#unionises

[077891st]

No one else can drink from the Meow-nager's cup 😾

[klngfili]

more lord of the rings bigatures my beloved cause ive been rewatching the extended edition

[probablyasocialecologist]

The restaurant industry has long coordinated efforts to suppress labor costs through the NRA, a multimillion-dollar lobbying machine funded both by its restaurant members and by the fees workers pay for required food-safety classes, according to a recent New York Times report.

The group has spent its war chest on lobbying campaigns to preserve a subminimum wage for tipped workers — who are disproportionately young, women, and people of color, and far more likely to live in poverty than regular minimum wage workers — and to help block state and federal sick leave proposals and minimum wage increases.

But now, restaurant executives are on edge. Union campaigns are suddenly penetrating their industry, which employs about 10 percent of the American workforce and has one of the lowest unionization rates of any sector. Over the past few years, baristas have unionized nearly 280 Starbucks stores in the face of enormous odds, and dozens of other coffee shops and restaurants have followed suit.

[...]

“The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, every newspaper reports on every union win… when an unfair labor practice charge is filed, when there are challenges to elections,” said Felice Ekelman, a principal at Jackson Lewis, one of the oldest and most infamous union avoidance law firms in the country. “When did this become first page news?”

“And guess who’s reading it?” replied Laura Pierson-Scheinberg, one of Ekelman’s Jackson Lewis colleagues, as the two sat across from each other on the main stage of the summit. “My kids. Literally. I have an 18-year-old, my kids are into it.”

The two lawyers were discussing a new threat for the restaurant industry: the unexpected rise of union campaigns in workplaces that, for decades, have largely been immune from such organizing efforts.

[...]

“Before, I used to say… ‘[Unionization] isn’t a problem for you in the restaurant industry,’” said Pierson-Scheinberg. But now, she warned, “Kids do not care about paying union dues. Two percent of pay, are you kidding me? Their Netflix costs more. They think it’s a hell of a deal.”

The “kids,” she added, are organizing workplaces which would have previously seemed unreachable.

[pbnmj]

miles and felicia have barely interacted in canon TO YOU. in my mind they are already at batman and robin levels of working together

[bugboy-behaviour]

BOYCOTT TRADER JOE'S

Currently, Trader Joe's is teaming up with Amazon and Elon Musk to attack workers rights and Unions. We have to show them that this is not acceptable.

PLEASE reblog to spread the word

if someone could add a transcript/captions it would be greatly appreciated!!!

[porcelain-dionysus]

BBC: yeah david tennant’s coming back with catherine tate so get ready for-

Me: *gnashing my teeth and clawing at the floor* WHERES MARTHA?! IS SHE OKAY?! IS SHE SAFE?!! WHERE IS SHE YOU SON OF A BITCH

[soupdreamer]

dictatorship and shit aside coriolanus snow’s biggest crime was fumbling not one but two brown eyed bad bitches. like how do you mess up that bad

[thelvadams]

since i see some people talking about this, nobody is asking you to boycott the new sonic/persona/yakuza games - but you should sign the petition telling SoA to remain neutral during unionisation efforts

[decolonize-the-left]

I'm so fucking tired of those posts that say "quit calling for strikes! Strikes require organizanization and-"

Why did union memberships fall in 2023? Did you know only 11% of the workforce is unionized to begin with for example?

Did you know, workers ages 45 to 54 had the highest union membership rate in 2023, at 12.6 percent while those ages 16 to 24—had the lowest union membership rate, at 4.4 percent?

Did you know in 2023, that the union membership rate for full-time workers (10.9 percent) was more than double that for part-time workers?

All this to say that if you really want me to wait for the workforce to organize then we'll be here til we're all dead because nobody is doing the outreach necessary.

Show me the org that specializes in outreach and getting work places unionized. Is there anywhere that even helps people choose a union? Where are the tutorial posts about forming a union then? Well then show me the posts people make about being in unions and how they did it.

Oh don't have those either? Interesting.

So then quit asking me to wait for you to organize the workforce when that's not what you're doing anyway, psyop.

I'm so tired of "read a book" leftists. For real. Shut up. Telling people to read or "look it up" or assuming the other person has the time and resources to do All The Legwork to get unionized is fucking wild. "We have to organize" and how exactly are you doing that by telling people online they have to organize? Who is that helping???

If Bisan calls for a strike last second cuz she thinks she's going to die in the next few hours and it's not possible, it isnt her who failed to organize, it's not her who had unrealistic expectations, it's not her who failed to think ahead, it's not her expectations of leftists that was wrong.

And I HATE that leftists of all fucking people have managed to dupe themselves into thinking that it's everyone else who is just too dumb to know how to strike and thats why everyone keeps calling for them when the infrastructure isn't there.

Because that's not it at all. People aren't dumb

The issue is that people think the left has been taking action on the things they're always bitching about (like unionizing and going on strikes) but they haven't and now that push has come to shove and we Need that infrastructure those leftists are making up excuses left and right about the infrastructure not being there. Like for real? You're gonna act like people are dumb and unrealistic and it's their fault for expecting it to be there after y'all have been "organizing" for how long?

[transmutationisms]

(If you're alrght with another poorly articulated question from an obnoxious high schooler) Do you have thoughts on academics and their position in a labor framework? I know some grad students and have never been quite sure where they fit because they don't always work with "capital" in a traditional sense. Professors are odd to me because they are under university contract, but rather than get paid by the university they often get their own funding from the government. Or graduate sudents, who are often unionized, but I know a paleontology student who studies shark fossils who says he doesnt really consider what he does "making surplus value."

ok well that last person is simply confused lol. graduate students exist because the university profits from having us; it is a capitalist institution. most directly we usually work as teaching assistants or research assistants (or else pay tuition) and more indirectly, graduate programs get funding and university support because their existence contributes to a university's rankings, prestige factor, &c, which is to say its (perceived) profitability. plenty of us study things that don't produce much directly lucrative research, but this does not mean the university keeps us around for shits and giggles or some kind of laudatory interest in knowledge for its own sake. it is a capitalist institution and acts in the financial interest of its owners / beneficiaries.

anyway wrt faculty members, they are also employed by the university because it profits from them (or hopes to, anyway). i think many people get confused by tenureship; tenure is indeed fairly cushy as far as employment contracts go, but it is is still an employment contract, and most faculty are not actually tenured anyway. academics are a classic example of the 'professional-managerial class', which is not a marxian term but is a useful one for identifying those 'upper-middle class' members differentiated by their professional qualifications and status; the prestige and perceived utility of academic knowledge production is partially what makes academics an attractive target for a lot of government and NGO funding. state funding of academic research ofc has numerous functions but, and not to put too fine a point on it, a capitalist state also invests money in things because it is hoping for some kind of return on investment, eg in the form of directly profitable inventions, soft power, &c.

there are distinctions here between different academic employment statuses. an adjunct or contingent hire is paid by the university solely to teach, making their labourer status fairly straightforward. with tenured or tenure-track positions, yes there may also be money coming from outside; however, this doesn't negate the fact that the university is trying to profit from its faculty (else it wouldn't hire them). the professional-managerial class has certain characteristics of both proletariat and bourgeoisie, and there is some variation between academics as a very select few do attain the kind of household name status that can turn them into basically a personal brand. again though: the university wants to extract value from the work (both teaching and research) of academics it hires, and so do outside sources of funding for research projects. knowledge production should not be mystified or abstracted in ways that obfuscate the financial interests of involved parties; though it attains a prestige that few other commodities do, this is still a process that is embedded within the overall operating logics of capitalism.

an additional consideration wrt internal academic class politics is that many faculty use graduate students, postdocs, and even undergrads to perform or assist with their research. these arrangements vary in structure (and between disciplines) but in general, this does mean that many academics produce papers, books, &c that depend upon the labour of many people and rarely compensate these people equally to themselves. this can take the form of a more overtly employer-employee relationship between a professor and their underlings (for example, some labs are run this way) or it can be the case that it's another party (a publisher, say) who is reaping most of the surplus value squeezed from grad / undergrad / postdoc labour. in any case it is important to keep in mind that professors can and often do take on employer (ie, small capitalist) roles in relation to other employees of the university, even though the professors themselves are there because the university and other institutions pay them and profit from their labour.

i hope this is a useful start; obviously there is lots else to be said about the economics of the university and knowledge production as a capitalist process. in general when you are trying to think through this my advice would be not to let the presentation of the university as some kind of cerebral place of enlightenment confuse a materialist analysis of the flows of capital. plenty of workers and capitalists deal with commodities that are immaterial in the sense that 'knowledge' is, or are imbued with similar social meaning and value; the university deals with knowledge production but this does not make it any less an employer (ie, a capitalist institution) than any other institution operating in a capitalist context.

[thefirstknife]

Since tensions and emotions are super high, I know people default to drastic measures and worst case scenarios, but I would like to remind everyone that there are still people working at Bungie.

A lot of comments online right now act as if there's no one there anymore and that it's totally okay to burn everything to the ground. But there are still employees there who are facing an incredibly difficult situation and they don't need the community to talk about it all as if they've all died.

It's not helping them or their laid off colleagues to talk about the game they work on as if it's gone and over. They still work on the game and that work will be difficult for them, emotionally and physically. I'm sure it's also not good to be the remaining employee and hear how your work is now worth nothing and "will suck" and be "soulless" because some of their coworkers are gone. It's literally the last thing they want to hear in a situation of complete demoralisation. It's not respectful to them or to the people laid off. This is a massive group project. There isn't a single person responsible for the soul of the game, all of them are. Some of them are gone, but many are not.

Many of the devs that we know and love are still there and will be still working on the game. We should respect their work instead of preemptively calling it soulless. Obviously the game will not be the same. That's not the main issue here. The main issue is that there are still developers who have jobs and who would probably like to keep those jobs and who still care deeply about their work and are passionate about the game and its community. So just be mindful of how you talk and engage with the situation. The remaining devs will have a tough time, especially with motivation and morale going forward; we don't have to add to it by labelling their efforts worthless. Most of all, they will for sure be overworked and understaffed and they don't need added difficulties and demands thrown on them.

[widthofmytongue]

[oifaaa]

I cannot think of anything more embarrassing than Bruce dating a dad. Tim would die of embarrassment and that is reasonable

Wait why would it be embarrassing for a dad to date another dad?? Unless you meant specifically tims dad if that's the case yes 100% agree

[frosty-coffee]

[reasonsforhope]

"More than 150 workers whose labor underpins the AI systems of Facebook, TikTok and ChatGPT gathered in Nairobi on Monday [May 1st, 2023] and pledged to establish the first African Content Moderators Union, in a move that could have significant consequences for the businesses of some of the world’s biggest tech companies.

The current and former workers, all employed by third party outsourcing companies, have provided content moderation services for AI tools used by Meta, Bytedance, and OpenAI—the respective owners of Facebook, TikTok and the breakout AI chatbot ChatGPT. Despite the mental toll of the work, which has left many content moderators suffering from PTSD, their jobs are some of the lowest-paid in the global tech industry, with some workers earning as little as $1.50 per hour.

As news of the successful vote to register the union was read out, the packed room of workers at the Mövenpick Hotel in Nairobi burst into cheers and applause, a video from the event seen by TIME shows. Confetti fell onto the stage, and jubilant music began to play as the crowd continued to cheer.

The establishment of the Content Moderators Union is the culmination of a process that began in 2019, when Daniel Motaung, a Facebook content moderator, was fired from his role at the outsourcing company Sama after he attempted to convene a workers’ union called the Alliance. Motaung, whose story was first revealed by TIME, is now suing both Facebook and Sama in a Nairobi court. Motaung traveled from his home in South Africa to attend the Labor Day meeting of more than 150 content moderators in Nairobi, and addressed the group.

“I never thought, when I started the Alliance in 2019, we would be here today—with moderators from every major social media giant forming the first African moderators union,” Motaung said in a statement. “There have never been more of us. Our cause is right, our way is just, and we shall prevail. I couldn’t be more proud of today’s decision to register the Content Moderators Union.”

TIME’s reporting on Motaung “kicked off a wave of legal action and organizing that has culminated in two judgments against Meta and planted the seeds for today’s mass worker summit,” said Foxglove, a non-profit legal NGO that is supporting the cases, in a press release.

Those two judgments against Meta include one from April in which a Kenyan judge ruled Meta could be sued in a Kenyan court—following an argument from the company that, since it did not formally trade in Kenya, it should not be subject to claims under the country’s legal system. Meta is also being sued, separately, in a $2 billion case alleging it has failed to act swiftly enough to remove posts that, the case says, incited deadly violence in Ethiopia...

Workers who helped OpenAI detoxify the breakout AI chatbot ChatGPT were present at the event in Nairobi, and said they would also join the union. TIME was the first to reveal the conditions faced by these workers, many of whom were paid less than $2 per hour to view traumatizing content including descriptions and depictions of child sexual abuse. ...Said Richard Mathenge, a former ChatGPT content moderator... “Our work is just as important and it is also dangerous. We took an historic step today. The way is long but we are determined to fight on so that people are not abused the way we were.”

-via TIME, 5/1/23

[Note: In addition to Big Tech outsourcing and exploiting workers for social media and AI moderation, many companies also exploit and vastly underpay mostly overseas workers to straight up pretend to be AI. I'm really glad issues around this are starting to get attention AND UNIONS because exploited overseas labor is so often the backbone of AI--or even the "AI" itself.]

[worstloki]

HYDRA kidnaps Loki but all the goons look up to him and think he’s the coolest guy and keep kissing up to him because they really really want him to join their ranks