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"Efficiency" left the Big Three vulnerable to smart UAW tactics
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Tomorrow (September 22), I'm (virtually) presenting at the DIG Festival in Modena, Italy. Tomorrow night, I'll be in person at LA's Book Soup for the launch of Justin C Key's "The World Wasn’t Ready for You." On September 27, I'll be at Chevalier's Books in Los Angeles with Brian Merchant for a joint launch for my new book The Internet Con and his new book, Blood in the Machine.
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It's been 143 days since the WGA went on strike against the Hollywood studios. While early tactical leaks from the studios had studio execs chortling and twirling their mustaches about writers caving once they started losing their homes, the strikers aren't wavering – they're still out there, pounding the picket lines, every weekday:
https://www.cnbc.com/2023/08/09/how-hollywood-writers-make-ends-meet-100-days-into-the-writers-guild-strike.html
The studios obviously need writers. That gleeful, anonymous studio exec who got such an obvious erotic charge at the thought of workers being rendered homeless as punishment for challenging his corporate power completely misread the room, and his comments didn't demoralize the writers. Instead, they inspired the actors to go on strike, too.
But how have the writers stayed out since May Day? How have the actors stayed out for 69 days since their strike started on Bastille Day? We can thank the studios for that! As it turns out, the studios have devoted so much energy to rendering creative workers as precarious as possible, hiring as little as they can getting away with and using punishing overtime as a substitute for adequate staffing that they've eliminated all the workers who can't survive on side-hustles and savings for six or seven months at a time.
But even for those layoff-hardened workers, long strikes are brutal, and of course, all the affiliated trades, from costumers to grips, are feeling the pain. The strike fund only goes so far, and non-striking, affected workers don't even get that. That's why I've been donating regularly to the Entertainment Community Fund, which helps all affected workers out with cash transfers (I just gave them another $500):
https://secure2.convio.net/afa/site/Donation2?df_id=8117&8117.donation=form1&mfc_pref=T
As hot labor summer is revealed as a turning point – not just a season – long strikes will become the norm. Bosses still don't believe in worker power, and until they get their minds right, they're going to keep on trying to starve their workforces back inside. To get a sense of how long workers will have to hold out, just consider the Warrior Met strike, where Alabama coal-miners stayed out for 23 months:
https://www.thenation.com/article/activism/warrior-met-strike-union/
As Kim Kelly explained to Adam Conover in the latest Factually podcast, the Alabama coal strikers didn't get anywhere near the attention that the Hollywood strikers have enjoyed:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UvyMHf7Yg0Q
(To learn more about the untold story of worker organizing, from prison unions to the key role that people of color and women played in labor history, check out Kelly's book, "Fight Like Hell," now in paperback:)
https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Fight-Like-Hell/Kim-Kelly/9781982171063
Which brings me to the UAW strike. This is an historic strike, the first time that the UAW has struck all of the Big Three automakers at once. Past autoworkers' strikes have marked turning points for all American workers. The 1945/46 GM strike established employers' duty to cover worker pensions, health care, and cost of living allowances. The GM strike created the American middle-class:
https://prospect.org/labor/2023-09-18-uaw-strikes-built-american-middle-class/
The Big Three are fighting for all the marbles here. They are refusing to allow unions to organize EV factories. Given that no more internal combustion cars will be in production in just a few short years, that's tantamount to eliminating auto unions altogether. The automakers are flush with cash, including billions in public subsidies from multiple bailouts, along with billions more from greedflation price-gouging. A long siege is inevitable, as the decimillionaires running these companies earn their pay by starving out their workers:
https://www.businessinsider.com/general-motors-ceo-mary-barra-salary-auto-workers-strike-uaw-2023-9
The UAW knows this, of course, and their new leadership – helmed by the union's radical president Shawn Fain – has a plan. UAW workers are engaged in tactical striking, shutting down key parts of the supply chain on a rolling basis, making the 90-day strike fund stretch much farther:
https://prospect.org/blogs-and-newsletters/tap/2023-09-18-labors-militant-creativity/
In this project, they are greatly aided by Big Car's own relentless pursuit of profit. The automakers – like every monopolized, financialized sector – have stripped all the buffers and slack out of their operations. Inventory on hand is kept to a bare minimum. Inputs are sourced from the cheapest bidder, and they're brought to the factory by the lowest-cost option. Resiliency – spare parts, backup machinery – is forever at war with profits, and profits have won and won and won, leaving auto production in a brittle, and easily shattered state.
This is especially true for staffing. Automakers are violently allergic to hiring workers, because new workers get benefits and workplace protection. Instead, the car companies routinely offer "voluntary" overtime to their existing workforce. By refusing this overtime, workers can kneecap production, without striking.
Enter "Eight and Skate," a campaign among UAW workers to clock out after their eight hour shift. As Keith Brower Brown writes for Labor Notes, the UAW organizers are telling workers that "It’s crossing an unofficial picket line to work overtime. It’s helping out the company":
https://labornotes.org/2023/09/work-extra-during-strike-auto-workers-say-eight-and-skate
Eight and Skate has already started to work; the Buffalo Ford plant can no longer run its normal weekend shifts because workers are refusing to put in voluntary overtime. Of course, bosses will strike back: the next step will be forced overtime, which will lead to the unsafe conditions that unionized workers are contractually obliged to call paid work-stoppages over, shutting down operations without touching the strike fund.
What's more, car bosses can't just halt safety stoppages or change the rules on overtime; per the UAW's last contract, bosses are required to bargain on changes to overtime rules:
https://uaw.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/Working-Without-Contract-FAQ-FINAL-2.pdf
Car bosses have become lazily dependent on overtime. At GM's "highly profitable" SUV factory in Arlington, TX, normal production runs a six-days, 24 hours per day. Workers typically work five eight-hour days and nine hours on Saturdays. That's been the status quo for 11 years, but when bosses circulated the usual overtime signup sheet last week, every worker wrote "a big fat NO" next to their names.
Writing for The American Prospect, David Dayen points out that this overtime addiction puts a new complexion on the much-hyped workerpocalypse that EVs will supposedly bring about. EVs are much simpler to build than conventional cars, the argument goes, so a US transition to EVs will throw many autoworkers out of work:
https://prospect.org/labor/2023-09-20-big-threes-labor-shortages-uaw/
But the reality is that most autoworkers are doing one and a half jobs already. Reducing the "workforce" by a third could leave all these workers with their existing jobs, and the 40-hour workweek that their forebears fought for at GM inn 1945/46. Add to that the additional workers needed to make batteries, build and maintain charging infrastructure, and so on, and there's no reason to think that EVs will weaken autoworker power.
And as Dayen points out, this overtime addiction isn't limited to cars. It's also endemic to the entertainment industry, where writers' "mini rooms" and other forms of chronic understaffing are used to keep workforces at a skeleton crew, even when the overtime costs more than hiring new workers.
Bosses call themselves job creators, but they have a relentless drive to destroy jobs. If there's one thing bosses hate, it's paying workers – hence all the hype about AI and automation. The stories about looming AI-driven mass unemployment are fairy tales, but they're tailor made for financiers who get alarming, life-threatening priapism at the though of firing us all and replacing us with shell-scripts:
https://pluralistic.net/2023/03/09/autocomplete-worshippers/#the-real-ai-was-the-corporations-that-we-fought-along-the-way
This is why Republican "workerism" rings so hollow. Trump's GOP talks a big game about protecting "workers" (by which they mean anglo men) from immigrants and "woke captialism," but they have nothing to say about protecting workers from bosses and bankers who see every dime a worker gets as misappropriated from their dividend.
Unsurprisingly, conservative message-discipline sucks. As Luke Savage writes in Jacobin, for every mealymouthed Josh Hawley mouthing talking points that "support workers" by blaming China and Joe Biden for the Big Three's greed, there's a Tim Scott, saying the quiet part aloud:
https://jacobin.com/2023/09/republicans-uaw-strike-hawley-trump-scott/
Quoth Senator Scott: "I think Ronald Reagan gave us a great example when federal employees decided they were going to strike. He said, you strike, you’re fired. Simple concept to me. To the extent that we can use that once again, absolutely":
https://twitter.com/American_Bridge/status/1704136706574741988
The GOP's workerism is a tissue-thin fake. They can never and will never support real worker power. That creates an opportunity for Biden and Democrats to seize:
https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/18/co-determination/#now-make-me-do-it
Reversing two generations of anti-worker politics is a marathon, not a sprint. The strikes are going to run for months, even years. Every worker will be called upon to support their striking siblings, every day. We can do it. Solidarity now. Solidarity forever.
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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/2023/09/21/eight-and-skate/#strike-to-rule
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u-sari · 2 months
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The future is ahead of us.
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purpleshadow-star · 9 months
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Grover was really out here finding and collecting Big Three kids like they were Pokémon. He really said, "gotta catch em all," and he did.
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angiedaine · 1 year
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Man the trio. Half and half, pomeranian, broccoli. The✨️BIG THREE✨️
Artist: @frulleboi
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jeliseinsights · 10 months
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🥵18 + Astro Observations 😋🔥
My very first post!🙈🥰
12h Mars can get addicted to or consumed by their sex drive when h0rny
Ex. Like when they get turned on, they consumed by the feeling ** If Mars is in Air sign, they can get addicted to/consumed by foreplay or s3x dreamz
Libra placements are such fake innocents LMAOOO😭
IMO Air signs can be just as or freakier than Scorpio placements
Here’s why: Scorpio placements bring intense passion, but Air Signs are more open-minded. Air signs would probably be more willing to try different positions, toys, roleplay etc.
Taurus placements are HOT🥵
Aries Venus CAN be selfish in the act🙄
VERY passionate, but can limit or skip foreplay, especially masculines Like once THEY’RE ready, then they are ready, regardless of whether or not YOU are also turned on and ready
Capricorn placements🤝 Aiming to impress/Win/Succeed😉
Pisces placements can literally put you in a trance with their s3x
Especially if you also have Pisces placements
Sag placements SCREAM fun, like s3x with them is just fun lmaooo😭
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yendts · 24 days
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Nico di Angelo, Son of Hades
Percy, Jason, Thalia
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femmedefandom · 6 months
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one thing I love is that PJO fans pretty much seem to agree upon is that of our Greek Big Three trio, Thalia is punk (spikes, chunky hair, loud music, rebellion), Nico is emo (black clothing, skull decoration, perpetual seriousness, feels deeply) and Percy is skater (devil may care attitude, can’t stay still, shaggy hair, literally has a skateboard). considering the original release date of the books, they have all probably gotten something (paid or otherwise) from hot topic at least once like can you imagine?
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parcai · 1 year
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leash the lightning + wind.
thinking abt thalia tied to zeus, and jason to beryl. congrats to the new cast 🥳 lance reddick's voice is!!!
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bookoholic-rosie · 6 months
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*Everyone is standing around the broken coffee maker*
Annabeth: So. Who broke it? I'm not mad, I just wanna know.
Everyone:
Hazel: ...I did. I broke it.
Annabeth: No. No you didn't. Leo?
Leo: Don't look at me. Look at Percy
Percy: What?! I didn't break it.
Leo: Huh, that's weird. How'd you even know it was broken?
Piper : Errr Leo it's sitting right in front of us and it's broken.
Leo: Suspicious. Very suspicious
Piper: No, it's not!
Frank: If it matters, probably not, but Jason was the last one to use it.
Jason: Liar! I don't even drink that crap!
Frank: Oh really? Then what were you doing by the coffee cart earlier?
Jason: I use the wooden stirrers to push back my cuticles. Everyone knows that, Frank
Will : Okay let's not fight. Truth is guys I broke it. Let me pay for it, Annabeth.
Hazel: No he’s covering for me. I broke it
Annabeth: No! Neither of you do it! I know that! Who broke it!?
Everyone:
Percy: Well… putting this out there but Nico survives off of that stuff…
Nico: Oh come on Jackson! Just because you’re not my type!
Percy: That is not the reason!
Annabeth: Seriously guys. Who. Did. This.
Leo: Annabeth... Reyna’s been awfully quiet.
Reyna: rEaLLy?! HaVE I bEeN QUiEtT FiRe BoYy?? WelL LeTs MAkE SoMe nOiSE *cracks knuckles*
*Everyone starts arguing*b
Annabeth being interviewed: I broke it. I burned my hand so I punched it.
Annabeth : I predict 10 minutes from now they'll be at each other's throats with warpaint on their faces and a pig head on a stick.
Annabeth:
Annabeth: Good. It was getting a little chummy around here.
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williefresh · 1 year
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Sage
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frownyalfred · 8 months
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no one else stops in the middle of grocery shopping to write about the Trinity visiting a strip club? that's just me? oh ok.
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inchells · 1 year
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Finally finished 🙌
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meidui · 5 months
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faceless
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bakugokemkatsuki · 6 months
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Tamaki Amajiki X (GN) Reader :
**Genre: Fluff?? **Word Count: 647 **Warning(s): cussing, some inappropriate remarks, use of c^nt once, cringy, NOT proofread, thought of this at 2 am **Key: R/N- Random Name, R/N/F- Random Name’s Friend, Y/N- Your Name **Note: Y/n gender is not specified/ GN for anyone
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Background: You and Tamaki have been dating for a few months and have been friends since middle school. No one knows you two are together. Nejire and Mirio know Tamaki is seeing someone but respects his privacy and your friends don’t know you’re seeing anyone. You are a first year in this. Everyone knows you two are close friends but no one thinks it could be anything more. This does have things that don’t follow the timeline/plot line exact and yes this is partially based on that one scene in Victorious. NOW onto the story!
The festival of the year was here. The weather was perfect, the light breeze carrying the sounds of laughter and joy through the air. Everyone was at the U.A. Festival. One of the third year classes had put on a dance for their activity. Everyone was dancing having a good time. At least it seemed that way, over near the side by some tables were the big three. They were all talking, when two girls came up to them. “Hey it’s Tamaki, right? We’re in the same year! I’m (R/N) and this is (R/N/F).” Tamaki was very flustered and taken aback by the attention. “h..hi, nice to meet you two.” With this Mirio decided to pipe in, “I’m Mirio and this is Nejire. We’re Tamaki’s best friends. It’s a pleasure to meet you guys.” “We know you two, we came here to talk to Tamaki” (R/F/N) snootily responded. After that conversation continued mostly (R/N) flirting and (R/F/N) edging them on. Tamaki was getting very uncomfortable. Across the room, you were dancing and having fun with your friends when you caught sight of Tamaki looking like he’s about to be sick. You quickly tell your friends you’ll be back and start making your way over to everyone. As you approach you hear (R/N) say, “so you’re quick, you use tentacles a lot, I wonder what else those tentacles can do”. “Um, excuse me. He has a girlfriend/boyfriend/significant other .” [Nejire] “I don’t see her/him/them” [R/N] Hearing this you storm up behind R/N not even caring that you just knocked about twenty people over on your way. R/N turns to look you up and down after you tap them on the shoulder. “Now you see her/him/them” “Well I don’t see much”[R/N]. At this point the music is off and the room is quiet all attention on you and R/N. “Leave my BOYFRIEND alone.” “And what if I don’t? I mean he can do so much better than some puny first year like yourself. He’d mush rather have an older more experie….” Before R/N could finish their sentence you decked them in the face. “What the hell is wrong with you! Sexualizing him when it’s clearly making him uncomfortable and disrespecting our relationship on top of that. Stay the HELL away from my boyfriend, got it c^nt” R/N and their friend quickly ran off. “Wow that was nice of you to cover for Tamaki, pretending to be his girlfriend/ boyfriend/ significant other. You’re a good friend y/n.” Hearing yourself referred to as a good friend by Mirio really hurt but you simply nod and walk back to your friends. You’re about half way back when you feel someone grab your arm and spin you around, before you can process what is happening lips are on yours. You immediately recognize them as Tamaki’s. Kissing him back you, he quickly pulls away, “..um thanks.. for that and um sorry for not telling everyone about us sooner.. I just I really.. um…” “I know you hate all the attention. No worries. And I’m glad everyone knows now.” Everyone around you two were cheering and tamaki confessed for the first time… “ I love you (y/n)” stunned you stare at him for a moment before simply replying “I love you too Tamaki” and pulling him into another quick kiss.
Sorry this was cringy and horrible writing this was done at 2am and is my first Fanfic type thing!! Requests are open if anyone is interested!! And thank you for reading!!
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kapreday · 7 months
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Folks on here talk about the big three all the time. Always on about the big three. Back in my day it was even a different big three. But the old big three and the new big three are maybe the same?
Supernatural - What We Do In The Shadows. The worlds most fucked up gays in the worst polycule imaginable.
Doctor Who - Good Omens. Anywhen on Earth featuring David Tennant.
Sherlock - Our Flag Means Death. Puppy dog blonde loves worlds dumbest tall dark and handsome genius.
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Quick Venus Sign Horoscopes
Timeframe: Next Hour to Next Week
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Aries Venus: That kid with the red hair? Kind of brownish? Don't put all your eggs in one basket. They may be cute but they're really, really not worth your time right now.
Taurus Venus: Call your mother/mother-adjacent figure soon. Let her know you're thinking about her. She needs it.
Gemini Venus: Crop tops are for everybody, regardless of appearance.
Cancer Venus: What would happen if you stayed quiet for a full day? Didn't speak unless spoken to? Who would care? Who wouldn't? The answer will surprise you.
Leo Venus: When's the last time you took a bath? Like a bubble bath, pa,per style. Do a face mask.
Virgo Venus: Is cleanliness really a test of morality? are you a better person because you vacuumed? (The answer is no, and its okay to ask for help. You are not weak for having your moments)
Libra Venus: When's the last time you vacuumed? Dusted? Get that over with before Fall starts. It'll leave things easier to work through.
Scorpio Venus: I feel like the ones reading this have dogs, or like a more exotic pet. Play with it. Feel it out. You may learn some new tricks.
Sagittarius Venus: Watch a really bad movie. Seriously. You don't need to feel so uptight all the time. Don't take your media seriously.
Capricorn Venus: I have a feeling you've fallen out of love with some of your passions lately. Do a coloring book. Color outside of the lines and cry about it.
Aquarius Venus: Go on a date. A weird date. Ask out the person you would usually never think of asking. You only have one life, might as well try something new.
Pisces Venus : Do your homework. I know you're procrastinating.
☀️masterlist ☀️
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