"Today’s strike at the University of California challenges us to think big about what a labor movement is, and what it should do. [...] Graduate student employees at the University of California, in striking against UC-led police brutality and against their employers’ support for the war in Gaza, are [...] reminding us of the labor’s movement’s best self, when it links workplace issues at home, with civil liberties, with police repression, and with foreign policy and the fates of other working people abroad. That’s what solidarity looks like."
"The strikers are demanding amnesty for grad students and other academic workers who were arrested or face discipline for their involvement in the protests, which union leaders say were peaceful except when counter-demonstrators and other instigators were allowed to provoke unrest"
Union jobs provide economic and class advancement over generations. That's why billionaires and their Republican minions are so desperate to kill them.
If you are in a labor Union (thinking US but any similar kind of union works too) whose membership is significantly larger than there are leadership roles, do you have some kind of shop steward role?
Specifically: stewards that are representatives of a small group of workers like a shift or a department or a wing. Do they have some kind of voting/additional power beyond basic legal rights like weingarten rights? Even if it is often unfilled, does the role exist?
Edit: also tell me about ur stewards/show me ur handbooks plz♥
Tien is head of policy & legal affairs at the #Vietnam General Confederation of Labor and director of the Institute for #Workers & Trade #Unions, the group said.
Much as I dislike the theft of human labor that feeds many of the #generativeAI products we see today, I have to agree with @pluralistic that #copyright law is the wrong way to address the problem.
To frame the issue concretely: think of whom copyright law has benefited in the past, and then explain how it would benefit the individual creator when it is applied to #AI. (Hint: it won’t.)
Copyright law is already abused and extended to an absurd degree today. It already overreaches. It impoverishes society by putting up barriers to creation and allowing toll-collectors to exist between citizen artists and their audience.
Labor law is likely what we need to lean on. #unions and #guilds protect creators in a way that copyright cannot. Inequality and unequal bargaining power that lead to exploitation of artists and workers is what we need to address head-on.
Very amusing 4-minute video by Robert Reich about how Musk and Bezos want to dismantle government protection for workers.
Quote by RR:
"14 mei 2024
Nothing tells you how important unions are like corporations controlled by the richest men on earth suing to dismantle the government agency that protects the right to organize."
Talking of Chameleons, I am always impressed by the way Apple have managed to maintain much of their ‘outside, liberal’ image - even when they dominate mobile markets. Jobs was a shite, indifferent to others in his company, family and community. The organisation maintains that process - with a ‘friendly face’.
I do use their hardware/software but am under no illusions about the company.
#Amazon#UK#Unions#AntiLabor#AntiUnions#LaborUnions: "Amazon has once again discovered its incredible facility for ease-of-use. The company has blanketed its shop floor with radioactively illegal "one click to quit the union" QR codes. When a worker aims their phones at the code and clicks the link, the system auto-generates a letter resigning the worker from their union.
As noted, this is totally illegal. English law bans employers from "making an offer to an employee for the sole or main purpose of inducing workers not to be members of an independent trade union, take part in its activities, or make use of its services."
Now, legal or not, this may strike you as a benign intervention on Amazon's part. Why shouldn't it be easy for workers to choose how they are represented in their workplaces? But the one-click system is only half of Amazon's illegal union-busting: the other half is delivered by its managers, who have cornered workers on the shop floor and ordered them to quit their union, threatening them with workplace retaliation if they don't.
This is in addition to more forced "captive audience" meetings where workers are bombarded with lies about what life in an union shop is like.
“#Amazon CEO Andy Jassy violated labor laws when making ‘coercive statements’ about #unions during interviews conducted in 2022, a judge for the National Labor Relations Board ruled on Wednesday.”
"In the past 2.5 years, more than 60 groups of student workers have filed petitions for representation elections...Notably, student workers have won every single election that has been held, and student workers have voted by overwhelming margins to unionize. On average, a whopping 91.3% of student workers have voted in favor of forming a union during their elections."
-Lynn Rhinehart and Margaret Poydock, Economic Policy Institute
Wisconsin unions argue for overturning 2011 law that ended nearly all collective bargaining (apnews.com)
From the Article:...