🌎 Discussion: Labor, Unions, and Workers' Rights

[Schlosser85]

A lot of the hardcore wannabe French Revolution leftists with their “eat the rich” slogans and their all or nothing purity tests and demands for instant satisfaction strike me as childish cosplayers.

 

[Lily Adler]

A lot of the hardcore wannabe French Revolution leftists with their “eat the rich” slogans and their all or nothing purity tests and demands for instant satisfaction strike me as childish cosplayers.

The idea of an honest politician is a rarity I'll give you that (Bernie is the closest thing to it). I find the rich are high in fat with all the gourmet meals we paid for with our labor. It's not like the CEO of Family Dollar is going hungry during this pandemic or working with potentially infected. How much hazard pay did you get for that? How long did it take them to provide you guys with PPE? How long did it take before they installed sneeze guards, social distancing decals, and required masks?

 

[Schlosser85]

The idea of an honest politician is a rarity I'll give you that (Bernie is the closest thing to it). I find the rich are high in fat with all the gourmet meals we paid for with our labor. It's not like the CEO of Family Dollar is going hungry during this pandemic or working with potentially infected. How much hazard pay did you get for that? How long did it take them to provide you guys with PPE? How long did it take before they installed sneeze guards, social distancing decals, and required masks?

Ok but if you’re just throwing out this catch all of “the rich”, you’re also throwing Bernie and Warren in there. Along with actors, sports stars, etc. who have nothing to do with what CEOs are doing.

Hence the childishness.

 

[Lily Adler]

Ok but if you’re just throwing out this catch all of “the rich”, you’re also throwing Bernie and Warren in there. Along with actors, sports stars, etc. who have nothing to do with what CEOs are doing.

Hence the childishness.

It's about paying their share. Not destroying them or punishing them. If they paid their share, we would have more substantial social programs and maybe afford a livable wage for workers.

 

[InCali]

The idea of an honest politician is a rarity I'll give you that (Bernie is the closest thing to it). I find the rich are high in fat with all the gourmet meals we paid for with our labor. It's not like the CEO of Family Dollar is going hungry during this pandemic or working with potentially infected. How much hazard pay did you get for that? How long did it take them to provide you guys with PPE? How long did it take before they installed sneeze guards, social distancing decals, and required masks?

I've met quite a few "honest" politicians, but I lived in Santa Cruz and they were generally in the State Senate or the Assembly. We tended to elect people we knew, they knew what was expected, and carried through.

 

[Axl Van Sixx]

Ok but if you’re just throwing out this catch all of “the rich”, you’re also throwing Bernie and Warren in there. Along with actors, sports stars, etc. who have nothing to do with what CEOs are doing.

Hence the childishness.

I couldn't care less about Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren. Sanders showed back in 2016 and 2020 that when push comes to shove, he will buckle and support the corporate Democratic candidate who represents everything he claims to stand against. He doesn't have the guts to break from the Democrats and as soon as he endorsed Biden he became irrelevant. Sanders is a sheepdog for the Democratic Party.

As for Warren, one quote tells you everything you need to know: "I'm a capitalist to my bones." That alone tells you that she is not on the side of the working class. And no, this is not about "purity tests". This is about what politicians will do when they take power and which class their policies will benefit. If you refuse to break with capitalism, you have to play by the rules of capitalism. In a situation of economic depression where governments have taken on huge amounts of debt after once again bailing out banks and corporations, that will mean brutal austerity measures, attacks on workers, and cutting social programs.

I'm not too worried about actors and sports stars. First of all, entertainers and athletes who are able to become millionaires (or even the Michael Jordans of the world who become billionaires) are a tiny minority within their fields. Secondly, they are not the owners of capital. If you had a socialist government come to power and nationalize major Hollywood studios under democratic workers' control, actors would still be able to perform. If you nationalized the NFL, football players would still be able to play. They just probably wouldn't get paid millions of dollars to do so anymore.

 

[OtherwiseKnownAs]

A lot of the hardcore wannabe French Revolution leftists with their “eat the rich” slogans and their all or nothing purity tests and demands for instant satisfaction strike me as childish cosplayers.

When I see things like this, my heart isn’t exactly breaking for the rich. And I mean yeah, at this point either you’re okay with the wealthy continuing to amass and hoard wealth while a substantial percentage of Americans don’t even have enough money to cover an emergency expense, or you’re not. If that’s a purity test, then so be it.

 

[OtherwiseKnownAs]

I mean, c’mon.



edit: I’m wondering if “Wealth and Income Inequality” deserves its own thread, or if this one pretty much covers it.

 

[mclay18]

I'm pretty sure some people already saw this, but...

Ted Cruz spews disgust at ‘waiters and waitresses’ who he says don’t deserve $600 unemployment checks

Doesn't this lizard man know better than to badmouth food service workers? Hasn't he seen The Help?

 

[Schlosser85]

I'm pretty sure some people already saw this, but...

Ted Cruz spews disgust at ‘waiters and waitresses’ who he says don’t deserve $600 unemployment checks

Doesn't this lizard man know better than to badmouth food service workers? Hasn't he seen The Help?

Anyone dumb enough to insult food service workers is just begging to unknowingly eat something disgusting mixed into their pasta.

 

[moviedoors]

And I mean yeah, at this point either you’re okay with the wealthy continuing to amass and hoard wealth while a substantial percentage of Americans don’t even have enough money to cover an emergency expense, or you’re not. If that’s a purity test, then so be it.

THANK YOU

 

[moviedoors]

I'm pretty sure some people already saw this, but...

Ted Cruz spews disgust at ‘waiters and waitresses’ who he says don’t deserve $600 unemployment checks

Doesn't this lizard man know better than to badmouth food service workers? Hasn't he seen The Help?

“The policy the Democrats and Nancy Pelosi are pushing adds an additional $600 a week,” Cruz complained. “The problem is, for 68% of people receiving it right now, they are being paid more on unemployment than they made in their job.”

“I’ve spoken to small business owners all over the state of Texas who are trying to reopen,” he continued, “and they are calling their waiters and waitresses, they are calling their bus boys and they won’t come back.”

Cruz added: “And of course they won’t come back because the federal government is paying them in some instances twice as much money to stay home.”

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Uuuuugh. The answer is right there staring you in the face. Why would anyone chose to go back to a wage slave job when they're doing better on 600 bucks a week? How is it not glaringly obvious that the actual problem here is the working class is getting ****ed left and right by employers and a government system that goes out of its way to protect those employers?

 

[Schlosser85]

The pragmatic economic solution is obvious. It’s simple 2>1 math.

But Cruz is a moron.

 

[Axl Van Sixx]

Jason Kenney throws down the gauntlet to the labour movement

If allowed to pass, Bill 32 could set a destructive precedent for the entire Canadian labour movement. After World War II, right-to-work legislation spread in the U.S. from one state to another. Since then, it has rendered once-powerful labour organizations impotent. Between 1983 and 2015, the American union membership rate was cut in half, from 20.1 per cent to 11.1 per cent. As a result, American workers have had their wages stagnate, costs increase, and living conditions worsen. This cannot be permitted in Canada.

 

[mclay18]

Anyone dumb enough to insult food service workers is just begging to unknowingly eat something disgusting mixed into their pasta.

Or their pie.

 

[mclay18]

The pragmatic economic solution is obvious. It’s simple 2>1 math.

But Cruz is a moron.

And generally when restaurants pay their employees a livable wage ($15/hr), the price hike is not terribly steep. According to The Atlantic, Australians pay from 7 cents to 70 cents more for Big Macs and their adult minimum wage is $19.84/hr.

For me, I would pay a bit more at a restaurant if the employees didn't have to work two part-time jobs just to make ends meet.

 

[OtherwiseKnownAs]

Yeah, gonna just say that sweatshops are bad, regardless of whether or not available alternatives exist. The fact that better alternatives don’t exist isn’t even a defense of sweatshops. Also the guy who wrote that article is the same guy who wrote “Socialism Sucks,” and is head of a “Free Market Institute” so I’ll have to say his opinions on the matter are probably leaning towards the defense of corporations taking advantage of workers.

We “choose” not to work in sweat-shops? Most people who work in sweatshops don’t choose to either, so what exactly is the point there? Furthermore, I’m sure most people don’t “choose” to work for under the minimum wage either. This is like saying we can’t get rid of slavery, there’s just no alternative available for slave owners. It’s not the fact that “alternative employment” options don’t exist, it’s the fact that the system that is exploiting their labor shouldn’t exist in the first place. Who do you think made it so that no better alternatives are available in the first place?

Also the “alternative employment available to me and probably you”? Most of us aren’t University Professors, so you’ll excuse me if I take his views on what the job market is like for the average person with a grain of salt

 

[Axl Van Sixx]

Heroes no more? Grocery store bosses collude to strip workers of 'hero pay'

On June 11, Canada’s three largest grocery chains—Sobeys, Metro, and Loblaw—announced that they would be ending the $2 premium which they had paid employees who risked exposure to COVID-19. When they introduced the bonus in mid-March they characterized it as a “Hero Pay Program,” but it seems that just months later they have decided their workers are heroes no more, and no longer deserving of the bonus.

 

[Lily Adler]

Heroes no more? Grocery store bosses collude to strip workers of 'hero pay'

My friend who used to work for Dollar General told me that they weren't going to give hazard pay to the employees and it was only going to field managers. Then once it leaked out DG started to expand only out of fear of bad PR.

 

[Axl Van Sixx]

My friend who used to work for Dollar General told me that they weren't going to give hazard pay to the employees and it was only going to field managers. Then once it leaked out DG started to expand only out of fear of bad PR.

"Hero pay" was always a PR move. In Canada, the grocery store chains stopped providing hazard pay as soon as the federal government's emergency benefit payments in response to COVID-19 stopped.

The owners of these grocery store chains are some of the richest people in the country. It's a sign of a sick system when a billionaire like Galen Weston earns vast quantities of money for contributing nothing to society, while grocery store workers who are literally risking their lives to keep people fed are paid the lowest wages possible so that parasites like Weston can earn more profit.

 

[InCali]

My friend who used to work for Dollar General told me that they weren't going to give hazard pay to the employees and it was only going to field managers. Then once it leaked out DG started to expand only out of fear of bad PR.

Well color me shocked!!! You mean they needed to be pressured to do the right thing and money was the motivating factor? The deuce you say.

 

[MagnarTheGreat]

Vice - Amazon Is Hiring an Intelligence Analyst to Track 'Labor Organizing Threats'
UPDATE Sept. 1, 12:04 p.m. ET: Shortly after this story was published, Amazon removed the listings from its job portal.

One of the world's richest people (Bezos) intends to stay that way.

 

[moviedoors]

He's a psychopathic monster.

 

[MagnarTheGreat]

Exclusive: Vince McMahon Threatens To Punish Talent Engaging With Third Parties - Wrestling Inc.



EDIT: many wrestlers are changing their social media user names to their real life names instead of their character names in hopes of dodging the issue

McMahon already screws them by calling pro-wrestlers independent contractors while there's not much independent in the way he's (and others in the industry) always treated them and micromanages and controls their very lives.

EDIT 2: confirmed w/ company spin:

Much like Disney and Warner Bros., WWE creates, promotes and invests in its intellectual property, i.e. the stage names of performers like The Fiend Bray Wyatt, Roman Reigns, Big E and Braun Strowman. It is the control and exploitation of these characters that allows WWE to drive revenue, which in turn enables the company to compensate performers at the highest levels in the sports entertainment industry. Notwithstanding the contractual language, it is imperative for the success of our company to protect our greatest assets and establish partnerships with third parties on a companywide basis, rather than at the individual level, which as a result will provide more value for all involved.

The people Disney and WB work with are in labor unions and/or are considered employees. Pro-wrestlers do not have unions to protect them nor are they considered employees.

 

[KRYPTON INC.]