#company on strike

[night-market-if]

Dear Mr. Stockfish

Hello. You don’t know me. And based on your lack of consideration thus far, it is doubtful you wish to.  I am the wife of one of your employee’s. I am a mother of four. I am the woman that has watched her husband go work, thirteen to fourteen hour shifts for you, often times in the middle of the night. I am a woman who raised children during the pandemic. Homeschooled them. Became their friend. Their teacher. Their support. Because you couldn’t spare a single worker.  I am the one that has watched him struggle with working for you, a good company as you proudly proclaim, while trying to be a good father.  He operates on little to no sleep due to the type of hours you demand and the shifts you implement. Because he wants to provide for us. But he also doesn’t want his children to grow up, as many are now, with an absentee father.

On September 13th, your employees walked on you. You claim your contract is fair. It is not.  A pay increase does nothing when insurance goes down.  It does nothing in the face of inflation. And it does nothing when most of your workers have to commute and the gas prices have skyrocketed. In fact, what you have offered them is a pay decrease in the guise of something charitable. You talk about fair and competitive wages and yet most people have been able to leave and find better money elsewhere. Your electricians are underpaid by far. Your hours are atrocious. Your insurance is abysmal. I have had two babies under your insurance. My first one had issue within the hospital. That original plan five years ago, was a lifesaver.  My child that was born without complications, without me spending a full extra day in the hospital, nearly bankrupted us because the fees were so high due to your shitty insurance policy. And now you wish to reduce it more because it is status quo? 

What happened to being a good company because you weren’t status quo? Because you offered what others could not? What happened to be a good solid foundation for a community? You pride yourself on hard work and family values and yet children are struggling to eat because you cannot meet your employees at the table and negotiate.

And that, is truly what it does come down to. Your employees are willing to negotiate. They are not asking for the moon. But each time you have come back to the negotiating table with nothing. Nothing but a paltry sign on bonus that you were shocked people weren’t going to take? Can I ask you what you think a sign on bonus is going to do for my children when they get sick? Or if Covid resurges? Can I ask you what your sign on bonus is going to do if a pipe bursts this winter?  Can I ask how your sign on bonus has helped or can help in the face of your employee’s family emergencies? Your community lost family members these last few years.  Your employees banded together. Grieved together. Supported and helped each other. Where were you?

You claim to be a good company. That you take care of your own. Your own are speaking back saying they do not feel support and your response is to gaslight them as if they are some small child undeserving of your time.  But hey, when you guys came to them and asked them to still work during a worldwide pandemic, they did. They made you billions in profit in fact. Let's just read that again. Billions.  But you can’t give them a decent raise or decent insurance.  Mr. Stockfish, were your bonus’s that you took this year more important than my child's speech therapy?  Was your bonus more important than the mental health of your workers?  Can I ask you if it is more important than your employees choosing whether they can turn on their heat this winter because they might not be able to afford it?  Can I see what you bought with your bonus while your workers all got up at two or three in the morning to come serve your company, while you do nothing but sit back and collect?

I’ll wait.

Sincerely,

A wife. A mother. A member of this community you claim to care for and are letting down.

If anyone wishes to e-mail this man, his email is devin.stockfish@weyerhaeuser.com

[multidimensional-trashcan]

and

EDIT:

sure why not:

tags via @littleredplanetnumberfour

EDIT 2:

someone asked for a sag-aftra one:

[chimaeraonwards]

no ai generated content will ever compare to the absolutely cartoonishly evil plot to cut down trees to prevent workers from striking to get livable wage.

[alwaysbewoke]

wow. "chiquita" and "death squads" are not things i expected to see in the same sentence.

[mementomoriwithacherryontop]

Thoughtful and heartfelt article written by Lacy Baugher about the cancellation of Dead Boy Detectives, and why the decision just doesn’t make sense for Netflix.

I could literally quote the whole thing. Instead, I’ll leave you with these three (lengthy) quotes and encourage you to read the article in its entirety. And you totally should. It’s worth the read.

Quotes Below:

“On paper, the Dead Boy Detectives has all the ingredients to succeed. Its cast is charming; its vibes are fun and accessible. It features a genuine connection to an established and successful genre property, but not one so deep that new viewers would find themselves overwhelmed by lore. Perhaps most importantly, it has so, so much heart.”

“The pieces were in place for the series to run multiple seasons with rich character dynamics between the core quartet and a template that allowed for all sorts of adventures for the living and the dead. If this had been a show introduced during the heyday of The CW, it probably would have run for the better part of a decade. Alas, that's almost never a possibility in today's streaming landscape. Even the most successful series tend to come with a built-in expiration date. (Five years, max.)

Netflix has something of a history when it comes to cutting promising genre shows off at the knees. In recent years it has unceremoniously dumped all sorts of series, from fantasy (Shadow and Bone, Warrior Nun), and supernatural (Lockwood and Co., First Kill, The Midnight Club) to sci-fi (The OA, 1899). Dead Boy Detectives is certainly joining a good company. But the fact that its main characters were part of the same universe as The Sandman makes the show's cancellation even more galling. What streamer doesn't want a franchise to call its own? The Sandman is still one of the most popular comic series ever, and Netflix is currently gearing up to drop the second season of its successful TV adaptation.”

“That Dead Boy Detectives wasn't given more time to build an audience — or a bigger promotional budget to let viewers know of its existence — feels particularly criminal because Sandman's second season would have almost certainly given the drama a needed awareness boost.”

[cruelsister-moved2]

lets say hypothetically that i wanted men to die and suffer for all time

[thoughtportal]

a share of the revenue.

record profits are unpaid wages

[avesdraws]

lightning strike !

[acepalindrome]

So pay your writers and actors, you greedy fuck.

[hydriad81194]

For any other crows

[itsbatman-butpoor-andmurderous]

Before anyone thinks that the SAG-AFTRA should have accepted the deal that included “a groundbreaking AI proposal that protects actors’ digital likenesses, and more” I would like you to read this quote from the chief negotiator Duncan Crabtree-Ireland

“They propose that our background performers should be able to be scanned, get paid for one day's pay, and their company should own that scan of their image, their likeness, and should be able to use it for the rest of eternity. If you think that's a ground-breaking proposal, I suggest you think again.”

And a comment from the AMPTP (the studios)

“The union has regrettably chosen a path that will lead to financial hardship for countless thousands of people who depend on the industry”

Both quotes are from this BBC article.

The same group of people saying that the strike will cause financial hardships for thousands of people is suggesting they get a single days pay for getting digitally scanned. Afterwards said scan will be used to do the work the actor should be getting paid for.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Stellantis wants to make scabbing woke

I'm coming to Minneapolis! Oct 15: Presenting The Internet Con at Moon Palace Books. Oct 16: Keynoting the 26th ACM Conference On Computer-Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing.

I know, I know, it's weird when the worst people you know are right, even when they're right for the wrong reasons: like, the "Intelligence Community" is genuinely terrible, pharma companies are murderous crooks, and Big Tech really does have a dangerous grip on public debate. The swivel-eyed loons have a point, is what I'm saying:

https://locusmag.com/2023/05/commentary-cory-doctorow-the-swivel-eyed-loons-have-a-point/

When conspiratorialists and reactionaries holler about how the FBI are dirty-tricking creeps who are framing Trump, it's tempting to say, "well, if Trumpists hate the FBI, then I will love the FBI. Who cares about COINTELPRO and what they did to Martin Luther King?"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FBI%E2%80%93King_suicide_letter

It's a process called "schizmogenesis": forming new group identity beliefs based on saying the opposite of what your enemies say, and as tempting as that is, it's extraordinarily foolish and dangerous:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/12/18/schizmogenesis/

It means that canny reactionaries like Steve Bannon can trick you into taking any position merely by taking the opposite one. Bannon's followers are even more easily led, so it's easy for him to convince them that we have always been at war with Oceania. The right has created an entire mirror world of "I know you are but what am I?" politics.

Anti-vax co-opts "bodily autonomy." Climate denial becomes environmentalism ("wind turbines kill birds"). Transphobia becomes feminism ("keep women-only spaces for real women"). Support for strongmen becomes anti-imperialism ("don't feed the war machine in Ukraine"). These are the doppelgangers Naomi Klein warns us against:

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

The far right has even managed to co-opt anti-corporate rhetoric. Culture warriors rail against "woke capitalism," insisting that when big businesses take socially progressive positions, it's just empty "virtue signalling." And you know what? They've got a point. Partially.

As with all mirror-world politics, the anti-woke-capitalism shuck is designed to convince low-information right-wing pismires into buying "anti-woke pillows" and demanding the right to pay junk fees to "own the libs":

https://pluralistic.net/2023/08/04/owning-the-libs/#swiper-no-swiping

But woke capitalism is bullshit. Corporations – profit-maximizing immortal transhuman colony organisms that view workers and customers as inconvenient gut-flora – do not care about social justice. They don't care about anything, except for minimizing compensation for workers while maximizing the risk those workers bear; and locking in and gouging customers for products that are as low-quality as can be profitably sold.

Take DEI, a favored target of the right. It's undoubtably true that diversity, inclusion and equity initiatives have made some inroads on correcting bias in hiring decisions, with the result that companies get better employees who would have been excluded without this explicit corrective.

However, corporations don't value DEI because they abhor their history of hiring bias. Instead, DEI is how corporate management demonstrates to workers that their grievances are best addressed by trusting corporate leadership to correct their error of their ways – and not by forming a union.

Before the passage of the National Labor Relations Act in 1935, corporations would create fake "Company Unions" whose leadership were beholden to the company executives. These were decoy unions: they looked and sounded like unions, but when they negotiated with management, they were actually working for the bosses, not the workers.

This is more mirror-world tactics. They're the labor equivalent of the "crisis pregnancy centers" that masquerade as abortion clinics in order to fool pregnant people and trap them with endless delays until it's too late to terminate their pregnancies. Company unions get workers to trust in negotiators who are secretly working for the bosses, who emerge from the bargaining table with one-sided, abusive contracts and insist that this is the best deal workers can hope for.

Company unions were outlawed 90 years ago, and for decades, labor had a seat at the table, with wages tracking productivity gains and workers getting protection for discrimination, unsafe labor conditions, and wage-theft. Then came the neoliberal turn, and 40 years of wage stagnation, increased inequality, and corporate rule.

Anything that can't go on forever will eventually stop. Finally, finally, we have reached a turning point in labor, with public approval for unions at levels not seen since the Carter administration and thousands of strikes and protests breaking out across the country:

https://striketracker.ilr.cornell.edu/

It's not just the Writers Guild and SAG-AFTRA, either. For the first time in history, the UAW is striking against all the major automakers, and they are winning:

https://arstechnica.com/cars/2023/10/striking-uaw-workers-win-key-battery-plant-concession-from-general-motors/

The automakers are getting desperate. Stellantis – Chrysler's latest alias, reflecting the company's absorbtion into corporate-human-centipede of global carmakers – has mobilized its DEI programs, trying to get marginalized people to believe that scabbing is a liberatory activity:

https://theintercept.com/2023/10/10/uaw-auto-strike-stellantis/

Stellantis calls each of its DEI silos a "Business Resource Group" (BRG): there's a "Working Parents Network," an "African Ancestry Network," "Asians Connected Together," a "DiverseAbilities Network," a "Gay & Lesbian Alliance" and more:

https://blog.stellantisnorthamerica.com/2021/07/20/business-resource-groups-drive-inclusion-and-diversity/

The corporate managers who lead these BRGs have established a scab rotation for each subgroup, calling on members to cross a UAW picket-line at a Michigan Parts Distribution Center run by Stellantis subsidiary Mopar:

Each BRG will pick a specific day of the week/weekend to volunteer as a team. Help continue to be the RESOURCE the BUSINESS can count on! Stellantis needs your help in running the Parts Distribution Centers (PDC) to ensure a steady supply of parts to our customers while negotiations continue. Working Parents Network has identified Friday, October 13 as WPN’s BRG Day at the PDCs!"

Now, these BRGs weren't invented by marginalized workers facing discrimination in the workplace. They come from literal union-busting playbooks produced by giant "union avoidance" firms that charge bosses millions for advice on skirting – or breaking – the law to keep workplace democracy at bay. All the biggest anti-union consultancies love BRGs, from Littler Mendelson to Jackson Lewis. IRI Strategies touts BRGs as a way to "union-proof" a business by absorbing workers' grievances in a decoy committee that will let them feel listened to.

BRGs, in other words, are the Crisis Pregnancy Centers of workplace discrimination. They're a Big Store Con, a company union dressed up as corporate social responsibility.

Now, let's not pretend that unions have a sterling record on race and gender issues. Giant labor organizations like the AFL had to be dragged into racial integration, and trade unions have sometimes been on the wrong side of anti-immigration panics:

https://www.archives.gov/publications/prologue/1997/summer/american-labor-movement.html

But unions have also been the most reliable way for people of color and women to win better workplace treatment. The struggle for racial and gender justice was fought through labor organizing. Remember that MLK's "I've Been To the Mountaintop" speech was given in support of striking sanitation workers in Memphis:

https://www.afscme.org/about/history/mlk/mountaintop

Black organizers have always been militant labor organizers. Labor Day commemorates the victory of the long, hard-fought Pullman strike, where Black workers brought one of the most powerful companies in America to its knees:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pullman_Strike

And women have always fought for gender justice through the labor movement: the New York shirtwaist strike is the Ur-example, when women-led unions fought thugs and scabs on icy New York streets:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_shirtwaist_strike_of_1909

It's no surprise that labor activism, anti-racism and feminism go together. Since the earliest days, the labor justice struggle was also a social justice struggle. To learn more check out Kim Kelly's Fight Like Hell: The Untold History of American Labor:

https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Fight-Like-Hell/Kim-Kelly/9781982171063

The most exploited, underpaid, and abused workers in America are also the most marginalized (duh).

From nurses:

https://www.reuters.com/business/healthcare-pharmaceuticals/kaiser-healthcare-union-says-week-long-strike-possible-early-next-month-2023-10-09/

To teachers:

https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2023-04-18/l-a-teachers-win-21-wage-increase-in-new-lausd-contract

To Amazon warehouse workers:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazon_Labor_Union

To publishing assistants:

https://apnews.com/article/harpercollins-union-strike-ends-0a94238718879066d9b21af6266be526

To baristas:

https://www.cnn.com/2023/09/29/business/starbucks-union-wages/index.html

To fast-food workers:

https://www.ufcw.org/about/

The vanguard of today's labor surge is Black, brown, female and queer. Without a union, workers who face discrimination are on their own, hoping that their bosses will voluntarily do something about it. Black workers in Tesla's rabidly anti-union shops face vicious racism, from slurs to threats to violence. Without a union, they have to rely on the shifting whims of an Apartheid emerald mine space-Karen for relief, or hope for help from the NLRB or a class-action lawyer:

https://apnews.com/article/tesla-racism-black-lawsuit-class-action-21c88bddf60eca702560be58429495de

The far right isn't wrong when they holler that woke capitalism is bullshit. As with so many of their mirror-world causes, they've got a point, but only a limited one. The problem with woke capitalism is that it's no substitute for a union. The problem with relying on Business Resource Groups to fight racism, sexism, homophobia and transphobia is that these struggles are all class struggles, and a BRG is never going to fight against the company that created it.

To understand how bankrupt woke capitalism is, conside this: Stellantis is calling on its "Working Parents Network" to scab this Friday. Stellantis is also being sanctioned by the Department Of Labor for discriminating against nursing mothers – the same "working parents" that the BRG is meant to protect:

https://www.clickondetroit.com/news/local/2023/02/08/investigation-finds-stellantis-violated-rights-of-nursing-mothers-at-sterling-heights-plant/

Woke capitalism is just another kind of "predatory inclusion," like Intuit's campaign defending its "Free File" tax-prep scam, where they're claiming that ending this ripoff is racist because it denies Black families the right to be tricked into paying for something they are entitled to get for free:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/27/predatory-inclusion/#equal-opportunity-scammers

When I learned about Intuit's wokewashing, I thought I'd found woke capitalism's rock bottom, but I was wrong. Stellantis's call for woke scabbing is a new low.

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/2023/10/11/equal-opportunity-class-war/#inclusive-scabbing

My next novel is The Lost Cause, a hopeful novel of the climate emergency. Amazon won't sell the audiobook, so I made my own and I'm pre-selling it on Kickstarter!

[luliaka]

Nightwing (1996) #3

Dick “I’ve always had my utilities set up by my butler or my alien girlfriend” Grayson

[nightmanatee]

david tennant calling crowley and aziraphale married couple a day before actor's strike is so iconic of him like yeah THANKS for the first and last promo being this

[akumahoshojo]

descriptions from the Rondo of Blood manual's unofficial English translation

[notbecauseofvictories]

it's a good thing that I've developed a pretty cast-iron sense of self-worth, because otherwise....man, my boss could do a number on me without even really trying.