love the UPS and healthcare workers stuff…but…fast food? I’d like to see every fast food place go out of business. Celebrating a bit higher wages from mega-corp fast food places seems a bit…odd, considering fast food is a cancer on society. although i guess if paying the higher wages squeezes them more, i’m all for it. But seriously…who in their right mind even goes to fast food places these days? it’s basically setting fire to your own money and health.
I think any job could benefit from workers union. No matter if restaurant workers or software engineers. We can see right now the issues that exist with US at-will work situations and green card holders being held hostage.
I am part of a union as a software engineer and I wouldn’t have it any other way anymore. I am based in the EU though.
I live in a country where more than 50% of worker is are in some union or another. Not a single person or union would allow it’s members to go to work if it was even remotely close to the situation in the US. Not to mention that you’d have to change a whole bunch of laws that give rights beyond what unions fight for, which don’t exist in the US
I don’t know if you are in Europe, but I work somewhere in the US with high safety standards relative to what I’ve seen. We had a team from EU working with us and they mentioned a few of the things we did regularly wouldn’t be allowed in their country haha.
Same thing in my country. The percentage of union members has been in steady decline for years, mostly due to years of right-wing paid propaganda that has had an alarmingly great effect on the younger generations.
Another reason is that since the unions did such great work in the years after WWII, the working conditions in most workplaces are pretty damn good. Therefore many assume that “union membership is useless for me, why should I pay anything for something I already have?”
The unions are slowly losing their power to defend the workers due to this idiocy. Many of the unions have been poorly managed and haven’t done their work defending the workers as efficiently as they should have, this cannot be denied.
Right now our right-wing government is planning new labour laws that would break the peace between the unions and employers that has lasted for decades. A peace that has brought us such prosperity our grandparents couldn’t even dream of.
It’s best to unionize everyone as much as possible, and indeed there are unions for essentially every job, so that everyone’s pay and working conditions can improve as much as possible. Everyone deserves a shorter working week.
I saw another comment where I think you said you work in tech, so I will paste this:
There is a tech union :) Unions and pro-union movements have been growing a lot in major tech companies in recent years and they have already had significant achievements in improving workers’ conditions. If you would like to join don’t hesitate to check out CODE-CWA and remember the most important thing is to start building support for unions among your coworkers!
Also, sure this works in pockets of America but most people are still voting for Trump, against healthcare, against education, etc.
Lead poisoning, hookworms and propaganda has done it’s job. USA is on the brink of extinction, parts of it will survive for sure (CA/NY/TX?) but it’s going down. It’s a damn shame, for many reasons. Too bad the people of the nation aren’t caring for it.
NY has never been self sustainable. If you thought the USA was on the brink of extinction, but somehow NY would survive, you clearly didn’t think very much.
I am asking once again for your support of unionization and strikes. While the WGA strike is over, the UAW, Kaiser employees (soon-ish) , and of course, SAG-AFTRA, still need your support.
That should be mentioned on this, like the .03% their profit went down, I wouldn’t doubt in some cases they may have even become more valuable because of employee retention.
Don’t just hope, help build momentum by getting involved! There is so much to be done, either unionizing new workplaces, forming militant sub committees within existing unions and most importantly organizing outside the democratic party to force them out of center.
Workers Strike Back is where my wife and I have decided to best spend our time with, but there are others to join. The important part is to get off the internet and start making it happen.
The common use isn’t to talk about people legally going on strike (which is their right during a collective agreement negotiation) because that’s just it, going on strike. It could have been called an uprising if they had just decided to walk out illegally outside of the negotiation period.
This doesn’t mention one of the big wins from the WGA strike: transparency from the streamers on what people are watching. It’s part of the residuals win, but transparency is huge on its own.
From what I understand a lot of Hollywood contracts (for writers, actors, etc.) include residuals for tickets sold or views on streaming services. However, streaming services did not have to provide the actual numbers of streams so people couldn’t determine how much money in residuals they were owed.
I believe there were also some questions about streamers fudging numbers to say shows were more/less watched than they actually were so it’s a big step to knowing what’s actually going on.
Streamers are generally just a kind black box when it comes to what they recommend and what each show’s ratings are. If I’m understanding this correctly, transparency will allow for things similar to Nielson ratings and keep streamers honest.
Wouldn’t you want to know if everyone is actually watching that one show Netflix keeps recommending or if they’re just trying to make it seem like everyone’s watching it to inflate its popularity?
The more popular a show, the more money writers get (residuals). In the old days, viewership was measured independently and those numbers shared (Nielsen). In the steaming age, streaming services basically tell writers, “trust us”.
There are consulting companies that specialize in preventing unions from forming. If the law allows it (most US states do), they’ll get everyone to watch anti-union “training” videos. That’s not even getting into the historical violence that companies have inflicted on striking workers.
Companies would not do these things if they thought unions were no big deal.
The funny thing is that when employees are unionised and getting paid fairly, they can spend their time working on serious stuff instead of constantly fighting against being exploited.
The professional and successful companies know this well enough. It’s all the personally owned shit stores that think the owner himself can outsmart everyone by stealing nickles from their own employees to finance the underbidding of other companies and thereby delivering a shit product. Grow the fuck up already.
Quality work is done by qualified people who takes enough pride in their work to join a union of people who does similar kind of work, instead of winging it like a poorly paid servant.
