LETS FUCKING GOOOOOO
this post was submitted on 31 Oct 2023
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Work Reform
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- All workers must be paid a living wage for their labor.
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Best news I've heard all year! A general strike is probably one of our best ways to radicalize the masses. I'm fuckin pumped
Let's fucking go. They've worked hard to gut the strength unions used to wield with the POWER of the general strike. Time to bring it back baaaby.
Yay for more strikes!
Obligatory merchandising here, but you can support our union's effort during the strike by buying some swags in the link below.
sagaftra.org/official-sag-aftra-strike-swag-available
Thanks, esteemed Academy Award nominated character actress Margot Robbie!
(I bought the stickers).
Thanks, esteemed Academy Award nominated character actress Margot Robbie!
Finally. After all these months. Thank you.
I really want to believe it's actually Margot Robbie. But I'm just a dog.
A general strike would result in the fall of the federal government. Secondary action is illegal because it's so powerful. This is an interesting way to get around that, with every contract just happening to align with the other.
At this rate though, the federal government is about to result in the fall of the federal government.
I would blame the people who have stated publicly that they want the federal government to fall.
FINALLY
... in 5 years.
This is a really smart thing, though. Any unions that align contract dates with UAW and others who also do so, gains a huge lever to use both now and later.
He's speaking as a union rep, I get what you're saying but he just can't call a general strike. It would take years alone to get different trade union contracts to align to expire on the same year to get what he wants to do across. For example I'm in a steelworker union and my contract expires in 2027. If we sign a new contract in 2027 and participate in a general strike it wouldn't be backed by our union and could be punishable. However if they vote to extend the current contract 1 year near the end of the contract (very likely) we would actually have steelworkers and auto workers contracts expiring on the same year which could be interesting if these assholes actually communicated with each other union to union.
Sorry if you knew all this but I took your comment as in a "why not sooner?" or "what are they waiting for?" context so I felt compelled to answer.
5 years too late, we need action today. Let's get it rolling sooner than that.
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This is awesome, but idk if they're even printing 2028 calendars yet lol
Five years certainly seems distant. I think if no civil war starts in the next five years, then the Earth will just drop out of orbit and fall into the Sun.
We will be saved by the second coming of Harambe.
Already have my dick out.
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Would be interesting. A peaceful general strike would lead to military intervention in about 45-60 days I think.
I'd say less than a week. Capitalism is something that we have to wake up and make happen every single day. How many days worth of food does the average person have? Definitely not 45 days. People would have to start self-organizing within 2-3 days, and in doing so, they would actively make something that isn't capitalism, which directly challenges those in power.
This is why every time there are emergencies or protests, the media is obsessed with "looting." If there's no food because of a hurricane or whatever, it is every single person's duty to redistribute what there is equitably. The news and capitalists (but I repeat myself) call that "looting," even when it's a well-organized group of neighbors going into a closed store to distribute spoiling food to hungry people.
Rebecca Solnit writes about this in detail in A Paradise Built in Hell. It's really good. She's an awesome writer.
This is the third time this book has come up in my life recently. I'm going to have to read it
I love her. You know all of those outlets that try to respond how all the news is bad by doing good news, but it's always just the orphan crushing machine all over again?
Solnit is like an actually rigorous and deeply insightful version of what that thinks it is doing. I think she herself would push back on anyone who says she tries to figure out "human nature," but insomuch as that's a meaningful thing to do, that's what she does. The book's central aim is to investigate what human beings are actually like when existing social expectations and power structures are removed, and it's both well-researched and surprisingly optimistic.
There are already mutual aid networks out there, food banks, community gardens, and neighborhood associations. The seeds are planted and the soil is fecund and ready. You cannot crush what is already dirt.
There is still much building needed for the networks and groups. The start is good, but participation and organization is currently still quite basic.
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And what is the military going to do? Force everyone back to work under the threat of death? Sounds like the catalyst to a revolution to me
Sooner or later, someone in the military would have to decixe between following an order, and not shooting a friend/relative. And as you say... revolution.
That long? Ain't no way the shareholders would let the government stay on its leash long enough to tank an entire fiscal quarter
Will somebody think of the economy?!
A peaceful general strike would lead to military intervention in about 45-60 days I think.
But at the end of the day, how do you task society to forcibly work?
Everyone can just start taking sick days, what's the Army going to do, go to door?
Blair Mountain.
I'm speaking more towards if workers stay at home en mass, etc.
Action and motion are necessary to sustain life in a community, through distribution, protection, and communication.
Nevertheless, whether workers are inside the home or outside, it seems reasonable to anticipate visitation by ACAB.
it seems reasonable to anticipate visitation by ACAB.
I don't know, the optics of police literally going into people's homes and pulling them out and forcing them to work doesn't seem like something the government would want, no matter what.
Which side of government would care? The coproratocracy or the facists?
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Unfortunately the Taft-Hartley act made political and solidarity strikes unlawful. Solidarity strike ≈ General strike. There are some very minor differences, but I don't see that mattering.
That's the point. If all the contracts expire at the same time, it's a coincidence, not a general strike in the eyes of the law
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What are they going to do, throw the entire working population in jail?
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All the effective strikes are illegal.
Fucking exactly. We're only allowed to have small relief valves to prevent riots, we aren't allowed to actually fight for a better future.
Interesting that it was a Republican sponsored bill, and voted in by a Republican Senate and House.
Also interesting that the President Truman had vetoed it.
A political, solidarity, secondary strike etc. is where a union or group under an in-force bargaining agreement are not allowed to strike just because their friends/fellow workers are striking. While not under a collective agreement then they can strike. If everyone's agreement expires simultaneously, then it is possible for any or every group to strike.
Okay. The police will just have to arrest hundreds of thousands, if not millions of people all across the country then.
An interesting read, thank you for sharing.
The anti-communism slant in the law was slightly humorous to read, as it shows you the times in which the law was written.
IUOE Local 1 Standing by...
Yeah!
What does that mean?
International Union of Operating Engineers
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