"The Senate voted on Thursday to reject a proposal to give railway workers seven days of sick leave, a benefit that was left out of a labor deal brokered by the presidential emergency board between freight rail companies and unionized workers."
:death-to-the-poor:
Huh, will you look at that. You got bait and switched by libs yet again
Exactly. the democrats could have tied the bills together to both end the strike and give the workers sick leave, but because they are bourgeois, they didn't actually want to do that, so they kept their strike breaking compromise and their sick leave "demands" separate. Why separate your compromise and your demands unless you want to lose all your leverage? Oh, right. because they never cared to begin with.
Union leadership didn't ask her, they simply "agreed" with the plan, or so she claims, the rank and file want 14 days and their right to strike
AOC and every other member of the house knew the 7-day compromise would fail in the senate, the point was to provide 48 hours of political cover for the strike-breaking congress just pulled
Also everyone should be aware that AOC co-opts (and misrepresents) labor shit she isn't actually involved in. Talk to ALU folks in NYC.
well the unions rejected the compromise their management gave them. the point of strikes is to jeopardize the profits of capitalists to receive better concessions. if they aren't allowed to go through with that because congress stopped them and forced them to accept sub-par (or in this case, zero) concessions, then nobody was actually "helped"
She's doing the strike breaking thing but wants plausible deniability.
This is how "progressives" do the bad things. They give up all of their leverage, support the bad thing in favor of wishes and promises, then don't actually get the results of the wishes and promises and go, "aw shucks".
You're supposed to think this is smart and good strategy, lol. You're also meant to think this is unintentional and they're just very dumb people making the same obvious mistake multiple times per year.
bourgeois reformist
bingo cardplaybook- rotating villain in party to prevent reforms from passing (sinema, manchin)
- give up leverage at critical moment to "compromise" with reactionary colleagues
- get rugpulled at the last minute on purpose and play dumb about it
- constantly "worry" about appearing "too extreme" for the "centrist voter" and punch left as a "solution"
- combine bills/motions/clauses/provisions that ought not to be combined
- separate bills/motions/clauses/provisions that ought not to be separated
- always talk about your intentions
- block party movement to the left
- allow party movement to the right
- tell marginalized/powerless groups that you "feel their pain"
- tell marginalized/powerless groups that "now is not the right time for reform"
- tell marginalized/powerless groups to not be violent because it will ruin the reputation and electoral potential of the party
- tell marginalized/powerless groups to "be patient"
- denounce human rights abuses (of dubious authencity) in a foreign country
- advocate for military intervention to fix those human rights abuses (of dubious authenticity)
- ignore/downplay those same human rights abuses going on in the home country
- accept donations from the private sector
- fulfill the wishes of donors under any circumstances because their donations are large and tend to repeat
- accept donations from voters
- do not under any circumstances fulfill the wishes of voters because their donations are too small and tend not to repeat
- privatize the public sector
- push private costs of doing business onto the public
- deregulate industry
- push for austerity
- crush organized labor
- distract from class consciousness
- if you "solve" a problem make sure to solve it in an impermanent way so they can come back before the election cycle
- never purge your "enemies" (colleagues) because you need the threat of them winning to keep your voters in line
- never under any circumstances change the mode of production
lol, good stuff.
Now explain why this bingo card has 28 spaces to fill in.
If they just stopped being so shitty the list wouldn't have to be so long!
it's in their class interests to be shitty so they can't stop. :shrug-outta-hecks: we have to make them stop. :lenin-shining:
Comments are filled with enlightened succs saying “Lenin obviously meant Classic Free Market Liberals, like Libertarians. We can trust and work together with modern left wing liberals”
I hope the workers strike anyway. It's cute the bourgeoisie think they can legislate this away.
collective bargaining is a compromise, it's a pressure valve that prevents workers from radicalizing to the point where we kill all the wealthy people.
It’s cute the bourgeoisie think they can legislate this away.
This is what is so insane about all this. Congress is compelling people to work on terms they do not agree with. If people aren't able to negotiate the conditions of their employment, that is slavery. It's absurd that nobody is framing this as such.
I don't think they're gonna strike because Americans are terrified of their government like everyone else, but it's still awful to see everyone just roll over and take this.
If people aren’t able to negotiate the conditions of their employment, that is slavery.
OUCH, got burned by that take
It's distinct from chattel slavery but it is slavery nonetheless. If these workers choose to withhold their labor they will be compelled to return to work by fines, imprisonment, batons, and rifles. How can a person be considered free if they can be forced to sell their labor power, that is to work, on terms they explicitly did not agree to?
I want to lay out just what "striking anyways" means.
If a union's leadership declares a wildcat strike, the union can be de-certified by the AFL-CIO and by the NLRB. They can be held liable for damages, draining their treasury. Leadership can be imprisoned. It has very real consequences.
Here's the thing: illegal strikes still happen. The question is, how?
Usually, the answer is a robust network of shop-stewards. In the olden days, that was the core of a union. Now, paid staff who don't work on the shopfloor are the core of most unions (Workers United, UNITE-HERE, UE and ILWU are exceptions. SEIU, AFSCME and IBT are the rule). For a union to get back to that system, like Chicago Teachers' Union did, takes years of organizing to build that network.
If they strike or run a campaign of sabotage (sometimes called "working without a contract"), it will be because militants have been building a network of stewards. If they don't fight, it's because staffers still control the union and have been cowed by the government.
If you want to see wildcat railroad strikes, then it's time to start mobilizing leftists into the railroad industry and time to start building a network of stewards.
:iww:
:surprised-pika::surprised-pika::surprised-pika:
:surprised-pika::surprised-pika::surprised-pika:
:surprised-pika::surprised-pika::surprised-pika:
Lmfao. I also told the progressive caucus that the word gullible isn’t in the dictionary
Shocking, right?
The house reps knew what they were doing when they assented to splitting the "no strike" bill from the "let them go to the doctor" bill
Even if it wasn't designed that way, the purpose of a system is what it does
Two things
- I hope these workers get whatever their strike allows for. Nothing is given, everything is taken in as far as American employee rights.
- We need a pro-strike emoji thing.
OH RIGHT! I always forget that the "Wildcat" is a pro-labor symbol. I always knew it was leftie icongraphy but for whatever reason its meaning eluded me. Good looking out man.
ps in a more modern form i should spruik the excellent and very cute sabocat agitprop from wobblydev, some of the best modern pro-union propaganda ive seen
These all rule, I love the cartoon sabo-cat that says general strike now, but trans fuck around and find out kitty with a rifle is also great
