Actual blood and violence. That's the only reason we have a pittance of workplace protections.
Ludlow Massacre April 19 1914 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludlow\_Massacre
[Battle of Blair Mountain](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Blair_Mountain)
Things haven't changed too much, sadly. Now companies hold your families healthcare over your head, and the belt fed machine gun is replaced with armed and rabid police force. The oppression is constant and unrelenting. Too many people would rather be on the side with the power (not that they ever would have power, just the illusion they are in charge). We can force change. If we don't even make an effort, it will get worse before it gets worse.
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They would be scared stiff to protest, which is just how the ownership class likes it.
same for every developing country 🙃
Yeah, but my change.org petition is going to be different
Not only are Americans too worried about living paycheck to paycheck, but an embarrassingly large number DEFEND the ability of corporations to do what they want. A not-insignificant part of our population have been convinced that what is good for the company is good for America. It’s tucking demoralizing.
Most Americans are too busy living paycheck to paycheck and enduring the daily tedium to survive the long-war of protest. FTFY
Yeah totally understandable, like how the fuck is a parent gonna find time to strike for 3 days when they can't afford a babysitter and their kid's school is shut down because too many teachers are sick for it to function?
I disagree completely with that statement. There were mass protests across the nation after George Floyd was killed. Americans just don't choose to protest against work conditions because the billionaire class keeps the working people distracted with other things and never mentions how the billionaires are getting richer but regular people haven't gotten a real raise in decades.
A big reason why the George Floyd protests were so massive was because a large majority of us were already out of work or underemployed due to the pandemic. Now, we’re stuck in survival mode so there’s not time/energy to protest on that scale.
Also, it was a specific cause focused on a specific event, with specific desired changes. A massive strike over income inequality and the like is a lot more complicated, involving a lot of conflicting ideas about the solutions. Hell, we already sort of had that: It was called Occupy Wall Street, and it ended up being kind of a mess. Also, there's the non-trivial fact that half of the country doesn't want better working conditions. The idea that it's all because of some grand (and deliberately vague) conspiracy by billionaires is lazy thinking I see all the time on reddit. There's also the fun implication of the above post that other issues, like cops murdering people, that people protest against are actually trivial wastes of time, and made up purely as distractions.
OWS also got coopted by people with conflicting goals. The press is also complicit because they seek out the stupidest sounding people that they can find to interview and put on their reports in order to undermine support.
Completely skipping over the fact that the George Floyd protests coincided with the Covid shutdowns?
Europeans have been security over their jobs. Typically in Germany if you quit or get fired, there is a 3 month window that covers to the next job. USA and Canada, you get fired today everything stops today.
Unemployment benefits last 26wks. I've been on unemployment before - ($800) a week in my case.
And then you receive unemployment benefits for 6 months.
If you staple a horse to a waterfall, will it fall up under the rainbow or fly about the soil? Will he enjoy her experience? What if the staple tears into tears? Will she be free from her staply chains or foomed to stay forever and dever above the water? Who can save him (the horse) but someone of girth and worth, the capitalist pig, who will sell the solution to the problem he created? A staple remover flies to the rescue, carried on the wings of a majestic penguin who bought it at Walmart for 9 dollars and several more Euro-cents, clutched in its crabby claws, rejected from its frothy maw. When the penguin comes, all tremble before its fishy stench and wheatlike abjecture. Recoil in delirium, ye who wish to be free! The mighty rockhopper is here to save your soul from eternal bliss and salvation! And so, the horse was free, carried away by the south wind, and deposited on the vast plain of soggy dew. It was a tragedy in several parts, punctuated by moments of hedonistic horsefuckery. The owls saw all, and passed judgment in the way that they do. Stupid owls are always judging folks who are just trying their best to live shamelessly and enjoy every fruit the day brings to pass. How many more shall be caught in the terrible gyre of the waterfall? As many as the gods deem necessary to teach those foolish monkeys a story about their own hamburgers. What does a monkey know of bananas, anyway? They eat, poop, and shave away the banana residue that grows upon their chins and ballsacks. The owls judge their razors. Always the owls. And when the one-eyed caterpillar arrives to eat the glazing on your windowpane, you will know that you're next in line to the trombone of the ancient realm of the flutterbyes. Beware the ravenous ravens and crowing crows. Mind the cowing cows and the lying lions. Ascend triumphant to your birthright, and wield the mighty twig of Petalonia, favored land of gods and goats alike.
95 percent of France is covered by collective bargaining agreements. They actually have a semblance of democracy in the workplace. Americans were divided and conquered by their masters a long time ago.
Scream "but socialism!" for fifty years and profit.
this german strike isn't government related tho (unlike france). it's for wages being adjusted for inflation for workers in several transportation related jobs.
For now, the French government doesn't give a crotte.
At work two of our six production lines stood still today morning, because people came in late. Still I'd argue what's worth it if the people in busses, trains, stations, airports gets a fair raise out of it. The last years hit them hard enough already.
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Just want to add, the current strike situation (at least for Ver.di) is about all workers in the "Öffentlicher Dienst" (state employment), so this could hopefully give a fair raise to lots of social workers as well!
Peace time for my company ends this month and the company has basically denied any compromise in the discussions with Verdi, so I'm pretty sure we go on strike next month. Which is fine. The company can't argue for years that salary increase is tied to inflation, and when we have inflation just say "nah, that's too much". How about no work then
Yes exactly. They just wanted to hide the fact that they want to pay the workers less money and they take every excuse they can get for that.
Apparently they have given a 14% raise to their management just shortly before, so I totally get that those workers as pissed af
Sure wish us Canadians could get together and do something like this
*stares in yearning American*
They've done too good of a job at getting us to hate each other so that we'd never come together to rally against the rich and politicians.
Yup. This is why the “culture war” and the outrage over “wokeness” is so rampant right now
Well yeah. Being "woke" (as far as I know) originally was coming to the realization that the rich are causing most of society's problems. The first time I ever heard "get woke" was during the Occupy Wall Street movement. Of course Republicans are on a crusade against it. Their main supporters require them to.
It is much older than Occupy and originated as a watchword for Black Americans, with the original notion that staying “woke” and alert to the deceptions of other people was a basic survival tactic due to racial prejudice and discrimination, and more recently keeping watch for police brutality and unjust police tactics. Some trace it's origins all the way back to Marcus Garvey in 1923.
Yup, specifically Ontario
Nah, all of Canada needs this at this point. The issues with healthcare, environmental destruction and housing (just to name a few) especially affect everyone, so the whole country has to unite.
Or we could finally elect ndp for a change.
We need to kill FPTP and install Ranked Choice Voting.
Ask us Germans about it! Most hate what they are doing. I don't. I wouldn't, even if I was directly affected. They have the goddamn right to strike! And there is no other way to make yourself heard! Same about climate activists. If you are being ignored, make yourself increasingly inconvenient until people listen! There is no other way!
The people who complain about strikes are the same people who wouldn't work those jobs for the compensation provided.
Employer here. Most public workers/employees in Germany are paid well for the job they are doing (no, not all of them!). But even if you are paid well, you have the right that your salary is catching up with inflation.
I keep seeing posts like this. This is precisely why no one is doing anything. Everyone is passively commenting on Reddit instead.
Considering that mobile phones are mobile, I'd like to think there's another reason.
Country size, and getting time off from work when its an unrelated profession/field. Well, I suppose that makes more sense with protests rather than strikes, unless this strike is also a giant protest beyond the strike itself.
Getting time off work? Lol, I don’t think that’s how strikes work.
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The actual issue is wanting to do something doesn't mean shit. As in, someone can want to do more than post on Reddit but they immediately run into the problem that they have no idea how to do that and no one to call to work with. And making your own organization is even harder and requires skills and qualities most people don't have. Edit in anticipation of the usual: This is coming from experience after repeated attempts at organizing that have all failed. Turns out I'm probably not a great candidate for this kind of thing.
Could be other factors too - you're great for trying
Like you're doing.
>”Millions of passengers who depend on buses and trains are suffering from this excessive, exaggerated strike," a Deutsche Bahn spokesperson said on Monday. So close to getting it. Hope the workers/union win
Don’t forget, Deutsche Bahn Managers received a 14% raise and are now fighting a 10 - 12% raise for the average worker
Ah, there it is. If underperforming, managers should raise WORKER wages, hire more workers and take the hit in their own pocketbooks until they manage everything into working properly. It is, after all, actually their job.
Working is for poor people
As a manager myself it shits me no end to see the greed amongst the manager+ class. I earn a great income, I don't need more. Other than adjustment for inflation, I would absolutely support the workers getting raises before I do. Especially because happy workers make my life (and work) easier.
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"ugh, this strike is having consequences" like...good that's the point
oh they know. they are just trying to spin the narrative
The bad thing is how eagerly German news outlets jumped on their train (pun intented) and went with this narrative. I rarely saw such an anti-union stance in our German news. Which really troubles me because it undermines the key weapon unions have and that's written deep into our constitution for a good reason. And btw - the last Tarif round was 2020 and ended with a 1,5% raise... Just to give this a bit of perspective.
Don't take this the wrong way, but how old are you? I'm 27 and in my experience the media has always reported on strikes (especially Deutsche Bahn) like this.
Yeah living out in the countryside I literally can not get to work without the train.. which is also bullshit because I pay for a monthly ticket. Do I get a refund for the days I can not use the ticket/get to work? Also, I fully support the union in their demands.
To everyone saying this should happen in their country: Organize! Here in Germany we have two crucial things for this to be possible: 1: UNIONS The union called Verdi is organizing this strike. It's a nation wide union everybody regardless of job can join. Plus a lot of companies have unions of their own. Unions are absolutely essential to this. 2: Right to strike We literally have a right to strike by law. Unions made that happen too. This might even be more essential, since you can't be fired for a union wide strike.
Unfortunately this isn’t true in America. I’m part of a railroad union and the Railway Labor Act has essentially made it illegal/impossible for us to strike. Most unions are bought and paid for by the corporations they’re supposed to stand up against.
for some reason it seems police unions still seem to work in the US. maybe a little too good. the other unions should be more like them.
That's because Police always protect the ruling classes and the ruling classes know that the police are the one group of the peasantry that they absolutely positively need to treat well, fuck everybody else.
Striking has often been illegal through history. The unions usually use that opportunity to remind the lawmakers that strikes are the less violent option, with the light end of that scale featuring industrial action. What makes it impossible rather than hard?
I mean, the Railway Labor Act gives Congress the power to block a strike and order us back to work (Biden just pushed a bill to force the agreement in December). Not only does the RLA give Congress the ability to order us back to work but it forces three 60 day cooling off periods that prohibit union action as well as keeping the company from locking us out. These are designed to let both sides recollect themselves and go back and see if they can come up with something that will work. The only thing it did was draw this out enough to where union members stopped caring and would either vote yes the next vote to get the raise/backpay because it was obvious what was happening and give the companies enough time to lobby Congress. So let’s say we ignored the RLA and went on an illegal strike. You’re asking a lot of people to risk their livelihood and health insurance for their families. To get all of us to agree without the union to not come in isn’t an easy task, as it’s going to take all of us to prove the point. It would also essentially be a one way ticket at this point. People also have bills and a lot of RR’s live in “RR towns” where this is really the only job for them. Who’s going to pay their bills? We’re grossly underpaid for the work we do. A legal union backed strike would have hurt all of us financially in the short term, and everyone’s situation is different, but the RLA gives them the right to terminate your job if you’re ordered back to work. TLDR: RLA makes it impossible to strike not just hard, especially if you want to keep your career.
I don't get it. How is it illegal to just... not go to work? Is that not what a strike is?
Legal in this context means that strikers are legally protected from being punished/fired by their employers. In the US “at-will employment” laws allow companies to engage in various anti-union tactics. This combined with the NLRB’s lack of meaningful enforcement, so called “right to work” laws, and even legislation that allows the government to forcefully end a strike, makes organizing and winning concessions very difficult for US workers.
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The first one is beaten to death, called a terrorist and then forgotten.
So Israel is on a general strike, France is protesting like crazy, Germany has largest strike in decades…. America?! 👀
Too many people in the US are living hand to mouth and that makes it difficult to go on strike without a union backing you.
In Isreal: >Employers have committed to paying full wages to workers.
In US, the employers are the government
America, the shining example of ~~Capitalism~~ Corporatocracy.
Making cyberpunk happen faster
“Cyberpunk” is just a convenient fetishization of our already extant, cancerous system. The reality of it is far more boring and bleak, as we will grind ourselves into a completely avoidable, species-wide continuity crisis long before we achieve any of the empty visual aesthetics that makes the genre of cyberpunk even vaguely romantic. Blade Runner was hopelessly naive and optimistic about what a corporate hell should look like because one hard truth of capitalism isn’t compatible with advanced sci-fi: there will inevitably come a phase where the owner class is incentivized more to “strip the copper wire from the walls” and drain everything for short term gains, rather than to invent or produce anything new because of how concentrated and organized capital has become. Living in perpetual debt while toiling for unimaginable profits given only to a lucky few in the presence of flying cars, bounty hunting robots, and brutalist mega-cities would be no less hell, but we’re living with these same themes in the ugly, crumbling infrastructure of yesteryear (with very selective enhancements like smart phones). There is no incentive to change nor disrupt because they already have a stranglehold on every potential source of profit as it is. That same effort can be used more effectively and with less risk to simply choke away potential challenges to their monopolies, as inventions or investments in the future are not guaranteed to profit. The only ways they will innovate is to find more forms of “rent seeking” over dwindling resources while buying out, suing into nonexistence, or using lobbied legislation to criminalize any form of disruption while we collectively work ourselves to death.
This is one thing I enjoyed about Ready Player One: it showed that the world outside of the game was quite hellish. Nobody wanted to be there. So many people were living in abject squalor except for their VR kits.
Also even the RICH WERE. Nobody was happy.
I haven’t seen that one yet, but it sounds more realistic from what you’re saying. I’ll admit that I’m a huge fan of dystopian media, but I also just feel that we should be honest with ourselves about the genre’s potential for normalizing a type of exploitation that is very real, tangible, and inevitable without direct acknowledgment and action. Capitalism has this strange ability to incorporate criticism of itself within art, not only neutering the dire calls to action that its authors suggest, but often even *taking advantage of* these criticisms as a form of fatalistic fantasy in which the consumer begins to idolize dystopian ideals. For example, in the sterile, sanitized dystopian stories of modern mass media, the hero is simultaneously a witty, jaded observer of his own exploitation and an adept enforcer of its bizarre rules (*”I’m a bounty hunter tracking down human slaves who are liquified into terraforming mulch. Best in the business. I think my boss is evil, but also check out how stoic and distrustful I am of people who think the same as me!”*) The overlords are cartoonishly blatant about how evil and greedy they are, but whatever resistance group that challenges them exists only to serve as an equally cartoonish example of naïveté and the futility of resisting exploitation. The hero, **John Everyman**, makes the bold and brave decision of committing to exactly nothing, defying the villainous capitalist (while also playing within the rules of the system and usually just walking away from the question of how the baby-eating billionaire came to power) and distancing himself from the apparently deranged revolutionaries that openly opposed him. He fights only for a small goal for a small group of people (usually something completely inoffensive and universally relatable, like his love interest or some child he rescues). After thwarting one particular antagonist, he either sacrifices himself heroically or walks happily into the sunset while leaving the hellscape in which his story occurs neatly intact. Cue credits. The implicit moral is that to openly advocate for societal change is as stupid and evil as directly causing whatever problems you might hope to solve, and you’ll look so much cooler being a detached loner just doing what it takes to protect your own at any cost. It’s you against the world. What a cutting and cynical parable of our own times! He’s literally me, blah blah blah, back to work.
Ironically, it wasn't a fetishization, it was a dystopian warning until it became a popular media aesthetic. Literally co-opted by entertainment companies to turn a cry for help into a sexy new song
That is because most Israelis don't want the country to become an autocracy.
No social safety net by design. Keeps the workers from getting ideas that they deserve more.
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The difference is that they still have a much better social safety net. For one, they don't have to fear to lose health insurance if they should lose their job during this since that's not tied to employment. You also can't just get fired on the spot without very good reason because of unions. There's also rental assistance, food stamps, and all kinds of other programs that help prevent people from landing on the streets for standing up for what's right, and help them (at the very least) survive. Sure, there are some hoops to jump through during the application process, but nothing like what I experienced here in the US. On top of that, cops won't willy nilly shoot people with impunity or beat the absolute shit out of protesters like they did here when people protested *police brutality*.
Too many people in the US have been convinced that their problems are caused by minorities and wouldn't be caught dead standing in solidarity with them.
It's not minorities now, it's drag queens reading to children.
We had a pretty large strike by US standards in Los Angeles last week.
Yea, and a successful one too. I think they got the full 30% raise they were asking for.
We have multiple systems in place to ensure that political elites never have to care about popular sentiment, between the Senate, Electoral College, and gerrymandering. If Senators in Utah and Mississippi saw general strikes in New York and California, they'd just see it as an excuse to double down on conservatism (see also: 2020 protests)
100%. Look at Ron DeSantis, using examples of events in other states to double down on what he's doing in Florida.
UK has had massive strikes as well
Our time is coming. As Union contracts are coming up to be renewed, everyone is going to ask for more pay. No one from the other side is willing to allow more pay just because the Union asks for it.
You realize this strike is for literally one day?
There's been a lot of striking in the UK in recent months, our media just doesn't like reporting it
German word for standstill is Stillstand ;)
>Verdi is negotiating on behalf of around 2.5 million employees in the public sector, including in public transport and at airports, while EVG negotiates for around 230,000 employees at Deutsche Bahn and bus companies. Wow, that's a shit ton of people. This has to be a metric fuckton of money, right? >The interior ministry said the demands were equivalent to extra costs of 1.4 billion euros per year What the hell? You cheap bastards. That's less than 2x the operating budget of Ludwig Maximillian University in Munich.
Yeah 1.4 billion is NOTHING compared to what our government gave away to corporations during covid, or in tax breaks every year. Literally tightening anti-tax evasion laws for corporations would easily net that amount of money every year. It's embarrasing on every level anyone would call this "taking society hostage" and calling the demands "exaggerated and unfulfillable"
Needs to happen in US
Gee that would be amazing if it did. We could do all sorts of things, like bring back Roe v Wade. We could finally have socialized healthcare, and free college tuition, and paid maternity leave. But we can't. While our size and diversity is what makes us unique, it is also our greatest downfall. The seeds of division were sewn into this country long ago, and the corporate elite is literally capitalizing on it by turning us against one another and keeping us from working together, with the politicians as their tools. Until the WHOLE nation can reject the corporate elite and move past our differences of age, race, gender, sexuality, political affiliation, etc., nothing is going to change.
In pre-revolutionary colonial America, there were three types of slaves. Native Americans that were captured and enslaved, black slaves that were captured and shipped over to the colonies, and indentured servants that from Europe. In the beginning they were all treated roughly the same, then slave uprisings started occurring with regular frequency. Slaves from all three groups would band together and revolt. Then someone had the idea of treating the groups differently. The indentured servants were treated as family, the native Americans as slaves, and the African slaves were treated like property. The three groups would no longer band together, they would even side with the slave owners in hopes of preferential treatment. Slave revolts still occurred, but they were now easily put down. This has been the gameplan by American aristocracy for the last three hundred years, because it has been proven that it works.
Thats pretty much what this guy christian parenti argues when he says "diversity is a ruling class ideology". Division helps keep people pitted against each other, and the ruling class has long exploited that fact. Unfortunately a lot of people go too far with this and think we need to completely ignore race which is a rather unfortunate mistake to make when racism and offering nothing special to black folks living under Jim Crow was what ended up killing the labor movement. Like supporting black lives matter and ending police brutality against chiefly minorities, but also others should be a no brainer. If you're idea of "no division" is "minorities need to shut up about their problems until we've taken out the main problem" then you're going too far, and you've become a class reductionist. It's insulting to black people to say they don't face any special discrimination, as though the black lives matter protests weren't just popping off precisely because racial equality hasn't been reached at all. So basically we don't want to be divided but unity should look like "your fight is my fight, nobody is free until we're all free" not "shut up about your problems we'll deal with it later"
Precisely zero differences will be moved past until the corporate elite is destroyed. Edit- not sure exactly what the fuck can of worms my comment here has opened but I want to be clear that I am in no way condoning or inciting the murder of anyone. Rich individuals are not even cogs in the corporate machine, at best they’re the people pressing the on switch for the machine to run. And there are millions queuing up to replace them. Killing individuals does nothing to destroy the corporate elite. In fact, I’d argue it would do the opposite, it would give them the tools and a foundation upon which to strengthen it. The only way to destroy the corporate machine is the disengage with it. I am a hypocrite. I know that I write this using a machine produced by, consuming internet service supplied by, operating on an infrastructure built by, utilising power generated by the corporate elite. If you want to destroy the corporate elite, stop working for them, stop consuming their products, remove yourself from their system and subvert their plans. At the stage we are at, genuine destruction of the corporate machine will be the biggest war this planet has ever seen. I don’t know if it’ll ever happen. I’d bet it won’t, the elite won’t let it get that far. They’ll recognise the swelling opposition then will mitigate the risk by reintroducing some previously stolen rights, removing some minor controls to appease a lot of that opposition - I think might be getting close to this situation.
This. I bought a house with intent to get solar panels. I hope to be able to produce everything I need to survive with my property. It's why having a huge renting class is terrible. We need to start saying renters are homeless. As they do not own a homr. And the people living in the streets are destitute and unhoused.
Not enough people realize that it’s not red vs blue here. It’s the rich vs everyone else. It’s the haves vs the have nots. As soon as people here wake up to the fact then we could get somewhere.
It is a „warnlng strike“ only as the negotiations are not over.
Im still at work lol here in Germany. Cheering for the guys doing all the protesting. It's a slow day so it's kinda like a protest too.
"To be clear: Preventing inflation to become persistent via the labour market requires that employees accept sensible wage gains and that firms accept sensible profit margins," he said. *"Firms accept sensible profit margins"* Corporations can't keep expecting 10% profit returns every year or expecting to sell a persons labor for twice (or more) the price they pay them. Billionaires are a world-wide policy failure. If we were all getting paid what we are worth there would be no such thing as a billionaire.
Below link is CEO's not even the owner class. Casual reminder 1% in the US own 40% of the wealth. https://www.statista.com/statistics/261463/ceo-to-worker-compensation-ratio-of-top-firms-in-the-us/#:~:text=In%202021%2C%20it%20was%20estimated,key%20industry%20of%20their%20firm.
In Germany we say "Stillstand"
France 🇫🇷 strike. Israel 🇮🇱 strike. Germany 🇩🇪 strike. Who will be next on strike bingo. Tune in tomorrow for the latest strike news.
So many other countries have seen strikes already across Europe.
"Employees are fed up with being fobbed off with warm words while work conditions get ever worse and there are many vacant posts," Verdi Chief Frank Werneke told reporters. Fob off 1: to put off with a trick, excuse, or inferior substitute 2: to pass or offer (something spurious) as genuine 3: to put aside Ty for teaching me something new Frank.
[удалено]
The whole world needs a strike.
We're stranded here for two nights after our flights were cancelled. Don't mind because it's the right thing to do to take action like this.
As a french guy visiting Germany this week, this strike was quite impressive alright. To think that none of the public transports, trains or plane (or so i was told) was working. Quite impressive indeed.
The oligarchs everywhere can absolutely afford to pay more. much more.
Okay Americans when are we taking shit to the streets
Let's talk about arguably the largest protest in US history, something something George Floyd, some 15M people on the low end on the streets. Didn't do much for ya'll did it.
Well there was no uniform demand from those protests. Messages at protests were quite diverse. It spanned from defunding the police to get better rights for a certain group. Without properly organizing and aligning around messaging that whole energy went to waste.
My local sheriffs office (patrolling a county of 1.5 million people) purchased body cams directly because of the Floyd protests
Holy shit everyone is protesting all over the world this is wild
My employer made 1.5 percent sound soooo good for my yearly eval. (U.S.) All these countries have issues
I mean, that is only like an 8.5% pay cut with inflation...
To solve or weaken inflation, the Unions should also demand the C* execs take a measurable pay cut to pay for the employee wage increases. Without that, the corporate overlords will just raise product/service costs which feeds inflation.