Senate The Labor Movement, Labor Struggles, and Labor Relations - General Discussion

Sounds very close to the kind of job I did @jcgoble3

Another issue was that if a coworker calls out or doesn't show, you could expect to have twice the labor (customer service in my experience) with no extra pay.

About jobs like Instacart or Doordash, they do seem like a good way to make money on your own time- I would do those if I had a car and the time.

 

OK City Apple store votes to unionize.

 

Starbucks closed by the mall in Eugene. The union campaign continues here.

My cis gf came up with a good joke about Libertarians after some around here argued against unionization. She said, "A Libertarian is a house cat. They're fiercely independent, but their life is controlled by forces they cannot understand."

 

Anakinfan, do you or any one else here know the merits of unionizing across companies? Or should unions stick to whatever tent under which they dwell? Are there pros and cons to both concepts?

That is a good joke, though. Libertarians in Texas did smoke plenty of weed, I recall.

 

My union (Rail, Maritime and Transport) RMT works across different sectors and companies. I suppose one of the benefits is that a maritime worker (such as myself) can be asked to provide support to a demonstration concerning rail workers and vice versa. Because the union is vast, we can be mobilised to write to politicians or boycott companies in much bigger numbers.

As far as drawbacks go, I’d say that such a union can be stretched thin and focus all it’s attention on the pressing issues of the day (such as the current rail strikes) whilst ignoring less high-profile issues occurring in other companies/sectors.

So, a big cross-company/cross-industry union has much more clout. But a union representing a single company would have more focus on the needs of all its members.

 

The largest strike in the US of 2022 so far is underway in California. 48,000 University of California academic workers-- not professors but graduate assistants and such-- are demanding large cost of living increases to their pay. These people often teach classes and they're forced to live in their cars or pay over half their incomes in rent.

 

I know that there's coordination under way to get others to support them from other universities as I saw the email a few days ago about getting people over to support them.

 

Having been a GTA, I can sympathize.

 

Looks like a good deal.

 

Have I mentioned recently how fiercely I despise the Democratic Party?

Just wanted to post a few tidbits, in the aftermath of the greatest betrayal of Labor by Democrats since NAFTA.

(Thanks to David Sirota, Counterpunch's Jeffrey St. Clair, and The Lever for succinct summaries.)

-The railroad barons have donated over $20 million to Democrats in the past decade
https://www.opensecrets.org/industries/totals.php?cycle=2022&ind=m04

-Here's list of the House Dems who voted against the strike-breaking bill: (Rashida Tlaib, as always, proves to be the most principled of the sorry lot known as The Squad)
Rep. Norma Torres (CA-35)
Rep. Rashida Tlaib (MI-13)
Rep. Mary Peltola (AK-01)
Rep. Mark Pocan (WI-02)
Rep. Donald Norcross (NJ-01)
Rep. Jared Golden (ME-02)
Rep. Mark DeSaulnier (CA-11)
Rep. Judy Chu (CA-27)

-Here's an open letter to pressure that sack of @#$% to use his executive authority to help these workers:
https://the.levernews.com/general-rail-sick-days-action-open-letter/

 

So, a quarter of the Democrats that voted against that bill were elected in instant runoff votes.

 

For what it's worth, some of those who voted for the bill-- including Cori Bush, Ilhan Omar, AOC, and Jamaal Bowman-- did so because the provision with sick days could not advance to the Senate unless the bill without sick days also did. They voted in consultation with the unions. It was a long shot, but the strategy was fighting in the Senate for the sick days.

 

Okay, but they knew that it was going to die in the Senate. We all knew this. The only way for the workers to get what they need is to strike and (hopefully) cripple the economy. By voting for the bill they prevented the workers from striking. They knew this.

 

Adding the sick days involved some arcane procedure. The House had enough votes to crush the strike with or without that handful of representatives; the sick day provision required their votes. I agree that the strategy was never going to work (they all recognized it was a long shot) and Congress has no business imposing a contract on workers, but there wasn't anything a few Congresspeople could do to stop it. I do think the workers should strike anyway, but that's up to them alone.

 

Absolutely. Once this passed the House, the strikebreak was as inevitable as the defeat of Build Back Better (following its decoupling from that paltry Infrastructure bill).

A united "progressive" front (sadly, I have to use quotations now) could have bought enough time for the railroad strikers to bring commerce to a screeching halt. As it stands, they buckled--as always.

 

People often get confused: the Congressional Progressive Caucus, led by Pramila Jayapal, is an official organization of about a hundred Congresspeople. There are few barriers for entry or mechanism for discipline, so people can and do self-label as "progressive," join the caucus and hold it back. "The Squad" is an unofficial media-generated label for a relative handful of representatives who may or may not work together.

 

I'm aware of the difference, but it's incumbent on the Squad to provide some sort of barrier against corporatist-inspired legislation as well as clarion calls for a broader national debate (which, if impassioned and popular enough, could force members of the broader, amorphous CPC to at least sweat a bit). Their resistance to this appalling anti-labor action was underwhelming, to say the least.

Like many fellow activists, I've become completely disenchanted with the majority of Squad members. With few exceptions--Rashida Tlaib the most notable--they just don't have the verve and guile to challenge the leadership.

 

They don't have the numbers in most cases.

 

There's an intensely lively debate on this at Bad Faith. Ryan Grim's heart is in the right place, but Kshama Sawant makes mincemeat out of his arguments.

 

To progressives (and soc dems) it feels like the squad "betrayed" rail workers, but us far left tankies know it's not a betrayal: capitalists, of any kind, are never on the side of labor.

 

Definitely feel this.. I'm home recovering from a surgery right now and have another day off still. Maybe one more. And a week next year for another surgery.

Can't imagine having ONE sick day.