On this day in 1919, the United Mine Workers (UMW) initiated a nationwide strike of more than 400,000 coal miners, demanding better wages and a 30-hour week. The U.S. declared the strike illegal while the media smeared workers as communists.
U.S. Attorney General, A. Mitchell Palmer, the same individual behind the infamous Palmer Raids, declared the strike illegal by invoking the Lever Act, a wartime measure that made it a crime to interfere with the production or transportation of necessities.
The law had never been used against a union before, and in fact American Federation of Labor (AFL) founder Samuel Gompers had been promised by President Woodrow Wilson that the Lever Act would not be used to suppress labor actions.
The strike was subject to Red Scare propaganda: coal operators made false charges that Lenin and Trotsky had ordered the strike and were financing it, and some of the press repeated those claims. Others used words like "insurrection" and "Bolshevik revolution". Because of this propaganda and the Attorney General's injunction against the strike, the UMW called the strike off on November 8th.
Many workers ignored this order, however, and the strike continued for over a month, with a final agreement being reached on December 10th. Workers won a 14% wage increase and the creation of an investigatory commission to mediate wage issues.
The US miners' strikes, 1919-1922 - Jeremy Brecher
:worker
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its not about aesthetics, I could give a shit, its just like, idk I'm all about safety, but I also want a stove that just works, and doesn't have electronics that just bake themselves and die after 5 years, planned obsolescence style. I don't feel like the two are incompatible. We're humans, things don't have to be completely smooth-edged fail-safe, foolproof for us to live with them. I don't want to live in a padded room just because I could slip and fall and crack my skull on the floor. I don't want devices that do unexpected dangerous things by default or like, fail catastrophically and burn your house down, but an appliance doing its normal thing is fine. It doesn't burn down your house if it gets left on, it just sits there and stays hot as instructed.
If you want to solve a much bigger safety issue with stoves, stop making glass-top stoves where you can't easily, visibly tell if they're hot or not (and they present a solid surface for pets to step on). Or ban unvented gas stoves, or any number of other issues.
Auto-shut-off whenever you pick up the pan sounds good, except for all the times that it isn't (I can't be the only one picking up pans while I cook), or when the weight sensor or its support electronics breaks. if you just make it a switch, then that's still 4 more wear items/moving parts that will go out over time minimum. If you make it a digital sensor that's even worse. And what's the minimum weight threshold?
And frankly, a burner that heats up on its own when you set something on it is more dangerous than a visibly screaming hot burner just sitting there. children, old people, pets and stoners mostly have vision and heat perception, so a hot burner is pretty obvious, while a cool burner that has been left on and so will start heating up when said stoner carelessly sets a bag of tortillas on it, that's not obvious, and will start on fire while the stoner might not even be looking. Sure, don't set stuff on the stove is always good advice but its gonna happen eventually, I'd rather have it be obvious than a delayed-effect.
It's better a safety feature needs to be repaired every five years than someone's hand.
if this was a serious issue (not convinced) and didn't have potential drawbacks that are worse for human safety than the problem it's purported to solve I'd be all for it, but it literally would create situations that are more dangerous than what it's supposed to solve
Regardless, I guess I'm not opposed to them being offered, if leaving the stove on is something people really struggle with, but there's plenty of valid reasons it isn't/shouldn't be standard equipment
This has the makings of a proper struggle session so before we go any further maybe we should make a thread about it?
lmao I mean feel free
Don't lmao me. You're the one making paragraphs. This isn't the place for that.
If it's any enticement I didn't read that shit.