“Congress can fix this with one easy bill:
Mandate that employers in any "critical infrastructure industry" must grant their employees a minimum of 7 paid personal/sick days per year. Done. The Railroads don't want to give up a penny of their BILLIONS in profits, so MAKE them. Don't force the workers into slavery conditions instead.
Mandate the sick time and the rest of the negotiations are fine. No strike. Workers are happy. Rail barons are slightly miffed at making 15 BILLION rather than 20 BILLION, but they'll get over it.“
“Y'know, it's almost like we should mandate that every worker deserves time off/sick leave, but that'd make us socialists like those dirty Europeans or something.“
“Fuck this goddamn country. If getting paid sick leave makes us socialist then fuck it I am one. Fuck the capitalists and their profits.“
“Im down for that! Fuck the capitalist profits, treat us like godamn human beings, not mindless cogs in the capitalist machine!“
…and there’s so many more just like that.
This is making a lot of people realize that the Democrats are not passive enablers of shitty policy but actively anti-labor.
I think that has been known, most people who voted three weeks ago were more concerned with voting against Republicans than voting for Democrats
And also a few well intentioned people glancing longingly at "Europe" as if the situation there is much different :bruh-moment:
Europe sucks in a lot of ways and is moving towards a dark place but conditions for workers there are a lot better than in the US.
US rail workers are fighting to go from no to fourteen sick days. As a worker in a European country I have 120.
if your company has an org chart it's also a list of who you'd need to beat to get those
I know a couple companies that do 8 weeks paid vacation each year (with the option of getting another 2 weeks of unpaid vacation if you want it)
I just applied for a job AT A NONPROFIT in Germany with 30 days paid vacation (not including holidays/sick days). The downside is that I'd have to live in Germany, but yknow.
If this is the sector that's constantly strapped for cash and known for not paying a lot, idk what other workers get.
Their unions are stronger, which is certainly something to be jealous about in our shared hellworld
I wish I was unionized
Depending on where, but on most places you have free healthcare and decent holidays, and protections. Not to mention that Labour is more organized.
I'd just say that is based on outdated information. While the zombies of those institutions still haunt the world, their insides are rotted away and keep rotting away more every day.
millenials looking at europe like it's still 2004 and we travel with canadian patches on our backpacks
Even /r/neoliberal is staunchly in favor of the union, save for a few Friedman flair holdouts - that's how you know it's bad.
If getting paid sick leave makes us socialist then fuck it I am one.
This is why I don't think conflating stuff like free healthcare in the U.S. with socialism is a bad thing. If it gets some folks over the socialism = bad brainworm, that's huge. It's way easier to bring people around to better and better positions if they're not reflexively rejecting you due to the scary s-word.
Yeah but the liberals have been saying this for almost a decade now and all it's done is make them think socialism is when capitalism doesn't eat itself.
e: Actually what it's done is make them think there's just another word they can hollow out and migrate to once 'progressive' starts to sound bad in the mouths of right wing media.
:debatebro-l: actually I'm using the word correctly just in the North American sense.
On one hand I agree but its been a long time and they really havent started self identifying as socialist at all
I don't always agree with them on everything but I damn sure respect their commitment to calling out media trickery and journalists being clowns. Also the minimalist approach to their podcast is great.
VERY TRUE! I still like RevLeft, Guerrilla History, and “millennials are killing capitalism”. There unfortunately too many leftist low effort cultural podcasts (not that cultural critique is a bad thing, but a lot of the critique from these is just smug ironic dunking rather than actually critiquing from a left perspective). It’s hard to make real deal leftie in an interesting way so I salute anyone or group that can make it worth while.
You vote on election day and spend the rest of your time organizing. That is all I’m saying. Come election day, you vote for the Democrats. Why? Because they’re better (less bad) than the alternative. The democrats will not pass an anti-abortion or an anti-lgtb bill. The republicans will.
no i'm being completely serious right now :i-voted: 4️⃣ :brandon:
I'm surprised /r/politics has allowed discussion or news about this given that they usually remove all things about unions as "not politics".
If there's a bill in congress, then it's Politics. At all other times, you're just tiring to shove politics into my [art, economy, language, philosophy] where there wasn't any before! :reddit-logo:
The truth is that it's just a method for the liberals to shut out everything to the left of them.
Am I missing something? Congress is writing a bill mandating 7 days sick leave for rail workers isn't it?
It was a do nothing, separate piece of legislation that is DOA in the senate. There were two pieces of legislation passed by the house, one to force the contract that the unions rejected and another to provide the sick time. Just typical liberal perfomative nonsense from the blue team.
The senate would have to pass it and there are pretty big doubts it'd make it through. Only 3 house republicans crossed the line, and they'd need a lot more in the senate to not just get filibustered. Also consider that the Rs are more than willing to "back" the strike to be able to manufacture the circus that will come with a huge fuckup under Biden, and I think it's unlikely to pass.
