cross-posted from: https://piefed.social/c/[email protected]/p/2182504/there-s-something-to-be-said-for-the-direct-approach
I was once in an interview where they said “the union and the management get along great” and in my head I thought “ah, so there’s not really a union”
Eh this isn’t necessarily true. My workplace has a very established union culture, and management is very aware of how they’re restricted by it, and they know not to push it.
I think that middle management here is also actually unionized (different union), so I imagine that helps.
It’s fucking awesome, by the way. Being in a union that is.
Add in management that understands that happy union workers are dedicated and stay longer and you’ve got a recipe for a good working relationship.
When the workers lost this we lost the class war
Sometimes things have to get real bad before people are willing to step up. That doesn’t mean that day isn’t coming, it just means it isn’t today. It took 100 years of wildcat strikes, violence, vandalism, and governments mass-murdering their own people in the 19th century before the wins of the 20th were finally realized. Organize. Organize and build networks of people who can move goods and people. An army is like a knife, the cutting edge may be where the drama happens, but if there isn’t a whole lot of metal supporting that edge, it’s just a fragile wire.
Whether the class war is lost has yet to be determined.
It’s lost every single day until it’s won. This why a general strike is illegal.
The sheer scale of globalized business means this is largely a non-issue for the company. You burn down their factory in New Jersey, there’s 10 other factories in other countries they can lean on to make up the shortfall. The owner likely hasn’t ever been physically in the factory (possibly even the country itself), so you can’t do the old Wobbly “how about you sign this contract or Mr Pistol gets angry”. Even if you manage that, the executive board will have a new CEO by the end of the month, and a flock of lawyers will find every way to tear that contract to shreds, or they’ll simply shut down your plant (if you’re in the US or a Western nation) or hire death squads to murder you and your union organizing friends (if you aren’t).
What the fuck is this. You burn down the factory in your country and it is now closed off and cannot produce for a considerable length of time. This definitely hurts even a globalized business. Learned helplessness through and through. You have power. You can effect change in a myriad of ways, lawful or not. Don’t assume Goliath has won from his size alone.
The unions are the compromise. Keep preventing us from peaceful bargaining and we’ll go back to burning the boss’ house down.
¯\(ツ)/¯
I agree!
We must do our part to make the rich terrified of us again 🤗
Can we start with the data centers?
Perhaps, we should also kill a few billionaires
I agree
21st centuryunions*business unions
The labor movement is old, and old movements are extremely complex. Business unions took hold during the second red scare and have dominated for decades. They act like a service to workers and don’t recognize the class war.
Class Struggle unions are still extremely militant. You want to know why SpaceX and Trader Joe’s are trying to ban the nlrb? Because Class Struggle Unionism is taking over again.
businesstrade unionsNo, in this case business describes how the union functions. A business union like the NEA is prone to union busting their staff. With a business union, you go to a steward with an issue and they say that they’ll take care of it.
A class struggle union is typically lean on staff and the local is handled by volunteer members. Stewards work with the member when there’s a problem to try and find a solution collaboratively. It fuels the “injury to one, injury to all” mentality.
Trade union just defines a union within an industry. WGA is a trade union for the entertainment industry, IBEW is a trade union for electrical workers, NALC is the trade union for the post office, Teamsters is the trade union for truck drivers, etc.
If the factory burns, the boss gets the insurance money and the workers lose their jobs.
Insurance only covers the PAPER value of the asset, It doesn’t factor at all the lost profiy, revenue, productivity, the years it could take to build a new one, etc. Not to mention irreplaceable machinery that has been out of production for decades, and replacement would require reverse engineering, and rebuilding it part by part.
Part of my job is taking broken, rusted bits of scrap metal and figuring out what it used to look like so a new one can be made. That’s an expensive and time consuming process and I bet its also not covered by insurance.
There’s no rebuilding. The boss just gets a bunch of money and move to another business. It’s like insurance fraud but without the risks, because the arson is made by someone else.
🔥
Last time I checked the boss would have had someone put a bullet in your head for threatening to burn down the factory in the 20th century.
They didn’t stop doing this because people protested, they stopped doing it because they wanted to. Everyone likes to grossly misrepresent the power of the people.
Laughs in armed workers
You should study the history of this. Your perception and reality don’t coincide.
Violence is always a last resort, an means to a end, if a compromise is not possible, then violence is inevitable
It is always the wealthy, the rich and the powerful who have forced our hands
Besides, what choice do we have? They left us with no choice
No I mean you perception that workers using violence lead to their rights. This is not really accurate. If you are looking at the numbers such as workers versus industrialist killed it is not a good ratio.
Violence was sanctioned and used against workers with impunity. When the workers did fight back with violence they were forcibly put down and sent to prison.
Simply put, It is not because they were scared of the workers. This is nonsense. I suppose you could attribute collection action, but more importantly it was lobbying the government for protections and succeeding in convincing the wealthy that it was a better arrangement for all parties.
Ok, fine. It was violence, and negotiations and lobbying. Besides, the moderates can’t get the compromises and workers rights annd asking politely for workers rights without and another group of workers committing violence.
It was not violence as I am explaining to you. The violence was always directed at the workers. If the workers did engage in violence they were either tried and sentenced to death or prison. Most of the time they were just killed.
https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/theminewars-labor-wars-us/
