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mostlysignssomeportents · 1 year

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How unions won a 30% raise for every fast food worker in California

Tonight (September 14), I'm hosting the EFF Awards in San Francisco. On September 22, I'm (virtually) presenting at the DIG Festival in Modena, Italy.

Anything that can't go on forever will eventually stop. 40 years of declining worker power shattered the American Dream (TM), producing multiple generations whose children fared worse than their parents, cratering faith in institutions and hope for a better future.

The American neoliberal malaise – celebrated in by "centrists" who insisted that everything was fine and nothing could be changed – didn't just lead to a sense of helplessness, but also hopelessness. Denialism and nihilism are Siamese twins, and the YOLO approach to the climate emergency, covid mitigation, the housing crisis and other pressing issues can't be disentangled from the Thatcherite maxim that "There is NoA lternative." If there's no alternative, then we're doomed. Dig a hole, climb inside, pull the dirt down on top of yourself.

But anything that can't go on forever will eventually stop. For decades, leftists have taken a back seat to liberals in the progressive coalition, allowing "unionize!" to be drowned out by "learn to code!" The liberal-led coalition ceded the mantle of radical change to fake populist demagogues on the right.

This opened a space for a mirror-world politics that insisted that "conservatives" were the true defenders of women (because they were transphobes), of bodily autonomy (because they were vaccine deniers), of the environment (because they opposed wind-farms) and of workers (because they opposed immigration):

https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/05/not-that-naomi/#if-the-naomi-be-klein-youre-doing-just-fine

Anything that can't go on forever will eventually stop. A new coalition dedicated to fighting corporate power has emerged, tackling capitalism's monopoly power, and the corruption and abuse of workers it enables. That coalition is global, it's growing, and it's kicking ass.

Case in point: California just passed a law that will give every fast-food worker in the state a 30% raise. This law represents a profound improvement to the lives of the state's poorest workers – workers who spend long hours feeding their neighbors, but often can't afford to feed themselves at the end of a shift.

But just as remarkable as the substance of this new law is the path it took – a path that runs through a new sensibility, a new vibe, that is more powerful than mere political or legal procedure. The story is masterfully told in The American Prospect by veteran labor writer Harold Meyerson:

https://prospect.org/labor/2023-09-13-half-million-california-workers-get-raise/

The story starts with Governor Newsom signing a bill to create a new statewide labor-business board to mediate between workers and bosses, with the goal of elevating the working conditions of the state's large, minimum-wage workforce. The passage of this law triggered howls of outrage from the state's fast-food industry, who pledged to spend $200m to put forward a ballot initiative to permanently kill the labor-business board.

This is a familiar story. In 2019, California's state legislature passed AB-5, a bill designed to end the gig-work fiction that people whose boss is an algorithm are actually "independent businesses," rather than employees. AB5 wasn't perfect – it swept up all kinds of genuine freelancers, like writers who contributed articles to many publications – but the response wasn't aimed at fixing the bad parts. It was designed to destroy the good parts.

After AB-5, Uber and Lyft poured more than $200m into Prop 22, a ballot initiative designed to permanently bar the California legislature from passing any law to protect "gig workers." Prop 22's corporate backers flooded the state with disinformation, and procured a victory in 2020. The aftermath was swift and vicious, with Prop 22 used as cover in mass-firings of unionized workers across the state's workforce:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/01/05/manorialism-feudalism-cycle/#prop22

Workers and the politicians who defend them were supposed to be crushed by Prop 22. Its message was "there is no alternative." "Abandon hope all ye who enter here." "Resistance is futile." Prop 22 was worth spending $200m on because it wouldn't just win this fight – it would win all fights, forever.

But that's not what happened. When the fast-food barons announced that they were going to pump another $200m into a state ballot initiative to kill fair wages for food service workers, they got a hell of a surprise. SEIU – a union that has long struggled to organize fast-food workers – collaborated with progressive legislators to introduce a pair of new, even further-reaching bills.

One bill would have made the corporate overseers of franchise businesses jointly liable for lawbreaking by franchisees – so if a McDonald's restaurant owner stole their employees' wages, McDonalds corporate would also be on the hook for the offense. The second bill would restore funding and power to the state Industrial Welfare Commission, which once routinely intervened to set wages and working standards in many state industries:

https://www.gtlaw-laborandemployment.com/2023/08/the-california-iwc-whats-old-is-new-again/

Fast-food bosses fucked around, and boy did they find out. Funding for the IWC passed the state budget, and the franchisee joint liability is set to pass the legislature this week. The fast-food bosses cried uncle and begged Newsom's office for a deal. In exchange for defunding the IWC and canceling the vote on the liability bill, the industry has agreed to an hourly wage increase for the state's 550,000 fast-food workers, from $15.50 to $20, taking effect in April.

The deal also includes annual raises of either 3.5% or the real rise in cost of living. It keeps the labor-management council that the original bill created (the referendum on killing that council has been cancelled). The council will include two franchisees, two fast food corporate reps, two union reps, two front-line fast-food workers and a member of the public. It will have the power to direct the state Department of Labor to directly regulate working conditions in fast-food restaurants, from health and safety to workplace violence.

It's been nearly a century since business/government/labor boards like this were commonplace. The revival is a step on the way to bringing back the practice of sectoral bargaining, where workers set contracts for all employers in an industry. Sectoral bargaining was largely abolished through the dismantling of the New Deal, though elements of it remain. Entertainment industry unions are called "guilds" because they bargain with all the employers in their sector – which is why all of the Hollywood studios are being struck by SAG-AFTRA and the WGA.

So what changed between 2020 – when rideshare bosses destroyed democratic protections for workers by flooding the zone with disinformation to pass Prop 22 – and 2023, when the fast food bosses folded like a cheap suit? It wasn't changes to the laws governing ballot initiatives, nor was it a lack of ready capital for demolishing worker rights. Fast food executives weren't visited by three ghosts in the night who convinced them to care for their workers. Their hearts didn't grow by three sizes.

What changed was the vibe. The Hot Labor Summer was a rager, and it's not showing any signs of slowing. Obviously that's true in California, where nurses and hotel workers are also striking, and where strikebreaking companies like Instawork ("Uber for #scabs") attract swift regulatory sanction, rather than demoralized capitulation:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/07/30/computer-says-scab/#instawork

The hot labor summer wasn't a season – it was a turning point. Everyone's forming unions. Think of Equity Strip NoHo, the first strippers' union in a generation, which won recognition from their scumbag bosses at North Hollywood's Star Garden Club, who used every dirty trick to kill workplace democracy.

The story of the Equity Strippers is amazing. Two organizers, Charlie and Lilith, appeared on Adam Conover's Factually podcast to describe the incredible creativity and solidarity they used to win recognition, and the continuing struggle to get a contract out of their bosses, who are still fucking around and assuming they will not find out:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_fgXihmHIZk

Like the fast-food bosses, the Star Garden's owners are in for a surprise. One of the most powerful elements of the Equity Strippers' story is the solidarity of their customers. Star Garden's owners assumed that their clientele were indiscriminate, horny assholes who didn't care about the wellbeing of the workers they patronized, and would therefore cross a picket-line because parts is parts.

Instead, the bar's clientele sided with the workers. People everywhere are siding with workers. A decade ago, when video game actors voted on a strike, the tech workers who coded the games were incredibly hostile to them. "Why should you get residuals for your contribution to this game when we don't?"

But SAG-AFTRA members who provide voice acting for games just overwhelmingly voted to authorize a strike, and this time the story is very different. This time, tech workers are ride-or-die for their comrades in the sound booths:

https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/business/story/2023-09-13/video-game-voice-actor-sag-strike-interactive-agreement-actors-strike

What explains the change in tech workers' animal sentiments? Well, on the one hand, labor rights are in the air. The decades of cartoonish, lazy dismissals of labor struggles have ended. And on the other hand, tech workers have been proletarianized, with 260,000 layoffs in the sector, including 12,000 layoffs at Google that came immediately after a stock buyback that would have paid those 12,000 salaries for the next 27 years:

https://doctorow.medium.com/the-proletarianization-of-tech-workers-ad0a6b09f7e6

Larry Lessig once laid out a theory of change that holds that our society is governed by four forces: law (what's legal), norms (what's socially acceptable), markets (what's profitable) and code (what's technologically possible):

https://cs.stanford.edu/people/eroberts/cs181/projects/2010-11/CodeAndRegulation/about.html

These four forces interact. When queer relationships were normalized, it made it easier to legalize them, too – and then the businesses that marriage equality became both a force for more normalization and legal defense.

When Lessig formulated this argument, much of the focus was on technology – how file-sharing changed norms, which changed law. But as the decades passed, I've come to appreciate what the argument says about norms, the conversations we have with one another.

Neoliberalism wants you to think that you're an individual, not a member of a polity. Neoliberalism wants you to bargain with your boss as a "free agent," not a union member. It wants you to address the climate emergency by recycling more carefully – not by demanding laws banning single-use plastics. It wants you to fight monopolies by shopping harder – not by busting trusts.

But that's not what we're doing – not anymore. We're forming unions. We're demanding a Green New Deal. And we're busting some trusts. The DoJ Antitrust Division case against Google is the (first) trial of the century, reviving the ancient and noble practice of fighting monopolies with courts, not empty platitudes.

The trial is incredible, and Yosef Weitzman's reporting on Big Tech On Trial is required reading. I'm following it closely (thankfully, there's a fulltext RSS feed):

https://www.bigtechontrial.com/p/what-makes-google-great

The neoliberal project of instilling learned helplessness about corporate power has hit the wall, and it's wrecked. The same norms that made us furious enough to put Google on trial are the norms that made us angry – not cynical – about Clarence Thomas's bribery scandals:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/06/clarence-thomas/#harlan-crow

And they're the same norms that made us support our striking comrades, from hotel housekeepers to Hollywood actors, from strippers to Starbucks baristas:

https://thetyee.ca/News/2023/09/13/Starbucks-Workers-Back-At-Strike/

Yes, Starbucks baristas. The Starbucks unions that won hard-fought recognition drives are now fighting the next phase of corporate fuckery: Starbucks corporate's refusal to bargain for a contract. Starbucks is betting that if they just stall long enough, the workers who support the union will move on and they'll be able to go back to abusing their workers without worrying about a union.

They're fucking around, and they're finding out. Starbucks workers at two shops in British Columbia – Clayton Crossing in Surrey and Valley Centre in Langley – have authorized strikes with a 91% majority:

https://thetyee.ca/News/2023/09/13/Starbucks-Workers-Back-At-Strike/

Where did the guts to do this come from? Not from labor law, which remains disgustingly hostile to workers (though that's changing, as we'll see below). It came from norms. It came from getting pissed off and talking about it. Shouting about it. Arguing about it.

Laws, markets and code matter, but they're nothing without norms. That's why Uber and Lyft were willing to spend $200m to fight fair labor practices. They didn't just want to keep their costs low – they wanted to snuff out the vibe, the idea that workers deserve a fair deal.

They failed. The idea didn't die. It thrived. It merged with the idea that corporations and the wealthy corrupt our society. It was joined by the idea that monopolies harm us all. They're losing. We're winning.

The BC Starbucks workers secured 91% majorities in their strike votes. This is what worker power looks like. As Jane McAlevey writes in her Collective Bargain, these supermajorities – ultramajorities – are how we win.

https://doctorow.medium.com/a-collective-bargain-a48925f944fe

The neoliberal wing of the Democratic party hires high-priced consultants who advise them to seek 50.1% margins of victory – and then insist that nothing can be done because we live in the Manchin-Synematic Universe, where razor-thin majorities mean that there is no alternative. Labor organizers fight for 91% majorities – in the face of bosses' gerrymandering, disinformation and voter suppression – and get shit done.

Shifting the norms – having the conversations – is the tactic, but getting shit done is the goal. The Biden administration – a decidedly mixed bag – has some incredible, technically skilled, principled fighters who know how to get shit done. Take Lina Khan, who revived the long-dormant Section 5 of the Federal Trade Act, which gives her broad powers to ban "unfair and deceptive" practices:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/01/10/the-courage-to-govern/#whos-in-charge

Khan's wielding this broad power in all kinds of exciting ways. For example, she's seeking a ban on noncompetes, a form of bondage that shackles workers to shitty bosses by making it illegal to work for anyone else in the same industry:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/02/02/its-the-economy-stupid/#neofeudal

Noncompete apologists argue that these merely protect employers' investment in training and willingness to share sensitive trade secrets with employees. But the majority of noncompetes are applied to fast food workers – yes, the same workers who just won a 30%, across-the-board raise – in order to prevent Burger King cashiers from seeking $0.25/hour more at a local Wendy's.

Meanwhile, the most trade-secret intensive, high-training industry in the world – tech – has no noncompetes. That's not because tech bosses are good eggs who want to do right by their employees – it's because noncompetes are banned in California, where tech is headquartered.

But in other states, where noncompetes are still allowed, bosses have figured out how to use them as a slippery slope to a form of bondage that beggars the imagination. I'm speaking of the Training Repayment Agreement Provision (AKA, the TRAP), a contractual term that forces workers who quit or get fired to pay their ex-bosses tens of thousands of dollars, supposedly to recoup the cost of training them:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/08/04/its-a-trap/#a-little-on-the-nose

Now, TRAPs aren't just evil, they're also bullshit. Bosses show pet-groomers or cannabis budtenders a few videos, throw them a three-ring binder, and declare that they've received a five-figure education that they must repay if they part ways with their employers. This gives bosses broad latitude to abuse their workers and even order them to break the law, on penalty of massive fines for quitting.

If this sounds like an Unfair Labor Practice to you, you're not alone. NLRB General Counsel Jennifer Abruzzo agrees with you. She's another one of those Biden appointees with a principled commitment to making life better for American workers, and the technical chops to turn that principle into muscular action.

In a case against Juvly Aesthetics – an Ohio-based chain of "alternative medicine" and "aesthetic services" – Abruzzo argues that noncompetes and TRAPs are Unfair Labor Practices that violate the National Labor Relations Act and cannot be enforced:

https://www.nlrb.gov/case/09-CA-300239

Two ex-Juvly employees have been hit with $50-60k "repayment" bills for quitting – one after refusing to violate Ohio law by performing "microneedling," another for quitting after having their wages stolen and then refusing to sign an "exit agreement":

https://prospect.org/labor/2023-09-14-nlrb-complaint-calls-noncompete-agreement-unfair-labor-practice/

If the NLRB wins, the noncompete and TRAP clauses in the workers' contracts will be voided, and the workers will get fees, missed wages, and other penalties. More to the point, the case will set the precedent that noncompetes are generally unenforceable nationwide, delivering labor protection to every worker in every sector in America.

Abruzzo has been killing it lately: just a couple weeks ago, she set a precedent that any boss that breaks labor law during a union drive automatically loses, with instant recognition for the union as a penalty (rather than a small fine, as was customary):

https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/06/goons-ginks-and-company-finks/#if-blood-be-the-price-of-your-cursed-wealth

Abruzzo is amazing – as are her colleagues at the NLRB, FTC, DOJ, and other agencies. But the law they're making is downstream of the norms we set. From the California lawmakers who responded to fast food industry threats by introducing more regulations to the strip-bar patrons who refused to cross the picket-line to the legions of fans dragging Drew Barrymore for scabbing, the public mood is providing the political will for real action:

https://www.motherjones.com/media/2023/09/drew-barrymores-newest-role-scab/

The issues of corruption, worker rights and market concentration can't – and shouldn't – be teased apart. They're three facets of the same fight – the fight against oligarchy. Rarely do those issues come together more clearly than in the delicious petard-hoisting of Dave Clark, formerly the archvillain of Amazon, and now the victim of its bullying.

As Maureen Tkacik writes for The American Prospect, Clark had a long and storied career as Amazon's most vicious and unassuming ghoul, a sweatervested, Diet-Coke-swilling normie whose mild manner disguised a vicious streak a mile wide:

https://prospect.org/power/2023-09-14-catch-us-if-you-can-dave-clark-amazon/

Clark earned his nickname, "The Sniper," as a Kentucky warehouse supervisor; the name came from his habit of "lurking in the shadows [and] scoping out slackers he could fire." Clark created Amazon Flex, the "gig work" version of Amazon delivery drivers where randos in private vehicles were sent out to delivery parcels. Clark also oversaw tens of millions of dollars in wage-theft from those workers.

We have Clark to thank for the Amazon drivers who had to shit in bags and piss in bottles to make quota. Clark was behind the illegal union-busting tactics used against employees in the Bessamer, Alabama warehouse. We have Clark to thank for the Amazon chat app that banned users from posting the words "restroom," "slave labor," "plantation," and "union":

https://pluralistic.net/2022/04/05/doubleplusrelentless/#quackspeak

But Clark doesn't work for Amazon anymore. After losing a power-struggle to succeed Jeff Bezos – the job went to "longtime rival" Andy Jassy – he quit and went to work for Flexport, a logistics company that promised to provide sellers that used non-Amazon services with shipping. Flexport did a deal with Shopify, becoming its "sole official logistics partner."

But then Shopify did another logistics deal – with Amazon. Clark was ordered to tender his resignation or face immediate dismissal.

How did all this happen? Well, there are two theories. The first is that Shopify teamed up with Amazon to stab Flexport in the back, then purged all the ex-Amazonians from the Flexport upper ranks. The other is that Clark was a double-agent, who worked with Amazon to sabotage Flexport, and was caught and fired.

But either way, this is a huge win for Amazon, a monopolist who is in the FTC's crosshairs thanks to the anti-corporate vibe-shift that has consumed the nation and the world. As the sole major employer for this kind of logistics, Amazon is a de facto labor regulator, deciding who can work in the sector. The FTC's enforcement action isn't just about monopoly – it's about labor.

Now, Clark is a rich, powerful white dude, not the sort of person who needs a lot of federal help to protect his labor rights. When liberals called the shot in the progressive coalition, they scolded leftists not to speak of class, but rather to focus on identity – to be intersectionalists.

That was a trick. There's no incompatibility between caring about class and caring about gender, race and sexual orientation. Those fast food workers who are about to get a 30% wage-hike in California? Overwhelmingly Black or brown, overwhelmingly female.

The liberal version of intersectionalism observes a world run by 150 rich white men and resolves to replace half of them with women, queers and people of color. The leftist version seeks to abolish the system altogether. The leftist version of intersectionalism cares about bias and discrimination not just because of how it makes people feel, but because of how it makes them live. It cares about wages, housing, vacations, child care – the things you can't get because of your identity.

The fight for social justice is a fight for worker justice. Eminently guillotineable monsters like Tim "Avocado Toast" Gurner advocate for increasing unemployment by "40-50%" – but Gurner is just saying what other bosses are thinking:

https://jacobin.com/2023/09/tim-gurner-capitalists-neoliberalism-unemployment-precarity

Garner is 100% right when he says: "There’s been a systematic change where employees feel the employer is extremely lucky to have them, as opposed to the other way around."

And then he says this: "So it’s a dynamic that has to change. We’ve got to kill that attitude, and that has to come through hurt in the economy."

Garner knows that the vibes are upstream of the change. The capitalist dream starts with killing our imagination, to make us believe that "there is no alternative." If we can dream bigger than "better representation among oligarchs" when we might someday dream of no oligarchs. That's what he fears the most.

Watch the video of Garner. Look past the dollar-store Gordon Gecko styling. That piece of shit is terrified.

And he should be.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/14/prop-22-never-again/#norms-code-laws-markets

EFF Awards, San Francisco, September 14

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eretzyisrael · 4 months

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by Dion J. Pierre

The US House of Representatives has launched an investigation into 20 nonprofit organizations that are currently funding anti-Zionist student groups mounting pro-Hamas demonstrations on college campuses, an effort aimed at uncovering long suspected links to terrorist organizations and other hostile foreign entities.

As part of the inquiry, US Reps. Virginia Foxx (R-NC) and James Comer (R-KY) wrote to Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen on Tuesday, asking her to share any “suspicious activity reports” generated by the activities of Students for Justice in Palestine, Jewish Voice for Peace, American Muslims for Palestine, Tides Foundation, Rockefeller Brothers Fund, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the Council on American-Islamic Relations, and other groups.

Foxx and Comer chair the House Committee on Education and the Workforce and the House Committee on Oversight and Accountability, respectively.

“The committees are investigating the sources of funding and financing for groups who are organizing, leading, and participating in pro-Hamas, antisemitic, anti-Israel, and anti-American protests with illegal encampments on American college campuses,” Foxx and Comer wrote in their letter to Yellen. “This investigation relates to both malign influence on college campuses and to the national security implications of such influence on faculty and student organizations.”

The inquiry comes amid widespread suspicion that an eruption of anti-Zionist protests on college campuses, in which students illegally occupied sections of section and refused to leave unless their schools agreed to condemn and boycott Israel, was fueled by immense financial and logistical support from outside groups. Foxx and Comer said in their letter that the investigation’s findings will inform recommendations for new federal laws requiring increased transparency and reporting of foreign contributions to American colleges and universities.

On Tuesday, Foxx told the Washington Free Beacon, which first reported the investigation, that the protests were a symptom of a larger threat to national security.

“It’s no coincidence that the day after the October 7 Hamas terrorist attack, antisemitic mobs began springing up at college campuses across the country,” Foxx said. “These protests have been coordinated and well organized, indicating that outside groups or influences may be at play. American education is under attack. It’s critical that Congress investigates how these groups — who are tearing apart our institutions — are being funded and advised before it’s too late.”

Foreign links to the anti-Zionist student movement have been the subject of numerous comprehensive studies.

Last week, the Network Contagion Research Institute (NCRI) published a report showing a connection between the anti-Zionist group Shut It Down for Palestine (SID4P) — a group formed immediately after Hamas’ massacre on Oct. 7 — and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). NCRI explained that SID4P, which organized numerous traffic-obstructing demonstrations after Oct. 7, is an umbrella group for several other organizations which compose the “Singham Network,” a consortium of far-left groups funded by Neville Roy Singham and Jodie Evans. The report describes Singham and Evans as a “power couple within the global far-left movement” whose affiliation with the CCP has been copiously documented.

“The Singham Network exploits regulatory loopholes in the US nonprofit system to facilitate the flow of an enormous sum of US dollars to organizations and movements that actively stoke social unrest at the grassroots level,” the report said. “Alternative media outlets associated with the Singham Network have played a central role in online mobilization and cross-platform social amplification for SID4P.”

In 2022, the National Association of Scholars (NAS) revealed that one of the founders of Students for Justice in Palestine, Hatem Bazian, is also a co-founder of American Muslims for Palestine, an advocacy group which, NAS said, “retains ties to terrorist groups operating in the Palestinian Territories.”

NAS added that the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic Cultural Boycott of Israel — which has been influential is steering the boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel in academia — is “structurally linked” to Palestinian terrorist organizations through the Council of National and Islamic Forces in Palestine — a member of the Palestinian BDS National Committee which comprises Hamas, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), Popular Front-General Command, Palestinian Liberation Front, and Palestinian Islamic Jihad.

“On the one hand, BDS is designed to secure political legitimacy vis-á-vis Israel, with boycotts and divestment offering Palestinian activists and terrorists new domains to assert their cause,” NAS senior fellow Ian Oxnevad wrote. “On the other hand, BDS, along with the formation of multiple NGOs and nonprofit organizations, offers the Palestinians new avenues by which to access funding in a post-9/11 international financial system designed to curtail funding for terrorism.”

#anti-zionists #protests #students for justice in palestine #bds #virginia fox #james comer #investigation

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justinspoliticalcorner · 3 months

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Christopher Wiggins at The Advocate:

The federal government is poised to apologize for decades of intolerance toward the LGBTQ+ community. U.S. Senators Tim Kaine, a Democrat from Virginia, and Tammy Baldwin, a Democrat from Wisconsin who is the first out LGBTQ+ person elected to the Senate, have introduced a resolution on Tuesday that seeks to formally apologize for the historical discrimination faced by LGBTQ+ people in the federal workforce. The resolution, introduced during Pride Month, acknowledges the mistreatment and wrongful terminations of LGBTQ+ civil servants, foreign service officers, and service members, dating back to 1949.

“LGBT civil servants, foreign service officers, and service members have made countless sacrifices and contributions to our country and national security. Despite this, our government has subjected them to decades of harassment, invasive investigations, and wrongful termination because of who they are or who they love,” Kaine said in a press release. “This Pride Month, I’m proud to lead this resolution alongside Senator Baldwin to reaffirm our commitment to righting our past wrongs and fighting for equality for all LGBT Americans.”

A dark chapter in history

The resolution highlights the Lavender Scare, a period from the early 1940s through the 1960s during which queer federal employees were targeted and persecuted. This era, marked by heightened suspicion and discrimination, saw thousands of federal workers lose their jobs due to their sexual orientation. The most recent wave of such discrimination was perpetuated by the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy, which was in effect from 1994 to 2011 and led to the discharge of more than 100,000 LGBTQ+ military service members.

The resolution acknowledges the extensive harm caused by these discriminatory policies, stating, “the Federal Government discriminated against and terminated hundreds of thousands of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender individuals who served the United States in the uniformed services, the Foreign Service, and the Federal civil service for decades, causing untold harm to those individuals professionally, financially, socially, and medically, among other harms.”

[...]

Support and future steps

The resolution is co-sponsored by a host of prominent Democratic senators, including Chris Coons of Delaware, Jeff Merkley from Oregon, Pennsylvania’s John Fetterman, Patty Murray from Washington, Brian Schatz of Hawaii, Jeanne Shaheen from New Hampshire, Bob Casey from Pennsylvania, Dick Durbin of Illinois, Massachusetts’s Edward Markey, Richard Blumenthal from Connecticut, Ben Cardin of Maryland, Rhode Island’s Sheldon Whitehouse, Kirsten Gillibrand of New York, Colorado’s Michael Bennet, Ron Wyden from Oregon, Sherrod Brown of Ohio, and Virginia’s Mark R. Warner.

What happens next?

The Senate will now review the resolution. If it gains sufficient support, it will proceed to a vote. If passed, it will serve as a formal acknowledgment and apology for the historical injustices faced by LGBTQ+ federal employees.

Tim Kaine and Tammy Baldwin, a pair of Democratic Senators, introduced a resolution seeking a formal apology for decades of anti-LGBTQ+ discrimination in the federal government, especially during the Lavender Scare era.

#Lavender Scare #LGBTQ+#US Senate #LGBTQ+ History #American History #LGBT History #Don't Ask Don't Tell #Tammy Baldwin #Tim Kaine #Executive Order 13672

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darkmaga-retard · 2 hours

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by John W. And Nisha Whitehead | Sep 25, 2024

The government wants your money.

It will beg, steal or borrow if necessary, but it wants your money any way it can get it.

The government’s schemes to swindle, cheat, scam, and generally defraud taxpayers of their hard-earned dollars have run the gamut from wasteful pork barrel legislation, cronyism and graft to asset forfeiture, costly stimulus packages, and a national security complex that continues to undermine our freedoms while failing to making us any safer.

Americans have also been made to pay through the nose for the government’s endless wars, subsidization of foreign nations, military empire, welfare state, roads to nowhere, bloated workforce, secret agencies, fusion centers, private prisons, biometric databases, invasive technologies, arsenal of weapons, and every other budgetary line item that is contributing to the fast-growing wealth of the corporate elite at the expense of those who are barely making ends meet—that is, we the taxpayers.

This is what comes of those $1.2 trillion spending bills: someone’s got to foot the bill.

Because the government’s voracious appetite for money, power and control has grown out of control, its agents have devised other means of funding its excesses and adding to its largesse through taxes disguised as fines, taxes disguised as fees, and taxes disguised as tolls, tickets and penalties.

No matter how much money the government pulls in, it’s never enough (case in point: the endless stopgap funding deals and constant ratcheting up of the debt ceiling), so the government has to keep introducing new plans to empower its agents to seize Americans’ bank accounts.

Make way for the digital dollar.

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allthecanadianpolitics · 8 months

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North American energy pipeline operator Enbridge said on Tuesday it will cut its workforce by 650 jobs in a bid to cut costs. The company said the cuts will begin in February and be completed by March 1. It will reduce vacant positions, contract positions and redeploy staff where possible, Enbridge said. "Cost reduction measures are necessary to maintain our financial strength, be more cost-competitive and enable us to grow," Calgary-based Enbridge said in a statement. It said persistent headwinds, including higher interest rates, economic uncertainty and the ripple effects of geopolitical developments, all contribute to increasingly challenging business conditions across many industries.

Tagging @politicsofcanada @abpoli

#cdnpoli #canada #canadian politics #canadian news #alberta #energy #layoffs

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dwellordream · 7 months

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“In the majority of immigrant families and for many working-class families of native-born Americans, the standard middle-class pattern, in which an entire family lived on the income of one man, was completely unachievable. The wages paid to a semi-skilled working man in 1909, for example--between $12 and $15 a week--were simply not enough to sustain a family. In large cities, rent often took between a quarter and a third of the family income and frequently did not include heat or fuel for the stove. Food, purchased daily to avoid spoilage, was relatively expensive. A chicken cost 25 cents, and potatoes were 2 cents a pound. Pennies for the newspaper, nickels for carfare, loaves of bread, and cups of coffee added up fast. Many families had bought their furniture on the installment plan, and many belonged to unions or mutual benefit societies. These payments and dues had to be met monthly.

Working class families adopted a variety of strategies to expand their incomes. In African-American families, where education was prized as a way out of poverty and second-class citizenship, children and teenagers remained in school while their mothers sought work as field hands, domestics, or laundresses. In Northern mill towns, where entire families worked at the textile mill, parents made childcare arrangements with neighbors and relatives for the youngest children so that mothers could work for a share of the family income.

…By far the largest employment sector for young American women, both black and white, was domestic service. In 1900, one-third of all wage-earning women--nearly 2 million of them--worked either as servants in private homes or as waitresses in hotels and restaurants. The great majority of household servants in the North, Midwest, and West were white immigrant women or their daughters, though native-born white women continued to work as domestic servants in country towns and villages. In the south, white middle-class families almost exclusively employed black women as maids, nurses, cooks, and laundresses.

Because the weekly wages of domestic services were comparable to those of factory hands, and room and board were free, domestic service gave immigrant women a chance to save money. Among Irish servants it was common to send money back to relatives in Ireland or to pay ship’s passage for parents and siblings who wanted to immigrate to America. Women from other immigrant groups--Germans, Scandinavians, and Slaves, for example--went into domestic service because they spoke little or no English and were unqualified for many other jobs. For some new arrivals domestic service provided a chance to learn a little English and become familiar with American culture.

…The advent of new machinery and new workforce efficiency techniques, called scientific management, contributed to the “deskilling” of labor, either by eliminating tasks formerly done by hand or by breaking the tasks down into ever-smaller segments. In many factories, for example, no worker completed a whole garment or shoe by himself, and no one needed more than a day’s training to learn the simple, repetitive work. With all these changes in the technology and management of the factory, some men did lose jobs to less-skilled women, who would accept cruelly low wages in order to help their families survive. When working men blamed women for taking their jobs or depressing their wages, they failed to see that it was not the fault of women who needed to work, but the fault of an industrial system organized solely for profit.

Few industrial jobs held any possibility of advancement, and it was not until after World War I that women became job foremen or floor managers to any appreciable extent. Many jobs, like candy making and bookbinding, were subject to seasonal rushes and slack times; women garment makers often found they worked for a 14-hour stretch for three days and then had no work--and no pay--for the rest of the week. Work hours grew shorter, and by 1920, the 54-hour week had become the legal standard in New York and a number of other states.

…For a few years in the 1880s, before it collapsed under its own size and increasing competition from the new American Federation of Labor (AFL), the Knights of Labor had successfully organized hundreds of thousands of skilled and unskilled workers, both men and women, black and white. The AFL, meanwhile, concentrated its energies on organizing unions for skilled male craftsmen. The AFL was not interested in industrial unionism--the organizing of masses of unskilled workers, such as miners or mill workers, by industry rather than by specialized craft. Many Americans, including the AFL leadership, felt that industrial unionism was under the control of revolutionary socialists. They were deeply suspicious of the socialist Industrial Workers of the World, or Wobblies, who were successfully organizing miners and mill workers in the opening years of the 20th century.

The AFL, unlike the Wobblies, ignored African Americans for many years. And, though it did charter a number of women’s local unions between 1890 and 1920, it was heavily biased against women workers. The AFL leadership believed that women should be at home and not in the workplace, and feared that women’s willingness to accept low wages constituted a threat to male jobs and wage levels. The AFL would be very slow to realize that encouraging divisions between men and women workers only retarded the progress of labor unionism as a whole, for women were in the workplace to stay.

..Before 1917, white-collar work was almost exclusively reserved for native-born white women. Immigrants, even second-generation daughters of immigrants who spoke with an accent or had noticeably “foreign” or Jewish names, usually found it impossible to get sales or office jobs. Black women knew that discriminatory hiring practices in both the North and the South made it useless for them even to apply to white-collar office or clerical work in any but black-owned businesses. Increasingly, and mostly in the South, black women were hired to teach black children. By 1910, 22,547 of the nation’s 29,772 black teachers were female.

Similarly, black women entered nursing in growing numbers around 1900, after the founding of a number of black nursing schools in the 1890s. Black nurses worked in the black community and as private nurses; they were denied jobs in white hospitals and in the Army Nurse Corps and the Red Cross. Excluded from membership in the American Nurses Association, they formed their own group in 1908--the National Association of Colored Graduate Nurses.

White women who worked in offices occupied an increasing number of specialized positions as typists, stenographers, shipping and receiving clerks, bookkeepers, cashiers, accountants, or office-machine workers. Their jobs had come with the growth of business and industry and technological advances in business machinery. At the same time that the demand for office staff skyrocketed, the spread of public school education, especially high school training, meant that a growing supply of women was available for office work. By 1915, approximately 50 percent of all office workers, and nearly 85 percent of all typists and stenographers, were women.”

- Karen Manners Smith, “Women at Work.” in New Paths to Power: American Women, 1890-1920

#karen manners smith #20th century #1910s #edwardian #gender #class #servants #new paths to power #1900s

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sunnysssol · 1 year

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Some Suzie headcanons because it's her birthday! 🌟✨️✨

Courageous, intelligent and endlessly determined, Suzie is a kind person despite how cold they initially come across, always willing to help whoever needs it. When helping, she might roll her eyes or sigh at the face of the problem, but "giving up" doesn't quite exist in Suzie's vocabulary— for better or for worse.

Suzie is actually left handed, but they've been trained (read: forced) to become ambidextrous thanks to her tutors growing up. After all, it's not until the late 20th century that the stigma around left-handedness disappeared, and before then it was a widely held belief that left-handedness implies wickedness, or unluckiness.

Suzie's supercomputer brain and overachieving personality work in tandem to create a workaholic whom many Assistants (and by extension, Nations) have never even talked to outside of work-related meetings. They're always doing something, whether it be experimenting or writing and rewriting age-old theories and analyses trying to answer a problem, or out in the world trying to (dis)prove some theory she read about or had for a while, she's always on the go. It's not enough for them to simply learn a skill or understand a concept– they have to do something with it too.

Alongside being enlisted in the army at the time, Suzie had also been hired to work on the Manhattan Project as part of the war effort. Her special position as a Nation Assistant lends itself to a lot of situations, circumstances and sometimes- privileges, that other people of her sex wouldn't be privy to otherwise. The Calutron Girls, that is, the women who worked on the Manhattan Project as operators and technicians crucial to the electromagnetic isotope separation process that would then contribute into the creation of the atomic bomb, were not told of the purpose of the project. It was highly-classified, and only those in higher positions of authority were informed of it.

Her relationship with gender is, as one might guess, a little complicated. Physically, she's very traditionally feminine– from her physical features, to her fashion sense. But personality wise, it's a little different. Yes, her overall high-standards lends Suzie to "typical gf" stereotypes, but the jokes about her wearing the pants in the relationship are not entirely unfounded. Unlike Alfred who feels as though he has to be a leader, Suzie just naturally is, and they've been that way since forever. To keep this post brief, there's always been a lot of challenging gender roles in Suzie's life and she's never been the type to back down from a challenge. They've never really had a label, and it's not like the language existed for it at the time, but for purposes of ease and clarity, Suzie is non-binary.

Suzie is highly skilled in machinery and engineering. Her interest began in the 1730s and flourished in the 1740s, from the introduction of the carding engine, and the numerous innovations in scientific instruments, mathematical theory and watchmaking. She took an interest in steam engines sometime in the 1770s as well, around when the Watt steam engine was first introduced commercially. This interest would continue on into the Industrial Revolution, with Suzie studying and redesigning steam engines for manufacturing, transportation and agricultural processes as a hobby. And in the 1940s, this skill and interest would come in handy when American women began to take on more roles in the workforce, specifically in factories helping with the war effort.

Alfred absolutely blasts Christmas songs in November. It's his most favorite holiday! Well, every holiday is America's favorite holiday, but this one especially! Besides the music, he's already planning activities, what to cook on the day of and what to get everyone on his ever expanding list. Suzie won't blast Christmas songs in November, but they would start decorating immediately after the detritus of Halloween has been cleared up.

"If it doesn't concern me, it's not my problem. I've already got enough on my plate as it is." — Suzie, while a caring person, generally believes in the principle of leaving people and other things alone if she deems that her participation in it is not necessarily important. With everything they do and have done and actually involve(d) themselves in, Suzie has had a mental list of priorities in which they pursue almost religiously. Adjustments do happen, but they're quite few and far in between. First on the list is family and loved ones, of course. Next are things they themselves have committed to either out of their own duties as a Nation Assistant, or just out of her own personal interest and free will.

Besides her work in the States, Suzie had been stationed in Europe for most of WWII, working wherever the higher ups decided they needed her. Administrative/clerical work, supply and logistics, as a radio operator, aerial surveillance, mechanics and maintenance- you name it. But the most significant of all her roles had been in intelligence and cryptography. Having had at least a few centuries of experience in espionage and code-breaking-and-intercepting, Suzie was at least a few leagues ahead of her associates. She's been a civilian since 1945 and hasn't enlisted in the military since, but she worked in gathering intelligence for at least until the early 1980s.

As mentioned earlier, Suzie often works long hours, and even when they're not working, they're probably thinking about it if they're not doing anything else. Highly efficient and focused, she doesn't find herself spaced out very often. But when one sees Suzie staring off into space, she's probably seeing spreadsheets and government seals in her mind's eye. It might be best to give her a tap and talk to her...

And finally, here is the birthday celebrant! She's officially 293 1 year old today!!! 😺🌟✨️

#their bday is august 30 btw !! so today for me #oc: susannah knightley #cc: alfred f jones #sol's writing #hws assistantverse #her cake actually looks good lowkey LOOOLLLL i'd like to think even the little duckies r edible!!! they're made out of chocolate :33 #(alfred voice) call me juli4 ch1ld the way i be cooking! ��🤓🤓#HNSDDSVHJHDFJDSKFDF

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covid-safer-hotties · 8 days

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Research Shows Severe COVID-19 Contributes to Long-Lasting Cognitive Impairment - Published Sept 17, 2024

By: Josh Baxt

In a study that followed COVID-19 patients for two years or more, researchers at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine showed the disease contributes to long-lasting brain fog and other cognitive issues.

These results could be especially concerning for Hispanic, Black and other underrepresented communities, which are already at higher risk for neurocognitive disorders.

The research was published in the journal Plos One.

“We’ve been looking at the relationship between subjective cognitive complaints, such as brain fog, and objective cognition in long COVID, particularly in ethnically and racially diverse groups in South Florida,” said Barbara Junco, M.Sc., clinical research project manager and first author on the study. “We found persistent subjective and objective cognitive issues even two years after infection, including brain fog, word-finding problems, working memory deficits and reduced processing speed.”

“Most Patients Have Never Fully Recovered” Brain fog is a subjective cognitive issue that can include exhaustion, forgetfulness, fatigue and other traits. These and other long-COVID symptoms have forced more than a million Americans to withdraw from the workforce.

“Many patients told us they have never fully recovered,” said Junco. “Their memories are not the same. They can’t work anymore. Some study participants, who are in their fifties and were relatively healthy before COVID, are now disabled. They can no longer function independently.”

The study grew out of a patient registry maintained by Ayham Alkhachroum, M.D., associate professor of clinical neurology at the Miller School and senior author on the paper, which followed COVID patients who had spent time in the ICU. The research team contacted these patients two years after their hospitalization and asked them to complete a series of questionnaires and cognitive tests.

The study queried 41 patients and found their disease severity closely corresponded with their brain fog symptoms and reduced cognitive function. In addition, many of these patients experienced sleep disturbances, including insomnia and obstructive sleep apnea.

The Consequences of the Pandemic While these results contribute to our understanding of how long COVID is affecting people, it is an early effort in an area that warrants extended study.

“This research highlights the enduring consequences of the pandemic, particularly the burden faced by survivors and the need for further research to understand the mechanisms behind COVID-19-related cognitive decline and brain fog,” said co-author Alberto Ramos, M.D., professor of clinical neurology in the Division of Sleep Medicine at the Miller School. “We believe that, with further study, we can develop more effective treatments.”

The authors hope this research will encourage clinicians to pay closer attention to patients with long COVID. In some cases, people might benefit from cognitive rehabilitation or other clinical interventions.

“It’s important for health care providers to be aware of the potential for these long-lasting issues and consider incorporating cognitive testing into their follow-up care,” said Junco. “Early, mild cognitive impairment could put some patients at risk for dementia, and that will be a terrible burden on patients, families and society at large.”

Study Link: journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0309102

#mask up #covid #pandemic #covid 19 #wear a mask #public health #coronavirus #sars cov 2 #still coviding #wear a respirator #long covid

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blakecooley · 2 years

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How to sabotage your work without losing your job (probably)

Hi! Lifelong contrarian and well-known pain in the ass here. I’ve noticed a recent trend following the unsurprisingly quiet death of the conversation around “quiet quitting” and well, I’m hardly seeing anybody talking much anymore about passive resistance at work. Sure, there's always the under the radar talk of big, showy ways of sabotaging your job. That’s great for some. Heck, might even make you feel like a real hero throwing a literal wrench into that conveyor belt. And to those willing to take the risk, cheers! We’re eternally grateful for your contribution in the fight against capitalism! But most of us teeter in a cosmically cruel paradox whereby we recognize that the systems that dictate our lives and extract our very livelihoods in order to fuel itself have likewise arranged themselves to be our sole means of survival in an attempt to guarantee eternal subservience and supply. (We need our jobs. Ew, bummer.)

Look, we all hate them. We all know and understand exactly how wildly unnatural, inhumane and exploitative they are. But goddamn wouldn’t you know it, the local utility just absolutely refuses to barter. And until they do we have to keep going to our stupid, pointless jobs that we know are slowly killing us but(!) don’t give up hope! Just because you can’t afford to lose your job doesn’t mean you can’t make things generally difficult for your employer, slow work down a few ticks and ultimately waste company resources! Today I’m going to offer you a few tried and true tips that I’ve collected along my twenty years as a member of the american workforce on how to quietly and mostly passively sabotage your work. Welcome to the resistance! Time to not get to work!

First up is a hard one that I feel might be met with some criticism. Which, I honestly understand as it seems counterproductive to the overall goal but, you have to be good at your job. I would never ask that anyone care about their job or devote a second more than is contractually required to even thinking about it but everything else is going to be a lot easier to accomplish if you’re not a problem employee. You don’t need to be stellar or outstanding at your job, in fact that would be aggressively productive for the company and ultimately counterproductive to your efforts towards counterproductivity and frankly is a lot of work. But be good enough at it that no one gives you much of a thought. This means avoiding write-ups, being generally present and on time, not being noticeably hungover or stoned at work and most importantly being consistent. Bosses love that shit. People that they can rely on without thinking about them make their lives easier and can often get a little more leeway with the rules. You need this to succeed at failing.

With that out of the way, onward! To impishness and the foiling of toiling!

Slow down. This seems obvious and I won’t spend much time on it but, slow down. Be deliberate, be mindful, be consistent. (There’s that word again!) Be slow. You don’t have to be sluggish or make your motions theatrically drawn out but just move a little more slowly than anyone else. While some are more concretely quantifiable than others, we all have expected productivity rates at our crummy jobs. How many orders have you served? How many phone calls have you taken? How many parcels did you pick, stack, toss or deliver? How many emails did you respond to? Fuck ‘em. Don’t meet these often arbitrary, almost always aggressively enforced, micro-deadlines. Hover. Float along just below quota. Not enough to get in trouble but just enough that other people have to wait on you, consistently. Measure every portion before plating. Run that dishwasher twice. Leave that detailed voicemail to confirm receipt of the email you just sent (I don’t know how office jobs work. Ask your friend who loves Gilmore Girls, they’ll know what not to do and ultimately may be the key to understanding the best ways to get nothing accomplished). Take the stairs, insist on walking, go to the office of someone you could reach by phone or radio and meet face to face, count everything twice, be obnoxiously thorough, do whatever you can however you can do it, just do it slowly. Make yourself a well-meaning but undeniable pain in the ass. Waste company time.

You might be asking now, “Blake, I thought you said you weren’t gonna spend much time on that tip? Sure seems like either this is the beginning of an arduous and lengthy trend or you’re a fucking liar. Perhaps both. Would you like the opportunity to speak to that?”

To which I would say, “Welcome to tip #3! It looks like you might’ve already got this one pretty figured out. Good work, champ. (sly wink (definitely not in a sexual way, unless you're into it in which case, hello there (winks both eyes, slyly)) But that’s right: Asking unnecessary, unanswerable, open-ended and otherwise asinine questions is a great way to waste company time! It’s great to really understand every single, miniscule, esoteric and inscrutable detail of the operation of every facet of your job, of your employer and of the majesty of life all around us. Will you ever realistically need this information? No. Are you ever going to be asked to demonstrate any of this knowledge to maintain your employment? No. Should you still turn that 15 minute meeting into a half hour marathon of interrogation? Abso-fucking-lutely! Should you really ask your elderly, probably q-anon addled, foxmaxxed coworker about that winding and vaguely related to whatever someone else was just talking about, personal story that requires more context to understand than the story conveys? Get fucking real, you beautiful asshole! Learn her whole family history! Learn to love her estranged children more closely than your own! Should you ask your boss about exploring the idea of setting up a meeting with your district manager so that you, and really the whole team, can get a chance to benefit from a more in-depth education about the new product, menu item, system rollout, policy change, or safety guideline update? FUCK YES! YOU GORGEOUS AND BRILLIANT FUCK GOD! Fuck everyone’s day up. Make every single person you interact with late to their next thing. Ask so many inane questions so consistently (fuck yes!!) that your neuroticism has to be soft scheduled into itineraries. Herald yourself among Socrates, Lao Tzu, Al-Khwarizmi, alongside all the great minds of history in your place at the pantheon of curiosity. Leave no one’s schedule, routine or plan intact. Make yourself a well-meaning, curious but undeniable pain in the ass. Waste company time.”

You, out of breath from cumming so hard from thinking about wasting company time after you stopped listening to me three words in, “What?”

This next one’s pretty simple but if executed improperly can backfire in some pretty “Either go see a doctor and find out what’s going on or stop wasting everybody’s time,” kind of ways but: Stay very hydrated. A well hydrated saboteur is a healthy saboteur. A well hydrated saboteur is a saboteur who has to go use the restroom, “Seriously, like every thirty minutes all day. Are you sure you’re okay? You can call it a day if you need to go home or whatever.” You don’t have to live in the bathroom but you should definitely be a regular. And really this is a tactic that you probably can’t employ every day without raising some questions and maybe drawing some medical concern from your employer but if and when it’s appropriate, go nuts! (I feel like if I were responsible or anything near the proximity of a medical professional I would say here that you should drink a lot of water instead of like soda or coffee or energy drinks or whatever cause too much of those sorts of things will probably kill you or something. But also don’t drink too much water cause I heard this story on the radio once about people dying from that too. It mostly seemed like it was accidental deaths during like frat hazing which I mean still sucks but seems pretty unlikely to happen in most daily scenarios so, I don’t know just be careful, okay? You're important, you're loved, we need you and I absolutely refuse to even think about living in a world without you). Remember, it’s not about creating urgency it’s about not getting work done so don’t try to be a hero and hold it in longer than you need to. Drink plenty of water, keep your body comfortable and rest easy knowing that as a pleasant side-effect of your hydration and abundant urination, you are absolutely fucking glowing! Being a saboteur never looked so good! Your skin is clear and radiant and you are wasting company time. Keep it up you stunning fucking fox!

#5(?) As a means of sort of rounding things to a close, my last tip is meant to be taken as broad advice. It’s really more about a general attitude that encapsulates a deliberate indifference instead of being a direct tactic. In all things related to work, be a devout incrementalist. Let your tactics develop slowly, gradually and naturally over time. Develop yourself as a character (maybe with a sexy mustache? Vroom vroom, let's ride!) that performs increasingly elaborate eccentricities which ultimately cost the company whatever unnecessarily expended resources you can scrape out of their coffers. But don't be afraid to let your coworkers be part of that development. Oddities and quirks are often off-putting and can make you unlikeable when meeting new people. People don't like things that they have to think about and anything new or different is challenging. (Don't flatten yourself for the sake of passive resistance though. You are a beautiful, unique and loveable flower. Shining like a star is part of who you are so you better not hide that light you magical fucking goddess! But, maybe remove the shade slowly. Sensually even. Pull the cover down nice and easy and let little rays of light peek through for a while cause you don't wanna blind anyone, you glowing Adonis!) Part of this, and part of class solidarity at large, is being liked by your coworkers. (I know, applying praxis with people who might not explicitly agree with everything you believe. Ew, bummer.) Let them in early, be friendly and do your best to be approachable. Maybe you could try revealing your tactics as mildly embarrassing habits on par with being particular about how you tie your shoes? Or maybe you could be more matter of fact and quietly keep at it, offering a chat about it to whoever asks? There's no wrong approach and with some experimentation you can find what works best for you. Small, gentle reveals will be much easier for everyone to accept with enough time, dedication and consistency. (Hey?! It's fun right? Getting blasted with the same thought over and over again. Almost seems like a good tactic to employ. Just saying.)

When using any of these tactics, those you’ve learned from others or any of your own that you’ve developed it's a good idea to be careful and pay attention. If any of this is done carefully you can always fall back on some degree of plausible deniability (legal gaslighting) but it's best to just be careful and avoid direct confrontation from the get-go. You don't want to lose your job. And unless your coworker can absolutely be trusted (blood bonds are probably too extreme here but definitely not off the table, use your best judgement), or if you can make it sound so ludicrous that even if were they to tattle to management that you were actively sabotaging your own workplace that no one would believe it, probably don't tell anyone what you're doing. This might take something of a more creative approach depending on how you feel about committing to some light deception but coming up with a cool explanation for why you do __________ (insert tediously slow, annoying, persistently disruptive behavior/activity here) can also be a real blast. Heck, maybe you and your tabletop buddies can get together some weekend and design a whole character? (I don't know how tabletop games work. I've had sex lots of times with lots of different people. Sorry nerds.) The possibilities are endless. You don't have to lie but it is fun and I guarantee your boss has almost certainly lied to you. So, fuck 'em. (Your employer, as a corporate entity, business or whatever, despite being legally recognized as a person thanks to the 2009 Citizens United vs. FEC ruling, is physically incapable of experiencing or understanding your puny, outdated and puritanical feelings of guilt. Abandon morality! Reject theological and cultural authority! Be your own god! Become death and destroy what destroys you! Arise, arise! Fell deeds awake: fire and slaughter! Spear shall be shaken, shield be splintered, a sword-day, a red day, ere the sun rises! Ride!)

Above everything else remember, you control the means of production. Your employer profits off of your labor by refusing to compensate you fairly. If you were being paid what you're really owed there'd be no profit to collect. By making your company as inefficient as possible you're simply doing your part to flex the power that comes with those realizations. You have the power to refuse being overworked. You have the power to tilt the balance and let your productivity reflect your wages. You can perform your own tiny little strike every day! Be creative! Have fun! Create the world you want to live in! Fuck work!

#writing #anarchism #sabotage #quiet quitting #queer author #queer #anarchist #fuck capitalism #anti work #fuck work #workers rights #passive resistance #resistance #anarchist writing

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michichi69 · 2 years

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Wild Westalia Week 2022 | Day 5 | Historical 'Stockman Jack' - 1945

Follow @wildwestaliaweek for more Hetalia cowboy content!

↓ Indigenous Stock Worker History ↓ Warning: Contains the names and images of Indigenous people that are deceased.

Indigenous stock workers have been an integral part of successful stations as they usually made up majority of the workforce in part due to their resourcefulness and knowledge of how to work the land and the high expenses of hiring white workers after the gold rush. These Indigenous station workers were exploited, often only receiving food and clothes for their labour or a much smaller pay compared to white station workers resulting in "stolen wages", these cases have been an enduring battle to rectify to this day and are not limited to Indigenous station workers. Exploitation amongst Indigenous workers culminated in notable strikes across Australia such as the Pilbara Strike (1946-49) and the Wave Hill Walk-Off (1966), contributing to a long history of Indigenous struggle. It is also important to remember that Indigenous stockwomen continued to work despite the Native Administration Act of 1936 officially disallowing the practice of hiring women to work on stations, these stockwomen were typically referred to as men in official documents to navigate this. Some notable Indigenous stockmen/stockwomen include (but are not limited to); Gwoya "One Pound Jimmy" Tjungurrayi, Maudie Moore, Charlie Flanagan, Nancy Watson, William "Deucem" Smith, and Vincent Lingiarri. It can be argued that the stock workers of Australia hold a similar mythos to the American Old West's cowboys -- and Indigenous people played a big role in creating that. Resources Used - (Feel free to give them a read!)

Native Administration Act

Pilbara Strike

Wave Hill Walk-Off

Indigenous Stockwomen

Stolen Wages

Stolen Wages Timeline

The Drawings of Charlie Flanagan

Monument of William "Deucem" Smith

Tribute To Vincent Lingiarri: From Little Things Big Things Grow Song Lyrics

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religion-is-a-mental-illness · 1 year

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What do you think about that they found wheels and horse bones at the bottom of the red sea, and that some are claiming that thats proof of Exodus bring true

LOL. It's like saying that we found a piece of the door frame of the RMS Titanic, therefore the movie Titanic is true. Or if I find a large footprint-shaped impression in the ground, that's proof Bigfoot exists.

Which is to say, that isn't how proof works. To "prove" something, you have to account for all the other possible explanations, and why they are either untrue or less likely. Than what is, let's face it, literal magic. Have the items been dated? Have they identified their origin? How did they figure out how long they've been down there? Where are the rest of the parts? What are they the parts to? Why did they survive? Shouldn't there be more of them for the story?

Even Jewish scholars say the Exodus didn't happen.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Exodus#Origins_and_historicity

Most mainstream scholars do not accept the biblical Exodus account as history for a number of reasons.

[..]

The Book of Numbers further states that the number of Israelite males aged 20 years and older in the desert during the wandering were 603,550, including 22,273 first-borns, which modern estimates put at 2.5-3 million total Israelites, a number that could not be supported by the Sinai Desert through natural means. The geography is vague with regions such as Goshen unidentified, and there are internal problems with dating in the Pentateuch. No modern attempt to identify an historical Egyptian prototype for Moses has found wide acceptance, and no period in Egyptian history matches the biblical accounts of the Exodus.

[..]

While ancient Egyptian texts from the New Kingdom mention "Asiatics" living in Egypt as slaves and workers, these people cannot be securely connected to the Israelites, and no contemporary Egyptian text mentions a large-scale exodus of slaves like that described in the Bible.

The reasons include that there would have been 2,000,000 Israelites wandering around a patch of land that you can walk across in a week, which would have also meant that, walking 10 abreast (200,000 rows of people) with a comfortable walking distance between each row (e.g. 2m), those at the head of the procession would have reached beyond the halfway point before the last people departed (2,000,000 people / 10 abreast x 2m row spacing = 400,000m = 400km).

Egypt losing 2,000,000 residents, including a slave workforce of at least 600,000 (if we count only males), would have been recorded somewhere, and would have dramatically affected the economics, the social dynamics and other factors of the area. Nobody seems to have noticed. And Egypt was notorious for its record keeping, even the unsavory parts.

As with the myth of the flood, it's possible some small-scale event was the origin of this myth. Localized flooding can easily be mythologized up into a global flood that killed everybody... except the Chinese, Aztecs, Australian Aborigines, Native Americans, tribes of Africa, etc, etc, who never noticed they were all apparently drowned but never knew it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Exodus#Potential_historical_origins

Despite the absence of any archaeological evidence, most scholars nonetheless hold the view that the Exodus probably has some sort of historical basis, with Kenton Sparks referring to it as "mythologized history". Scholars posit that a small group of people of Egyptian origin may have joined the early Israelites, and then contributed their own Egyptian Exodus story to all of Israel.

So, we can accept that an exodus occurred, while rejecting the notion that The Exodus, as described in the bible, actually occurred.

Anyone wishing to propose this discovery is proof of the bible will need to disprove more mundane explanations.

Because the Exodus describes specific magical events. There's a very long distance between the mundane story of three dozen Egyptian outcasts leaving town and joining the Israelites, and the magical epic saga of plagues, death of the firstborn, two million people walking across the desert for 40 years, magical, physics-defying fluid dynamics, and all the other shenanigans that is the Exodus mythology of the bible.

As someone once pointed out, even the characters in Exodus act like they live in a storybook land. The Pharaoh is just like, sure, we live in a land where magic is real and I have people who work for me who can do it. The Israelites are like, sure, a divine being from on high freed us with his hand and held back the waters of the sea, but we're going to worship this golden calf we made because we live in a world where magic and gods are everywhere, so that kind of shit isn't going to impress us into thinking a single uniquely divine creature exists, because why would we?

#ask #red sea #book of exodus #exodus myth #exodus #old testament #crossing the red sea #parting of the sea #bible #bible nonsense #bible stories #bible study #mythology #bible mythology #religion #religion is a mental illness

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mariacallous · 10 months

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As the country prepares for what looks like another controversial election year, the threat of violence against election officials is pervasive. Women make up 80% of election workers in the United States, and they face unique, gendered harassment. Conversations about threats to the American electoral system and legislation to address that crisis, however, too often leave out this critical dimension of the problem. But legal tools are available to make things better. The Violence Against Women Act of 1994 (VAWA) lays out confidentiality provisions aiming to protect personal information of survivors of domestic violence. If codified into state law, similar provisions based on those in VAWA could help protect female election officials in advance of the expected surge of election denialism in the 2024 election.

Gendered violence is explicitly used to intimidate female election officials, who receive the brunt of threats and harassment from election deniers. An investigation by Reuters in 2021 found that threats to election officials were typically generated by men and directed at a predominantly female workforce. Reuters found that dozens of these threatening messages used sexual or misogynistic language. Further research has shown that sexual intimidation and violence against women in political positions are increasing, especially in digital public spaces. These threats often include epithets and stereotypes, rape threats, and unsolicited commentary about women’s physical appearance and sexual desirability.

Even the female family members of male election officials can become targets. Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger was among a number of prominent election officials who publicly rebuffed former President Donald Trump’s attempt to reverse the state’s election results. Before election deniers trained their ire on Raffensperger, however, they threatened his wife, Tricia. She faced death threats and vulgar sexual insults. “Tricia got the first ones,” Brad Raffensperger said of the threats. “For some reason they targeted her.” The Raffenspergers’ daughter-in-law was also threatened and had her house broken into.

Gendered threats not only endanger female election officials’ safety and security but impede their ability to do their jobs. Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold has spoken about being a target of misogynistic harassment and threats as a female secretary of state: “Gender plays a major role. It plays a major role when you’re secretary of state. It plays a major role in your day-to-day — the threshold to be threatened for doing your job is much lower.”

Violence against election officials is contributing to attrition in the ranks. The Brennan Center for Justice found that one in five election officials are “very” or “somewhat unlikely” to continue serving through 2024. The election officials surveyed specifically cite attacks on the system and stress as their primary reasons for leaving. Data from the Pew Research Center shows that women who have been harassed online are “more than twice as likely as men” to report that they were “extremely or very upset by their most recent encounter.” This data signals a concerning threat to U.S. election security, given women’s overrepresentation among the country’s electoral workforce.

The issue of gendered violence against female election workers demands a solution not only for the sake of the women who make up the majority of election officials, but also for the sake of our democracy. Election workers are on the frontline of our democracy, ensuring that polling places are up and running, that every voter can cast a ballot, and that those ballots are accurately counted. The recent increase in harassment and harm directed at election workers has made it harder for officials to recruit and retain workers, which in turn makes it harder for them to run safe, secure, and efficient elections. Every attempt to harm or intimidate the women who serve their communities during election season or otherwise, is part of a broader trend to harm and undermine our election system. Protecting the women who play a critical role in our elections is a significant piece of the ongoing battle to protect our democracy.

In response to the stresses election officials must contend with, state legislatures are devising wider-reaching physical and cyber threat protections. Eleven states have passed comprehensive laws to protect election officials. While this is a helpful start, threats to female election officials cannot be effectively addressed by a “one-size-fits-all” policy response; they require a tailored approach that accounts for the gendered nature of the issue. The Violence Against Women Act of 1994 was passed in response to increasing violence against women and provides a useful legislative starting point for a tailored, female-specific anti-harassment law. The bill’s aims include reducing violence against women, securing offender accountability, and ensuring victim safety.

A critical portion of the law is its confidentiality provisions. Confidentiality provisions are measures to protect personal information of survivors of domestic violence and can provide opportunities for disciplinary action if personal information is disseminated. In VAWA, the postal service is responsible for regulations to protect the addresses of victims and domestic violence shelters. Lawmakers identified these measures as an effective means of preventing abusers from tracking their victims and causing them further harm. These provisions are codified in VAWA’s Subtitle G — Confidentiality for Abused Persons. The confidentiality provision in Subtitle G ensures the safety of adult, youth, and child victims of domestic violence, dating violence, sexual assault, and stalking.

Some states have folded confidentiality provisions into wider legislation meant to protect female election officials, though only one bill has been signed into law. Those prospective laws include:

California, CA SB1131: Passed (2021-2022)

Bill explicitly expands the address confidentiality program for survivors of domestic violence to also protect election officials. Existing California law allows a voter’s status, home address, telephone number, and email addresses to be confidential if they seek confidential voter status certification. CA SB1131 adds public entity employees and contractors (groupings which include election officials) to the list of covered individuals.

Florida, SB 1920: Died in Committee (2022)

Exempted certain information about election officials and their families from public record requests disclosure. The bill went as far as to protect the names and locations of “schools and day care facilities” attended by the children of current election officials.

Maryland, SB951: Referred to Committee (2023)

Bill prohibits an individual from making available on the internet personal information regarding an election official or their family.

Minnesota, SF 4217: Referred to Committee (2022)

Criminalizes any dissemination of personal information about an election official or their family or household member if the dissemination poses a threat to the official’s or family member’s safety or the person disseminating the information has knowledge of an imminent or serious threat.

Wyoming, WY H 139: Died in Committee (2023)

Prohibits knowingly disseminating personal information about an election official or their family if the information poses an imminent or serious threat to the official’s or family member’s safety.

The policymakers who sponsored VAWA recognized violence against women as a societal issue and tailored a legislative approach in response. Female election officials face many of the same types of violence as women at large — physical and sexual intimidation, verbal abuse, stalking, and constant harassment — that VAWA’s confidentiality provision targeted. Women who serve in election posts should be awarded similar protections commensurate with the nature of the threat to their safety. The functioning of our elections, and therefore our democracy, depends upon it.

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dontmeantobepoliticalbut · 2 years

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As we learned in the recent rail union contract negotiations, ruthless profit-seeking has made conditions for railworkers unbearable. It’s also made railroads less efficient. America badly needs a national rail service owned and operated for the public good.

Earlier this year, the federal board charged with overseeing America’s rail network called a hearing to discuss widespread complaints about higher costs and poor service. Predictably enough, rail executives sought to blame the pandemic and labor shortages for the likes of gridlock and supply-chain breakdowns. But the dysfunction on America’s railroads is neither a product of COVID-19 nor the result of nebulous constructs like the so-called “Great Resignation.” As Matthew Buck explained earlier this year in an article for the American Prospect, the single biggest contributors have been corporate monopolism and financialization — both of which contributed to the horrendous working conditions at the center of the recent showdown in Congress.

Thanks in large part to Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan–era deregulation, American rail has steadily become more consolidated — the number of major carriers shrinking from forty to just seven between 1980 and the present day. Unsurprisingly, there’s little evidence that this shift has made rail transport any more efficient. It has, however, made the rail business incredibly lucrative. In an effort to wring as much profit from railways as possible, company barons have in turn cut costs, laid off workers, and introduced a host of other changes ostensibly geared to improving the quality of service. Central to this project has been something called “precision scheduled railroading” (PSR), the brainchild of late executive Hunter Harrison. Under PSR, as Buck explains:

"Railroad management’s job is to drive down the 'operating ratio,' or operating expenses as a percentage of revenue. In other words, Wall Street judges railroads’ success based in part on spending less money running the railroad and more on stock buybacks or dividends. Theoretically, focusing on lowering operating ratios pushes railroads to be more efficient, to do more with less. But when railroads have the market power they have today, they can instead 'do less with less,' as shippers and workers put it."

The upshot, in addition to appalling conditions for an ever-diminishing workforce, is that railways — a basic utility relied upon by millions every day for commerce and transport — are now treated more than ever as an asset designed to be milked for profit than a service structured to meet need.

For shareholders, the whole arrangement has worked out brilliantly. As companies like Union Pacific have laid off tens of thousands of workers, revenues have gone through the roof and billions have been paid out through dividends. Measured against more relevant metrics, of course, it’s been a catastrophe: even before the pandemic, both overall productivity and the number of usable track miles were down. When COVID-19 brought with it backlogs, derailments, and higher costs, however, it became glaringly clear that cutbacks to the railways driven by their hyperfinancialization have rendered them a significant weak point in the country’s supply chain.

One lesson in all this is that an enterprise can be profitable — and thus “efficient” in a narrow business sense — without actually working particularly well or operating effectively to service the needs around which it’s ostensibly erected. This is true in most industries, but it has always been particularly applicable in the case of rail. As the late historian Tony Judt once explained, the very idea of competitive or market-based railroads is, for very straightforward reasons, fundamentally incoherent:

"You cannot run trains competitively. Railways — like agriculture or the mail — are at one and the same time an economic activity and an essential public good. Moreover, you cannot render a rail system more efficient by placing two trains on the same track and waiting to see which performs better: railways are a natural monopoly. . . . Trains, like buses, are above all a social service."

Judt was primarily writing about Britain’s railways, but the essence of his argument applies to America’s as well. Actual “competition” is a non sequitur when it comes to railroads and, fittingly enough, private monopolism has left a handful of rail giants with what are essentially noncompetitive fiefdoms in different corners of the country. Deregulation has additionally allowed the tiny remaining handful of companies to discontinue service on unprofitable routes, leaving whole regions cut off. With greater control and fewer constraints on the terms of their operations, they’ve also been at liberty to raise prices and introduce new fees. Bottlenecks, in fact, often provide further opportunities for such price-gouging — one executive boasting on a 2019 earnings call that Union Pacific is in a position to “take some pretty robust pricing to the market” (i.e., charge more regardless of efficiency or the quality of service).

A further corollary, of course, is that those who actually make the trains run and keep the tracks in working order have been increasingly expected to do more with less and endure a brutal work culture no reasonable person could possibly defend: having gone three years without a raise, many railworkers are now required to be on call more or less around the clock and expected to report for shifts of up to eighty hours on as little as ninety minutes’ notice. Unable to take time off even in the event of an emergency, many also face punitive attendance policies that can see them suspended or terminated if they can’t show up for work.

Freshly reimposed by a Democratically controlled Congress without substantive modification, these horrendous conditions are a potent symbol of what happens when an essential public good like rail is turned over to Wall Street. Smashing the monopolies, introducing stricter regulation, and giving workers paid time off would certainly be a good start. For the sake of its supply chain, transport needs, and basic economic fairness, however, what America ultimately needs is a single national railway, owned and operated in the public good.

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