No problem, I’m aware that I tend to essay-out into a ramble on these tough topics. Thanks for hearing me out!
So, “my solution”: idealistically? Worker organizing. I see a resurgence of unions which is very inspiring, and they’ve been effective at winning decent pay and benefits. The news has been quietly ignoring and underplaying strike waves across the nation (and the world), because it makes their bosses nervous. They’re also ignoring the absolutely blatant retaliation against strikers from corporations.
(Remember 19th and 20th centuries all over again? Thankfully they’re not bringing in PMCs and riot cops for strikers…yet.) If anybody is “entitled without earning it”, it’s the corpos who feel entitled to cheap complicit bodies for their profit machines.
The government isn’t going to help anybody.
Especially not this one. God help us.
Reagan’s measures to prevent certain industries from striking, like air traffic controllers, and recently seen with railway workers, is just one of many ways the pro-capital government keeps the workers from getting too “uppity.”
Returning to a New Deal economic policy would help immensely. But 50’s red-scare and trickle-down propaganda is still sunk in deep.
What can I DO TODAY, to make things better for myself and my family?
Short answer? Band together and survive. The “screw you, got mine” individualism/exceptionalism myth has destroyed our culture and made us a nation of suspicious strangers. Perfect for selling garbage to and farming labor from.
So we need to involve our neighbors and coworkers in mutual support. You’re right, the government won’t help, your boss won’t help. Who’s left?
Just “keeping my head down and looking out for me and mine” is how we get picked off. This is also why media thinktanks love to stoke identity politics. It gets people infighting instead of massing.
So I’m just doing what I can to do my own thing, and survive, and getting people talking, and loving my neighbor as myself as much as I can, and trying not to feel powerless against overwhelming apathy and oppression from all sides.
Interesting. I used to have some involvement in a union. In fact, I was a regional VP for a huge union at one point and time. And while I agree with the union premise of organizing, I believe it’s an antiquated solution. The union I belonged to also delved a lot into social issues which I didn’t believe had any place in what I was fighting for…which was fair wages, decent working hours and getting the tools we needed for our jobs.
Instead they focused on social issues that had nothing to do with my work environment. They ran me out of that union. I used to be excited about going to meetings and getting people involved. They quickly showed me what their ulterior motives were. I figured out what the leader of that union was making. I saw how they wined and dined me at fancy dinners and hotels at Las Vegas hotels and casinos. I could see how they were grooming me. All they cared about was membership numbers. They don’t care how I signed them up. Tell these employees anything they wanted to hear. Sign that card.
Eventually, I had enough. I resigned my position and took an early retirement (I’m working in a different field now). Not a single one of them asked me why. Not a single one of them were sorry to see me go. Not a single one of them gave shit. I wasn’t useful to them anymore. I had a big influence on the workplace. They knew that and they exploited that. I do feel bad for the people I misled into signing up for that union that I believed in (brainwashed) at the time. Meanwhile I was being flown across the nation and being wined and dined on their dime.
So yes. While I believe organizing and pushing back on employers to make working environments better, I also believe that unions have become the very thing they claim to fight against.
I’m curious to know what your opinion is on unions today. Because in their current form, I don’t believe they are beneficial to everybody. We were actively told that if they weren’t with us then they are against us. I wanted to show the non union members.what we were capable of. However, I wasn’t able to due to holding this hostile attitude towards non members. Plus, we were not able to show any real progress. Basically just “sign up and you’ll see. Be in the club.”
I’m curious to know what your opinion is on unions today. Because in their current form, I don’t believe they are beneficial to everybody.
I’m sorry to hear about your experience and I don’t disagree with you, sadly! Unions in their current state are rather flawed!
In the public sector where I worked, the union was pretty crap as well. It was mostly run by older people who were simply coasting along to retirement, so whenever the bosses would say “We need to suspend cost of living increases” or some other detriment to everybody else (like part-timers who weren’t allowed to be union)…
The union would simply roll over and show their bellies to get rubs and treats from the establishment without a fight. Again, the union leadership were just coasting to retirement, so they couldn’t care less if they tried. Absolutely useless. “Bargaining.” Yeah, right!
I’ve always thought seniority alone is a terrible metric with which to rank leadership, and it establishes yet another bullshit unjustified hierarchy just like the job itself does.
If anybody can say “What I say goes, because I get to make the rules.”, then we’re doing it all wrong.
If there’s “wining and dining” for “campaigning”, we’re doing it all wrong.
Unions should be a democratic collective, not yet another pathetic internal power struggle.
Unions have been de-fanged by corporate lobbyists under the guise of being “recognized.” In my eyes, if they’re jumping through hoops so their bosses “allow” them, what is the point?
The purest form of a union is the workers grouping up and saying :
“We will be treated better if you want your profit machine to keep running. Otherwise, things will start getting very painful for you, financially or otherwise.”
Bosses should be afraid to piss off the people who make them money. Instead, they feel entitled to a ready and desperate wageslave pool, where they can require PHDs and pay $20 an hour and demand unpaid overtime and require “permission” to be sick.
I’ve learned organizing a strike without jumping through a ton of hoops is called a “wildcat strike” and we’ve been conned into thinking that’s “frowned upon.” I personally think it sounds badass and should happen more often.
Instead, modern unions are “permitted” to exist, so long as they don’t actually threaten profits too much, and they’re run by people who want to “be the boss” themselves.
They’re even told when it can be “illegal to strike”!
So basically, the system needs a rework, but unions as an idea must be saved and protected if we want to avoid a complete Mordor scenario. Capitalists would still resort to slavery, company stores, child labor, and more, if unions past didn’t put up a very real fight.
Things like the 40 hour work week, FMLA, and sick days were literally bought with blood. And today we’ve raised generations to be complacent and docile to cruel masters.
Especially ironic in a country established in rebellion to a monarchy, who loves to eagle-screech about how “free” it is.
“Labor day” barely has meaning anymore, and we’re only conditioned to memorialize the veterans of foreign wars. Holidays to solemnly remember the sacrifice of both are now an excuse to grift oversized pickup trucks and mattresses.
In the end, unions should be agile, cunning, and cooperative representation of the entire worker base, rather than clubs of broken old men saying “Screw you, got mine.”
Anarchist cooperation is surprisingly effective in small groups with common aims. The power-hungry know this, which is why they come down on any hint of autonomy without mercy.
TBH I get what you are saying about unions. They are hard to do right. The problem is that without them we’re pretty much cooked. It’s not even management in most cases, but the owners.
At one company, I contributed to cancer research, we were saving actual people. But the owners decided that selling the whole thing to the Americans who can put it into their ponzi scheme of health insurance makes more money. That’s because the average American pays 50x as much for this particular service than an EU citizen.
The people who were contracting and were thus not covered by the union were immediately canned. The rest we could fight and get a dignified way to leave for.
And I was one of their hard working people. I got one particular process that took days down to taking minutes. And not even for the money, but for the satisfaction of getting shit done. Someone from the new owners who probably didn’t even know what we were doing was trying to outsource everything to India, so everything we did went in the trash.
And this was one of my better jobs. I’ve had way worse. And I’m not the kind of person to wallow in my shit either, so I went and got therapy and changed careers so let’s see how that works out.
But going back to the original argument, I know a ton of people who would make something nice for the sake of it, like the GoldenEye devs. They are usually on the younger side, they usually get punished for it, and they usually end up needing and usually not getting therapy. Workers in general get absolutely no input into their work by policy.
They are usually on the younger side, they usually get punished for it, and they usually end up needing and usually not getting therapy.
Nailed it. Public library here. I would often notice patterns with hangups where people didn’t understand the procedures, for example taking an accessibility seat when they didn’t require it, because it wasn’t clearly marked. So I’d make nice clear signs for such things that solved the problem, and I’d get punished.
I would try to take pride in my work, I wanted to share specific knowledge I knew in workshops. I was told “That’s not your role, go back where you belong.”
And then they wanted to have talks with me like “It seems like you’re not happy to be here.” Wow, no shit?
Retail job before that, a district manager visits and notices a simple sorting mechanism I designed for getting small products out from awkwardly deep shelves using ribbons to pull the stack forward.
“What is this?” She asks. I proudly begin to explain.
“Oh you misunderstand. . .” She cuts me off with utmost disrespect. ". . .I don’t care. " And demands it be done some other way.
I was too young and desperate to send an effective message by simply leaving and never coming back.
The days of meritocracy or rewarding “out of the box thinking” or hard work are statistically dead. Unions at least have a chance of putting these egomaniacal choads in their place.
No problem, I’m aware that I tend to essay-out into a ramble on these tough topics. Thanks for hearing me out!
So, “my solution”: idealistically? Worker organizing. I see a resurgence of unions which is very inspiring, and they’ve been effective at winning decent pay and benefits. The news has been quietly ignoring and underplaying strike waves across the nation (and the world), because it makes their bosses nervous. They’re also ignoring the absolutely blatant retaliation against strikers from corporations. (Remember 19th and 20th centuries all over again? Thankfully they’re not bringing in PMCs and riot cops for strikers…yet.) If anybody is “entitled without earning it”, it’s the corpos who feel entitled to cheap complicit bodies for their profit machines.
Especially not this one. God help us. Reagan’s measures to prevent certain industries from striking, like air traffic controllers, and recently seen with railway workers, is just one of many ways the pro-capital government keeps the workers from getting too “uppity.”
Returning to a New Deal economic policy would help immensely. But 50’s red-scare and trickle-down propaganda is still sunk in deep.
Short answer? Band together and survive. The “screw you, got mine” individualism/exceptionalism myth has destroyed our culture and made us a nation of suspicious strangers. Perfect for selling garbage to and farming labor from.
So we need to involve our neighbors and coworkers in mutual support. You’re right, the government won’t help, your boss won’t help. Who’s left?
Just “keeping my head down and looking out for me and mine” is how we get picked off. This is also why media thinktanks love to stoke identity politics. It gets people infighting instead of massing.
So I’m just doing what I can to do my own thing, and survive, and getting people talking, and loving my neighbor as myself as much as I can, and trying not to feel powerless against overwhelming apathy and oppression from all sides.
Interesting. I used to have some involvement in a union. In fact, I was a regional VP for a huge union at one point and time. And while I agree with the union premise of organizing, I believe it’s an antiquated solution. The union I belonged to also delved a lot into social issues which I didn’t believe had any place in what I was fighting for…which was fair wages, decent working hours and getting the tools we needed for our jobs.
Instead they focused on social issues that had nothing to do with my work environment. They ran me out of that union. I used to be excited about going to meetings and getting people involved. They quickly showed me what their ulterior motives were. I figured out what the leader of that union was making. I saw how they wined and dined me at fancy dinners and hotels at Las Vegas hotels and casinos. I could see how they were grooming me. All they cared about was membership numbers. They don’t care how I signed them up. Tell these employees anything they wanted to hear. Sign that card.
Eventually, I had enough. I resigned my position and took an early retirement (I’m working in a different field now). Not a single one of them asked me why. Not a single one of them were sorry to see me go. Not a single one of them gave shit. I wasn’t useful to them anymore. I had a big influence on the workplace. They knew that and they exploited that. I do feel bad for the people I misled into signing up for that union that I believed in (brainwashed) at the time. Meanwhile I was being flown across the nation and being wined and dined on their dime.
So yes. While I believe organizing and pushing back on employers to make working environments better, I also believe that unions have become the very thing they claim to fight against.
I’m curious to know what your opinion is on unions today. Because in their current form, I don’t believe they are beneficial to everybody. We were actively told that if they weren’t with us then they are against us. I wanted to show the non union members.what we were capable of. However, I wasn’t able to due to holding this hostile attitude towards non members. Plus, we were not able to show any real progress. Basically just “sign up and you’ll see. Be in the club.”
I’m sorry to hear about your experience and I don’t disagree with you, sadly! Unions in their current state are rather flawed!
In the public sector where I worked, the union was pretty crap as well. It was mostly run by older people who were simply coasting along to retirement, so whenever the bosses would say “We need to suspend cost of living increases” or some other detriment to everybody else (like part-timers who weren’t allowed to be union)…
The union would simply roll over and show their bellies to get rubs and treats from the establishment without a fight. Again, the union leadership were just coasting to retirement, so they couldn’t care less if they tried. Absolutely useless. “Bargaining.” Yeah, right!
I’ve always thought seniority alone is a terrible metric with which to rank leadership, and it establishes yet another bullshit unjustified hierarchy just like the job itself does. If anybody can say “What I say goes, because I get to make the rules.”, then we’re doing it all wrong.
If there’s “wining and dining” for “campaigning”, we’re doing it all wrong.
Unions should be a democratic collective, not yet another pathetic internal power struggle.
Unions have been de-fanged by corporate lobbyists under the guise of being “recognized.” In my eyes, if they’re jumping through hoops so their bosses “allow” them, what is the point?
The purest form of a union is the workers grouping up and saying :
“We will be treated better if you want your profit machine to keep running. Otherwise, things will start getting very painful for you, financially or otherwise.”
Bosses should be afraid to piss off the people who make them money. Instead, they feel entitled to a ready and desperate wageslave pool, where they can require PHDs and pay $20 an hour and demand unpaid overtime and require “permission” to be sick.
I’ve learned organizing a strike without jumping through a ton of hoops is called a “wildcat strike” and we’ve been conned into thinking that’s “frowned upon.” I personally think it sounds badass and should happen more often.
Instead, modern unions are “permitted” to exist, so long as they don’t actually threaten profits too much, and they’re run by people who want to “be the boss” themselves. They’re even told when it can be “illegal to strike”!
So basically, the system needs a rework, but unions as an idea must be saved and protected if we want to avoid a complete Mordor scenario. Capitalists would still resort to slavery, company stores, child labor, and more, if unions past didn’t put up a very real fight.
Things like the 40 hour work week, FMLA, and sick days were literally bought with blood. And today we’ve raised generations to be complacent and docile to cruel masters.
Especially ironic in a country established in rebellion to a monarchy, who loves to eagle-screech about how “free” it is.
“Labor day” barely has meaning anymore, and we’re only conditioned to memorialize the veterans of foreign wars. Holidays to solemnly remember the sacrifice of both are now an excuse to grift oversized pickup trucks and mattresses.
The Battle of Blair Mountain isn’t even taught in history classes! (I only learned of this a few years ago!)
In the end, unions should be agile, cunning, and cooperative representation of the entire worker base, rather than clubs of broken old men saying “Screw you, got mine.”
Anarchist cooperation is surprisingly effective in small groups with common aims. The power-hungry know this, which is why they come down on any hint of autonomy without mercy.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_union_busting_in_the_United_States
TBH I get what you are saying about unions. They are hard to do right. The problem is that without them we’re pretty much cooked. It’s not even management in most cases, but the owners.
At one company, I contributed to cancer research, we were saving actual people. But the owners decided that selling the whole thing to the Americans who can put it into their ponzi scheme of health insurance makes more money. That’s because the average American pays 50x as much for this particular service than an EU citizen.
The people who were contracting and were thus not covered by the union were immediately canned. The rest we could fight and get a dignified way to leave for.
And I was one of their hard working people. I got one particular process that took days down to taking minutes. And not even for the money, but for the satisfaction of getting shit done. Someone from the new owners who probably didn’t even know what we were doing was trying to outsource everything to India, so everything we did went in the trash.
And this was one of my better jobs. I’ve had way worse. And I’m not the kind of person to wallow in my shit either, so I went and got therapy and changed careers so let’s see how that works out.
But going back to the original argument, I know a ton of people who would make something nice for the sake of it, like the GoldenEye devs. They are usually on the younger side, they usually get punished for it, and they usually end up needing and usually not getting therapy. Workers in general get absolutely no input into their work by policy.
Nailed it. Public library here. I would often notice patterns with hangups where people didn’t understand the procedures, for example taking an accessibility seat when they didn’t require it, because it wasn’t clearly marked. So I’d make nice clear signs for such things that solved the problem, and I’d get punished.
I would try to take pride in my work, I wanted to share specific knowledge I knew in workshops. I was told “That’s not your role, go back where you belong.”
And then they wanted to have talks with me like “It seems like you’re not happy to be here.” Wow, no shit?
Retail job before that, a district manager visits and notices a simple sorting mechanism I designed for getting small products out from awkwardly deep shelves using ribbons to pull the stack forward.
“What is this?” She asks. I proudly begin to explain.
“Oh you misunderstand. . .” She cuts me off with utmost disrespect. ". . .I don’t care. " And demands it be done some other way.
I was too young and desperate to send an effective message by simply leaving and never coming back.
The days of meritocracy or rewarding “out of the box thinking” or hard work are statistically dead. Unions at least have a chance of putting these egomaniacal choads in their place.