people decided it isnt worth risking their lives to have a boomer spit in their face for bringing the wrong flavor of ketchup out
i have a nurse friend that did a unanimous union vote because all the new covid patients are unvaccinated rightwing nutjobs and they are in talks to formulate rules for how nurses will deal with these people (currently the plan is to strap them down and force the mask on them cause theyre fuckin idiots, tape it to the back of their head if necessary)
they also did a vote to expel all nurses that refused masks/vax too. there really is no excuse to not get vaxxed as a nurse, they do them in your lobby
a nurse friend that did a unanimous union vote
:meow-fiesta:
currently the plan is to strap them down and force the mask on them cause theyre fuckin idiots, tape it to the back of their head if necessary
:meow-cactus:
did a vote to expel all nurses that refused masks/vax too. there really is no excuse to not get vaxxed as a nurse
:meow-shining:
Legit, I think nurses and teachers and "reproductive capital" (cant remember the term but al the shit that keeps capitalism ticking over by keeping workers minimally healthy and educated) in general are going to form the locus of revolutionary labor in the coming struggles this decade. Like the longshoremen and railway workers and coal miners all were for the last big struggle.
To the point that if you're not sure what to do for work and wanna do good shit for the cause, go become a nurse or teacher and salt and organize with them.
"And what shall I say to the schoolmaster — not to the man who looks upon his profession as a wearisome business, but to him who, when surrounded by a joyous band of young pickles, feels exhilarated by their cheery looks and in the midst of their happy laughter — to him who tries to plant in their little heads those ideas of humanity which he cherished himself when he was young?
Often I see that you are sad, and I know what it is that makes you knit your brows. This very day, your favorite pupil who is not very well up in Latin, it is true, but who has nonetheless an excellent heart, recited the story of William Tell with so much vigor! His eyes sparkled; he seemed to wish to stab all tyrants there and then; he gave with such fire the passionate lines of Schiller:
Before the slave when he breaks his chain,
Before the free man tremble not.
But when he returned home, his mother, his father, his uncle sharply rebuked him for want of respect to the minister or the rural policeman; they held forth to him by the hour on “prudence, respect of authority, submission to his betters,” till he put Schiller aside in order to read “Self-Help.”
And then, only yesterday, you were told that your best pupils have all turned out badly. One does nothing but dream of becoming an officer; another in league with his master robs the workers of their slender wages; and you, who brood over the sad contrast between your ideal, and life as it is.
You still brood over it! Then I foresee that in two years, at the outside, after having suffered disappointment after disappointment, you will lay your favorite authors on the shelf, and you will end by saying that Tell was no doubt a very honest fellow, but after all a trifle cracked; that poetry is a first-rate thing for the fireside, especially whan a man has been teaching the rule-of-three all day long, but still poets are always in the clouds and their views have nothing to do with the life of today, nor with the next visit of the Inspector of Schools...
Or, on the other hand, the dreams of your youth will become the firm convictions of your mature age. You will wish to have wide, human education for all, in school and out of school; and seeing that this is impossible in existing conditions, you will attack the very foundations of bourgeois society. Then, discharged as you will be by the Education Department, you will leave your school and come among us and be of us; you will tell men of riper years but of smaller attainments than yourself how enticing knowledge is, what mankind ought to be — nay, what we could be. You will come and work with Socialists for the complete transformation of the existing system, will strive side by side with us to attain true equality, real fraternity, never-ending liberty for the world."
Kropotkin - An Appeal to the Young.
I always think of it as reading Marx for what is Socialism, Lenin for how to do Socialism, and Kropotkin for why we should do Socialism.
i think youll find those seeds of radicalization among hispanic and immigrant people the most tbh, they came here more recently so have less generational inside-the-beast propaganda on them
But they also self selected to be here, many of them because they had striver/get rich type dreams.
Seeing those dreams collide with reality can be radicalizing, though not in everyone.
Cubans (used to?) get all sorts of benefits and special treatment when they come to the U.S., extending all the way to a valuable position in the electoral process. So they may not be a good predictor for other Latin Americans who move here.
currently the plan is to strap them down and force the mask on them cause theyre fuckin idiots, tape it to the back of their head if necessary
The pissing and moaning would be monumental
Goddamn I just want to get to see 1 video of that happening. It would be so fucking fun to watch
Suddenly remembered about a brief work stint in the ER like a decade ago, and EMTs brought in someone who was tripping serious balls that they needed to put a mask on because she kept spitting at them for dragging her away from her castle (a sandbar that became an island at low tide).
Good for them they should do it, solidarity with based nurses unions
they also did a vote to expel all nurses that refused masks/vax too. there really is no excuse to not get vaxxed as a nurse, they do them in your lobby
Seems no different then expelling nurses who refuse to wash their hands. Good call.
proles may begin to realize in greater numbers their strength and the class struggle dynamic.
oh I hope so, we don't have a lot of time left and if this doesn't lead anywhere then nothing will ever change
You know that 9/11 happened right in the middle of a big decline in the economy (dot com bubble)? Did you know that in 2019 the fed started new QE measures in order to prop up a failing economy? What if this was already going to happen and we're falsely assuming it's all covid? The post says it itself. The proliferation of alternative gig employment means a smaller labor pool for traditional retail/foodservice jobs. The pandemic happened while this was already going on, and then we all assume it started because of the pandemic.
This was always going to happen.
Idk, don’t a lot of those gig jobs suck but in a different way? I’m not sure that the existence of some ~$15/hr. precariat gig is enough to help people reclaim their crushed dignity.
Shit, even the better job will get undercut by the 30% increase in rent and gas prices.
The gig jobs definitely do suck, but they're not replacing full time jobs with benefits, they're replacing part time jobs with inconsistent scheduling. At least with gig jobs you have the semblance of autonomy by being able to set your own schedule and not having a shitty manager breathing down your neck.
not having a shitty manager breathing down your neck.
Sure. Instead a handful of algorithms are your shitty manager breathing down your neck, and their mood is determined by an arbitrary rating system in the hands of customers who don't know or care how their ratings affect your schedule/pay/life.
Plus, a lot of gig work is essentially trading the value of your car for cash now.
Did delivery for SkipTheDishes for a couple years and my car was basically done at the end, yeah not worth it at all.
The tricky part is that it is worth it if you need to pay bills by the end of the week. But long term, yeah, you're not getting ahead.
I think rents rose so fast those low paying service jobs are now unable to provide even a strained living. The retail industry isn't able to subsidise the landlord's largess
Appropriate if the final nail in the u.s. coffin is that we finally ran out of :free-real-estate:
I think it's even more morbid than you're suggesting I bet a lot of these essential workers probably died or got long covid complications and just plain cant work anymore.
I thought that too, but deaths were heavily weighted toward the elderly
I looked it up, and over 100,000 people who died of Covid were under the age of 65 (and not everyone retires at 65 either). Even without burnout and long covid, that's still enough for a labor shortage
There’s also the eviction moratorium giving workers more power by not threatening them with eviction constantly.
I was talking to a friend who does run a restaurant. He voted Bernie, but did mention that no one wants to work. I told him people in restaurants died the most from Covid so it's no wonder people don't want to work now, especially with Delta. That did shut him down and he said basically everyone is fucked in the long run because no help at all from the government.
Tom brady's "small business " got a loan if that tells you anything
Hardly, my dad got like 40K and basically had to do nothing but a one-page application with basic info. He also applied and qualified for unemployment despite never being short on work (he did it while he was drunk and didn’t claim any after)
It is. I technically have a small business (freelance I'm not a boss) but you have to be making over a certain amount yearly to get one.
I think a lot of businesses that could have used the help didn't qualify the arbitrary standards. And ones that did get PPP loans didn't need it or pocketed cash.
I think the answer is that it's not happening, at least not on too disruptive of scale. Sure, you'll get slower service here and there. Sure, you'll get isolated (but boosted to the top of every fucking media outlet) stories of everyone at a fast food joint walking out. But the country isn't undergoing some organic, informal general strike; that's not even happening in small pockets of it.
Note also that some companies are shrewd enough (and established enough) to cut back temporarily unprofitable services, blame it on "nO oNe WaNtS tO wOrK!11!", and delay the decision to re-expand until later. It's like that Citations Needed episode on Walgreens or CVS shuttering stores to reduce costs and then blaming it on shoplifting.
https://citationsneeded.medium.com/news-brief-organized-crime-shoplifting-epidemic-panic-hits-san-francisco-media-b044c0f78bfa
There's long-covid which is fucking up plenty of people, but a ton more are just mentally fucked by the whole thing.
Anxiety and depression have been going up even before covid, but I wouldn't be surprised if a large percentage of the work force is currently dealing with undiagnosed anxiety and depression disorder.
The thought of going back to these shitty jobs after being able to finally take a break is probably too much.
This is especially true for people who are already behind on rent and everything. There's no way to get caught up after this long, so what's the fucking point?
That last point is especially salient. When shit piles up, it just becomes more and more overwhelming until you block it out entirely. See: the mess of an apartment I live in.
But what then? All the people who were wage slaving just gave up? What are they doing now to survive?
A lot are probably depressed as fuck while others are looking for alternative solutions to housing such as with friends and family.
Capitalism has so deeply infiltrated our corn-syrup-soaked brains, and so deeply uprooted the material conditions that allow class conciousness to grow, that even our general strikes are just an aggregate of individual choices made by individualized market actors.
That's the thing, you have to extrapolate to the absurd. If every single person who didn't like their minimum wage job left for a better job, who would do the minimum wage jobs? People tend to respond to this by saying that teenagers and stuff will do the jobs? People love to say that low wage, "low skill" jobs are just meant for teens but as a Chapo mentioned a few episodes ago, there was never a time when McDonald's couldn't be open until the kids all got out of school. So those jobs were always meant for adults.
Also imagine how annoyed they would be if McDonalds hours was fit around for example the fact teenagers have less free time in exam season
there was never a time when McDonald’s couldn’t be open until the kids all got out of school. So those jobs were always meant for adults.
The function of school is to stop kids from doing revolutionary praxis in street gangs. School is just child labor with extra steps
I know it’s anecdotal but I walk past tons of restaurants and bars that are only staffed by like 1-3 people and the workers look stressed as fuck. The only places where this is not the case are the mom and pop style restaurants where it’s clearly a family all working together instead of hiring random laborers
Freelance language tutoring sounds like it might get you some rewarding experiences. Grats on the upgrade.
Where I live some retail stores and fast food places are offering $18 or more per hour. You'd have to pay me a lot more than that do deal with shitty customers again.
I support Murder Bryan's plan for a fast-food draft so all these Karens need to work at McDonald's for a year and learn how the other half lives.
I saw $18 and was like "damn that's a lot." Then I crunched the numbers and it's $5000 less than I make. As a public school teacher.
Exploitation, we love it folks.
$36k before overtime. That was my entry level salary at a boutique software firm and they bumped my salary to $40k the following year and $45k the year after that for fear of losing me.
This is peanuts compared to the value-add you're generating in billables/sales. Nobody should be earning less than $25/hr. Certainly not with the cost of living right now.
fast-food draft
as Pod Damn America (the only podcast who talks to workers and aren't worthless PMC art student fascists) says in their several Thank You For Your Service episodes, workers are braver than the troops.
Huge shortage of nurses right now, thanks to all the burnout from COVID.
Guess what pays substantively better than retail service work?
Guess what pays substantively better than retail service work?
Selling feet pics?
