#strike action

[allthecanadianpolitics]

Canadian commercial actors say American actors are crossing the border and the picket line in the middle of a major US entertainment industry strike and filling the jobs of Canadian actors who have been locked out for over a year.

Thousands of unionized commercial actors in Canada have been locked out since April 2022 while The Alliance of Canadian Cinema, Television and Radio Artists (ACTRA) has been negotiating with commercial agencies to try and get a fair deal.

Now, as a result of the ongoing SAG-AFTRA actors and WGA writers strikes that have shut down TV and film productions in the United States, some Hollywood actors have travelled north of the border in search of non-union commercial work in Canada.

“Over the last year there’s been a lot of American commercials shooting up in Canada doing everything non union because they can walk around it,” one ACTRA member who requested to be anonymous told PressProgress. [...]

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Tagging: @politicsofcanada

[violetsandshrikes]

So…

[whydidisavethistomyphone]

Every time I see a meme about a stupid UFO I’m going to post about the ecological disaster happening in the US right now because of a corrupt capitalist government

[hussyknee]

Striking isn't enough y'all need to burn this shit to the ground and start over.

(alt included)

[damnesdelamer]

On the picket line the other day, I saw a former lecturer of mine, and we got talking. Part of the whole dispute we in UCU are involved in is around the fact that Higher Education as a sector has over £40 billion in reserves nationwide, and many universities have chosen to dump that into vanity projects like shiny new buildings (many of which are both exorbitantly expensive and also not fit-for-purpose), rather than invest in staff during the biggest cost of living crisis in living memory.

My former lecturer, a staunch liberal, intimated that £40 billion seems like a lot, so who knows if that money even exists. So I told him, here’s what I do know: three years ago, my managers, who were responsible for allocating a £5 million bid of government funding, ignored the advice of me and another expert on practical teaching equipment, and chose instead to spend more on products from existing contracts. This could be seen as corruption, but technically I think it’s just laziness. But it also amounts to a mutual agreement among university management and external contractors and suppliers to continue to profit off government funds, rather than invest in staff.

Over the last ten years, workers across Higher Education are being paid 25% less in real terms, due to stagnating wages, due to inflation, due to increased cost of living. This is to say nothing of the fallout from covid, or the arguably substantial decline in education standards new students receive (in spite of all the money dumped into new buildings and equipment).

Meanwhile, my institution’s student intake has nearly doubled in the past five years, which both means greater workload and, in theory, greater revenue. But who sees that money? Not me, nor even the lecturers who make twice as much as me, but you can bet that money is going somewhere.

Initially we had no offer of increased pay, then we went on strike and got an offer of 3% (again, in the face of a loss of 25% over the last decade in real terms), and then 5%. These ‘offers’ have been overwhelmingly rejected by UCU members, in part because they prove that that money does exist, and is available for our employers to give us our due. But more importantly, this is not just about pay, and the problems of workloads, pensions, mismanagement, and discrimination, which sparked the current strikes, won’t be solved by throwing money at them.

Nevertheless, slowly but surely, we are making advances. Industrial action works. Support the Unions and support the strikes!

Solidarity forever.

[ihateflying]

Royal mail are out on strike today for better pay that reflects an actual, inflation adjusted living wage. Please spread the message and show your support for postal workers across the UK.

We want a living wage and to protect the universal postal service! We will not be made into a gig economy or into amazon with different branding!

Stand with the CWU!

-Edit-

An update for everyone to see

[tomorrowusa]

Support the Red Cup Rebellion by striking Starbucks workers.

Red Cup Day (November 16th in 2023) is the busiest day of the year at Starbucks. Unionized workers have chosen Thursday to walk out selectively in support of better pay and working conditions.

What workers are demanding...

Workers are calling on the company to turn off mobile ordering on high-volume promotion days, improve staffing and scheduling issues, and bargain with the union. “I feel like customers don’t know to the full extent how hard the promotional days can be. It’s super exciting and fun for our customers to have these new cups, new drinks and all these exclusive things, but our management does not staff us correctly,” said Bruce Halstead, a barista at a Starbucks roastery in Seattle, Washington. “Partners will run themselves ragged having to do the job of three people sometimes because the demand of customers is a lot more. Partners will leave their shifts in tears, they will injure themselves just trying to keep up with the demand of the cups and the drinks. We just want to bring awareness to this.”

If you'd like to actively help the union on Thursday check the list of stores with strike actions.

Otherwise, simply don't visit Starbucks on Thursday November 16th or engage in any Starbucks transactions online on that day.

BOYCOTT STARBUCKS ON THURSDAY NOVEMBER 16th.

Union Strong!

[lesbiansandgayssupporttheminers]

General strike?

What are we saying the threshold for a general strike is? The famous general strike in 1926 was 1.7 million workers (yes, smaller population, etc etc).

So when can we call it a general strike?

[devoted-to-colin-farrell]

Colin Farrell is supporting the Writers’ Strike today in New York City (25 May 2023).

The filming of The Penguin has been shutdown because of the writers’ strike.

[theculturedmarxist]

On Friday, the US Chamber of Commerce issued an open letter to President Joe Biden imploring him to appoint a “mediator” and force through a tentative agreement between the Pacific Maritime Association (PMA) and the over 22,000 dockworkers in the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU).

In the letter addressed to Biden and acting Secretary of Labor Julie Su, Suzanne P. Clark, the CEO and president of the Chamber, wrote that the group was “very concerned by the premeditated and disruptive service actions that are slowing operations at several major ports along the West Coast.”

Beginning last week, and continuing through this writing, dockworkers at several West Coast ports have refused to show up to work after it was revealed that the PMA was proposing an across-the-board $1.56 “raise” for dockworkers, well below the rate of inflation. The fury of rank-and-file workers across all three tiers, A, B, and casual, prompted the ILWU, worried that workers would take matters into their own hands, to unofficially authorize job actions that led to the near-shutdown of major ports and terminals.

Dockworkers have been laboring on 29 ports, from Washington to California, without a contract since last July, while the PMA and ILWU have been negotiating in secret for 13 months. These secret negotiations, Andy, a Los Angeles-area dockworker told the WSWS, have left him and his coworkers “frustrated...we don’t know what is going on. We have no say in anything, it is outrageous.”

Commenting on the long hours that dockworkers put in during the pandemic, and the “thanks” they have received so far from the PMA, Andy said, “Me and a lot of other people got over 2,000 hours. We didn’t step out of line, we did everything they asked. The PMA are talking about not giving us enough retroactive pay, that insulting $1.56 pay increase.”

On Friday, June 9, the PMA issued another statement confirming that while job actions had lessened at the Ports of Los Angeles, Long Beach and Oakland, the “Ports of Seattle and Tacoma continue to suffer significant slowdowns as a result of targeted ILWU actions.”

The PMA asserted that the ILWU was refusing to dispatch lashers, leaving ships idle and resulting in “a backup of incoming vessels.”

Terrified at the prospect that these limited actions could spiral into a “serious work stoppage at the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach” that “would be devastating to...businesses,” Chamber Commerce CEO Clark, on behalf of Wall Street, urged Biden “to appoint an independent mediator to help the parties reach a voluntary agreement.” Clarke wrote that this “step is necessary to avoid potentially billions of dollars in economic damage to the American economy.”

Raising the prospect of invoking the anti-union Taft-Hartley law against dockworkers, and possibly deploying soldiers in the case of a strike, Clarke added that Biden should “consider additional steps that may be necessary in the event of a widespread work stoppage.”

This is the third statement issued by a major big business lobby over the last week calling on Biden to intervene in the dockworker negotiations, on the side of capital. On Monday, representatives from the National Association of Manufacturers and the National Retail Federation also called on the White House to impose a contract on dockworkers.

While Biden himself has not directly commented, his actions last year show that the self-declared most “pro-union” president is more than willing to run roughshod over workers’ democratic rights in order to satiate Wall Street’s unquenchable hunger for profits. Furthermore, high-level officials, in his administration and outside of it, have made clear that the White House has been actively involved in the dockworker negotiations from the outset.

In an interview on CNBC on Thursday, Gene Seroka, the executive director at the Port of Los Angeles, confirmed that the same labor officials who blocked a railroad strike last year, and subsequently dictatorially forced through a rotten pro-company agreement rail workers had already rejected, were again intervening in the contract talks.

“Here’s what’s been happening,” Seroka said. “Acting Labor Secretary Julie Su has been working with both sides, individually and collectively, trying to keep these talks moving.” Su was the deputy labor secretary under Marty Walsh last year during the railroad betrayal.

“Julie and her staff have been working tirelessly, not putting out press releases or coming on TV. They are talking with both sides to keep this progress moving,” Seroka continued, adding, “From the secretary of labor’s seat, this continues to be a top priority.”

While he claimed not to know the exact details, Seroka confirmed that the major conflicts in the contract remain pay and “robotics.” Seroka noted that during the pandemic, “Dockworkers were out on the job six days a week.” The ILWU has confirmed that at least 43 members died of COVID-19, no doubt a significant undercount.

While dockworkers were risking infection and death to move cargo, the companies have pulled in record profits. Shipping giant Maersk, one of several companies represented by the PMA, posted $30.9 billion in profit in 2022. And while shipping rates have declined from their 2021 highs, last month Maesrk still reported a first-quarter profit just under $4 billion.

In interviews with WSWS reporters on Thursday, Los Angeles area dockworkers reflected on the precarious and dangerous character of their work, the hated tier system, which was negotiated in by former ILWU President Harry Bridges in the 1960 Mechanization and Modernization agreement, and the need for dockworkers to unite as a class against the major corporations.

A casual worker said that she has been “a casual for 19 years. I need four more years to make it to Class A. It’s been a long, long time, and we don’t have any rights. My brother is an A man, we were always taught in our family to get union jobs, but things are very tough these days. It’s stressful. I had an accident last month because I had a seizure, which was caused because I was so angry with my boss.”

Commenting on the anti-Asian sentiment that has been whipped up by both big business parties as part of the war drive against China, the dockworker said she was “against all this anti-Asian violence and hate. They are trying to blame Asian people for all the problems, trying to pit worker against worker. We are all facing the same problems.”

A longshoreman who has been a Class A man for 15 years noted that the ILWU along the West Coast had yet to conduct a strike authorization vote nearly a year after the contract expired. “The Canadian longshoremen are having strike authorization votes [Thursday] and Friday. That’s important because the PMA was trying to use the Canadian access from their ports to railways to Chicago and back East to reroute shipping since West Coast longshore have been carrying out job actions here.”

Commenting on the miserly $1.56 raise, a pay cut in real terms, given that inflation in California is over 7 percent, he said, “For us here, I wasn’t happy about that tiny raise the PMA is offering us.”

In a message to other dockworkers, Andy warned about the ongoing conspiracy between Biden, the ILWU and the PMA. “They are all just oligarchs. Biden is doing the same thing Trump would do. The same thing George Bush would do.”

“It really is an international struggle,” he added, “That’s why the internationalism is so important. I mean if me, and all the other dockworkers in the world, got together and decided we weren’t going to move cargo until our demands were met? That would be amazing.”

The fight to link up workers in a joint struggle against the major international carriers requires the development of rank-and-file committees, controlled by the workers and independent of the ILWU union bureaucracy.

Workers cannot let the initiative remain in the hands of the ruling class and its state! It is urgent that workers begin communicating among themselves and coordinating actions to counter the conspiracy between the companies and the Biden administration, assisted by the union apparatus.

[mariemariemaria]

"The only time working-class people are allowed to become heroes is when they are trapped, dying or dead [...] If there is a pit disaster [the miners are heroes], if there is a wage claim, they are militants" – Tony Benn, 1989

[allthecanadianpolitics]

Pierre Poilievre seems to pop up with his populist message everywhere these days. But even though he’s out to woo working class voters, one place you definitely won’t find him is on a picket line.

The Conservative leader fumes relentlessly about today’s “affordability” crisis, and he correctly points out that workers are struggling to pay for groceries, rent, mortgages, etc.

Yet he seems confused about what actions workers should take to ease their affordability problems — other than voting for him.

In fact, the proven most effective way for workers to increase their pay and improve their working conditions hasn’t been to vote Conservative but rather to join a union and, when necessary, go on strike. [...]

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Tagging: @politicsofcanada

[scavengedluxury]

Auntie Beeb “forgetting” to use quotation marks again? It’s more likely than you’d think.

[workersolidarity]

Auto workers launch historic strike against Detroit’s Big Three – People's World

[hussyknee]

Speaking as a Sri Lankan whose country saw a general strike for the first time in forty years during the historic anti-government protests last year, I am so very excited for USAmericans to experience one for themselves. On one hand, it signals that the economic conditions are so dire that the majority of workers now have more to lose by going to work than not. That working conditions are impacting even the upper middle class. On the other hand– every. Single. Workers'. Union. In the. Damn. Country. The entire place a ghost town in a once-in-a-lifetime show of solidarity against the elite. You cannot imagine the exhilaration. You cannot imagine the show of power, the way the government and their crony capitalists and the fuckwits used to standing on people's necks piss their pants in fear. I think every country should see a general strike at least once every generation. It's not sustainable, but it doesn't have to be; it's to signal to the bosses that beyond this line is when the lid blows off this pressure cooker.

This means that shit is going to get damn ugly for weeks and months until the run up. It's going to primarily be a war of propaganda, because the bigger and more diverse the movement, the more cracks there will be between you to exploit. You're gonna have to get chill about a lot of things very quickly. You gotta get used to standing next to and holding the line with people you wouldn't want to spit on if they were on fire at any other time, with your eyes only on the prize. You're going to have to learn to support all kinds of problematic people without valorizing or demonizing them. Coalition building is political action at its most pragmatic and utilitarian; you don't need to share a moral page or be best buddies with people when pooling your resources against a common enemy. Idealogues don't win battles, coalitions do.

As for the success of our general strike, the President and his government rejected the unions' demands and refused to step down. Two weeks later, fifty houses of the government MPs all over the country burned down in one night, and a mob breeched the Prime Minister's mansions and set it on fire*. The PM resigned the next day, and the government was dissolved.

But that's a completely unrelated anecdote. 💅🏽

*Edit: it wasn't unions or any organized body that committed the arsons. It was widespread, spontaneous citizen reaction to a brutal attack on our largest peaceful protest site. Organized protest prevents this kind of escalation. The point is that when these attempts are not recognised, physical violence will be the inevitable outcome. As Martin Luther King said: "Riots are the language of the unheard".

[drumlincountry]

Strikes are a great opportunity to consciously appreciate what other people do for you without u noticing! Which is 1. Good for our common wellbeing (builds solidarity). 2. Good for your personal wellbeing (gratitude, hope, and connection are better headmates than despair, alienation, and loneliness). 3. Good for wellbeing of the strike and the union (directs the anger about the strike where they should be, aimed the people who are mistreating workers)

Like @ my UK folllowers. The rail strike is super fucking annoying right? You can't get where you need to go! Your life is more difficult right now. The flip side of that is these rail workers have been making your life quietly, subtly easier for years and years and years!

Capitalism loves to obscure these relationships - and it's true that they're mostly impersonal relationships. You're not FRIENDS with everyone who grows your food or makes your clothes or drives your trains or cleans your city.

You will never meet most of the people whose daily work supports your life - or most of the people who benefit from your work! But they're real. We're real. And we're really helping each other. That's a real connection. They're people you owe a lot to.

And these people who make your life better every day are suffering for it! They haven't been treated fairly or right.

It's easy to just get annoyed at the inconvenience of strike action, and God knows there are powerful forces urging that annoyance. But this is how we can regain some of our lost humanity, in this system of violence that crushes us all. This is what solidarity is. These people have been helping you. This is time to learn, connect, support. Help them back.