The strike escalates further! Looks like Ford didn't want to bring their battery production under the master contract.

From the articl (about three fourths, to be exact):

ATLANTA—On Thursday, Sept. 21, 2023, members of the Union for Southern Service Workers (USSW) gathered in a downtown Atlanta parking lot on a brisk early fall morning. As union members rubbed their hands together and joked about being underdressed, many held protest signs, megaphones, or carts carrying water bottles.

Their mission?

To march on a Georgia State University (GSU) Waffle House location and raise the demand for a guaranteed $25/hour pay rate for all workers. They aren’t alone in their struggle. Across the South, in cities such as Durham, N.C., and Orangeburg, S.C., USSW members and allies would soon be marching on other Waffle House locations to raise the same demands. The Atlanta USSW rally was just the kick-off for a day of regional action.

On Sept. 9, USSW members and GSU Waffle House workers delivered a letter to the location management calling for better pay and workplace safety. Their request fell on deaf ears, however, and union members knew it was time for action.

As GSU students held out their phones to film the action, the USSW marched towards the Waffle House in a tight formation to the tune of various union songs and chants. Upon arriving at the location, supporters cheered on the marchers as they packed inside the restaurant waving a banner reading: “Our Dedication Deserves Dignity, PAY US $25!”

Supporters gathered around USSW member Mo Haskins as he read a list of demands: a guaranteed wage of $25/hour for all employees, 24-hour security at all Waffle House locations, and an end to the meal deductions that are taken off each employee’s paycheck, regardless of whether they eat shift meals or not.

The rally finished off with several USSW members, including GSU Waffle House workers, delivering remarks to the crowd and their co-workers about why they deserve higher wages and safer working conditions.

Speakers also addressed the fact that Waffle House executives sit on the board of the Atlanta Police Foundation, and are using company profits to fund a militarized police training facility known as “Cop City.” If Cop City is built, close to 300 acres of forest will be torn down in metro Atlanta to build a $90 million dollar police training complex where police would practice raids on fake schools, homes, and barber shops.

As the speakers wrapped up, the crowd erupted into more union tunes, each of which called for the pay raises and other demands. As the USSW members filed outside, members spoke to the crowd about the unsafe working conditions and unfair wage practices Waffle House employees endure.

One worker reported that Waffle House failed to cover replacement costs when a customer stole her phone; other employees reported having to deal with customer assaults with little accountability or protection by Waffle House.

Red, a GSU Waffle House server, expounded on the meal deductions and low wages that come with every paycheck. Red said Waffle House “nickel and dimes us for everything, but they don’t want to give the nickels and dimes back.” According to her, “Even if you eat or not” while working, “they’re gonna charge you ten dollars” per paycheck.

The rest of it you can read in the link.

cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/799046

More from the article:

RECIFE, Pernambuco (Brazil) — Last week, newspapers here reported that the Regional Labor Court of the 6th Region had sentenced the former mayor of Tamandaré, Sérgio Hacker Corte Real, and his wife, Sari Mariana Costa Gaspar Corte Real, to pay R$2.01 million (approx. US $400,000) in damages to the family of Miguel Otávio, who died after falling from the 9th floor of the luxury building where the couple lived, and the child’s mother worked as their maid. The verdict, which will still be appealed by the couple, came more than three years after the child’s death. I wrote about this case, yet another crime against Black people in Brazil, three years ago (Vermelho, June 5, 2020), as follows. Sadly the echoes of this case can be found not only all over Brazil but everywhere touched by the history of slavery and exploitation.

The case of little Miguel, the son of domestic worker Mirtes, reveals the horror of class injustice in Brazil—and in this crime, the current custom of killing Black people among Brazilians.

Apparently they got what they were going to strike for in the end anyway?

I dont understand this situation at all, so I wanted to run it all by you all since Biden breaking the strike was a breaking point for many of you. But my friend (who is nominally a leftist, but a baby one and a lesser-evilism friendly one) uses this statement as a defense against the idea that the strike break should be levied against Biden the way it has been.

So what are your thoughts?

cross-posted from: https://lemm.ee/post/10568520

cross-posted from: https://lemmit.online/post/1011094

This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/aboringdystopia by /u/bisexualbestfriend on 2023-10-04 15:06:06.

The Almanac Singers feat. Sis Cunningham - Belt-Line Girl

The Almanac Singers feat. Pete Seeger - C for Conscription

The Almanac Singers - I Don't Want Your Millions Mister

Carlos Puebla - Cuba qu Linda es Cuba

Carlos Puebla - Y en eso Ilego Fidel

Cisco Houston - The Dying Cowboy

Joan Baez - Farewell Angelina

Judy Collins - In My Life

Judy Collins feat. Pete Seeger - Turn, Turn, Turn

Lead Belly - Cotton Fields

Loretta Lynn - Coal Miner's Daughter

Marlene Dietrich - Where Have All the Flowers Gone

Paul Robeson - Joe Hill

Paul Robeson - Nobody Knows the Trouble I've Seen

Pete Seeger - Down By the River Side

Pete Seeger - We Shall Overcome

Pete Seeger - Which Side Are You On?

Peter, Paul, Mary - If I Had A Hammer

Phil Ochs - What Are You Fighting For?

Ralph Chaplin - The Commonwealth of Toil

Sis Cunningham - Strange Things Happenin'

Tom Paxton - What Did You Learn In School Today?

Utah Phillips - Hallelujah I'm A Bum

Utah Phillips - The Preacher and the Slave

Woody Guthrie - All You Fascists Bound To Lose

Woody Guthrie - I Ain't Got No Home In This World Anymore

Woody Guthrie - Tear tthe Fascists Down

Woody Guthrie - This Land Is Your Land

unknown performers (written by Joe Hill) - Should I Ever Be a Soldier

unknown performer (written by Joe Hill) - The Rebel Girl

Originally intended to be a Fallout New Vegas radio mod, so add the whole archive to your mod manager if you want to use it as that.

Or simply download this link to get all the songs as mp3s (sorry, not named in the folder): https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1lcDJwNGwprP-fYhdObXdCf72ETVo5ev8?usp=drive_link

Diversity Equity and Inclusion is the new hot idea in corporate HR.

The linked article about REI is just an example from last year, but I've been hearing about similar mandatory DEI trainings that covertly push anti-solidarity messages via a framing of "avoiding potential microaggressions". Basically, don't talk to other employees about anything 'controversial'. Don't talk or ask about other peoples lives. Don't get to know other people as humans, that would be bad for the company.

Anyone else seen this subtext cropping up in the DEI corporate trainings?

Hello there. For the first time, I actually have some concrete questions about activism/doing my part in a union.

I'm in a teaching assistant union that's currently on strike. Since I'm sick for a few days, I've requested to be part of the "remote work" group, and the task I've been assigned is to find contact information for people who've donated to the university.

It occurred to me that "tracking down a person's contact information" is probably a fairly useful skill to have in the context of organizing, so I thought I should ask whether there is any advice I should follow here?

The university lists the names of donors alongside the scholarships, grants, etc. So far, I've mostly just been Googling "(person's name) (name of university)" until I narrow down the right person, and usually find either a LinkedIn page or a page related to that person's business. (Or, a few times, an obituary). The only slightly more sophisticated thing I've done is "whois" lookups for websites. Is there anything else I should consider?

I do think that elections should be held either way.

Victory.

Uber, DoorDash and Grubhub won’t be able to get out of paying minimum wage to their New York City delivery workers after all, following a judge’s decision to reject their bid to skirt the city’s new law. The upcoming law, which is still pending due to the companies’ ongoing lawsuit, aims to secure better wage protections for app-based workers. Once the suit settles, third-party delivery providers will have to pay delivery workers a minimum wage of roughly $18 per hour before tips, and keep up with the yearly increases, Reuters reports.

The amount, which will increase April 1 of every year, is slightly higher than the city’s standard minimum wage, taking into account the additional expenses gig workers face. At the moment, food delivery workers make an estimated $7-$11 per hour on average.

I don't remember the old numbers or their proposed deal from earlier off the top of my head, but the changes here look huge!

Some highlights:

The WGA reserves the right to assert that exploitation of writers’ material to train AI is prohibited by MBA or other law.

Each writer on a writing team employed for a script will receive pension and health contributions up to the relevant cap as though they were a single writer, rather than splitting the applicable cap. In addition, when a writing team is employed on a series, the contribution for each writer on the team will be made on the full weekly minimum instead of one-half of the weekly minimum.

Guaranteed 2nd step: A second step is required whenever a writer is hired for a first draft screenplay for 200% of minimum or less, including original and non-original screenplays. The requirement also applies to spec purchases.

Streaming features: When a feature-length project is made for streaming with a budget of $30 million or more, the minimum initial compensation for a story & teleplay is $100,000 (an 18% increase from the current rate) and a 26% increase in the residual base. Combined with the foreign residual improvements described below, this results in a 3-year residual of $216,000 for projects on the largest services, a 49% increase from $144,993 under the 2020 MBA.

The entirety of section 7 is just fantasstic:

7. Improved Terms in High Budget Subscription Video on Demand (HBSVOD)

Increased foreign streaming residuals: Foreign streaming residuals will now be based on the streaming service’s number of foreign subscribers for services available globally, amounting to a 76% increase (including a 2.5% base increase) to the foreign residual for the services with the largest global subscriber bases over 3 years. For instance, Netflix’s 3-year foreign residual will increase from the current $18,684 for a one-hour episode to $32,830.

Viewership-based streaming bonus: The Guild negotiated a new residual based on viewership. Made-for HBSVOD series and films that are viewed by 20% or more of the service’s domestic subscribers in the first 90 days of release, or in the first 90 days in any subsequent exhibition year, get a bonus equal to 50% of the fixed domestic and foreign residual, with views calculated as hours streamed domestically of the season or film divided by runtime. For instance, projects written under the new MBA on the largest streaming services would receive a bonus of $9,031 for a half-hour episode, $16,415 for a one-hour episode, or $40,500 for a streaming feature over $30 million in budget. This bonus structure will take effect for projects released on or after January 1, 2024.

Streaming Data Transparency: The Companies agree to provide the Guild, subject to a confidentiality agreement, the total number of hours streamed, both domestically and internationally, of self-produced high budget streaming programs (e.g., a Netflix original series). The Guild may share information with the membership in aggregated form.

Premium for Pilot & Backup Scripts: 150% pilot premium and 115% backup script premiums will now apply to programs made for HBSVOD.

This has been the best deal in the history of labour deals, maybe ever.

Full text (PDF) of the memorandum of the deal, for the legal nerds.

Striking is great, y'all!

The Culinary is the union of hospitality workers in Las Vegas. They merged with the International Ladies Garment Workers Union and a few others and are today part of UNITE-HERE.

They would be taking 40,000 workers out on strike, making this the largest strike in recent history.

This year will be written about.

As the WGA leadership and members move forward on the scribes’ tentative agreement with the studios and streamers, the 160,000-strong actors union could be sitting down with the AMPTP within days.

Riding the momentum that has hit Hollywood since the WGA and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers struck a deal on September 24, SAG-AFTRA leaders have penciled in meetings with the Carol Lombardini-led group by the end of next week, we hear.

As always in labor relations, the situation is fluid, and no negotiation has truly started until all participants are seated at the bargaining table. “We have no confirmed dates scheduled and there will not be meetings with the AMPTP this week,” a SAG-AFTRA spokesperson said Tuesday. “When we do have dates confirmed, we will inform our members. No one should rely on speculation.”

The AMPTP did not respond to Deadline’s requests for comment on the potential meetings.

The actors union has been on strike since July 14, when its members joined the WGA on the picket lines, creating Hollywood’s first joint strike since the Kennedy administration. The writers have suspended picketing and are awaiting details about their deal, which could come today or tomorrow.

WGA leaders on both coasts are scheduled to vote today on whether to send the tentative agreement to the general membership for ratification. If that occurs as expected, a vote by the nearly 12,000 members of the guild could come within several days, and a “yes” from them would end the WGA strike.

But the actors remain on the picket lines for now as both unions have pledged and shown solidarity with each other throughout the current labor strife.

While the WGA and SAG-AFTRA share similar concerns about AI, residuals and data transparency, to name a few, the actors union has some individual concerns that need to be addressed in its contract talks.

SAG-AFTRA President Fran Drescher has been vocal and passionate in her rhetoric, saying, among other things, that “the AMPTP’s maniacal corporate culture for greed must stop.” Meanwhile, the union’s National Executive Director Duncan Crabtree-Ireland has made many public appearances, including at the Toronto Film Festival, to talk up his side’s point of view.

Meanwhile, SAG-AFTRA members voted unanimously on Monday to authorize a strike against the video game industry, citing concerns including “the exploitative uses of AI and lagging wages.”

The union’s Chief Contracts Officer Ray Rodriguez said: “This strike authorization makes an emphatic statement that we must reach an agreement that will fairly compensate these talented performers, provide common-sense safety measures, and allow them to work with dignity. Our members’ livelihoods depend on it.”

The First International Syndicalist Congress was a meeting of European and Latin American syndicalist organizations at Holborn Town Hall in London that began on this day in 1913. The congress was attended by 38 delegates representing 65 organizations from Argentina, Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Cuba, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, Spain, Sweden, and the United Kingdom, with a total membership between 220,000 and 250,000.

Despite being marked by heated disagreements over both tactics and principles, the Congress succeeded in creating the International Syndicalist Information Bureau as a vehicle of exchange and solidarity between the various organizations, and the "Bulletin international du mouvement syndicaliste" as a means of communication. It would be viewed as a success by almost all who participated.

The First International Congress of Revolutionary Trade Unions (July 3rd to 19th 1921)

Megathreads and spaces to hang out:

• ❤️ Come listen to music and Watch movies with your fellow Hexbears nerd, in Cy.tube
• 💖 Come talk in the New Weekly Queer thread
• 💛 Read and talk about a current topics in the News Megathread
• ⭐️ September Movie Nominations ⭐️

reminders:

• 💚 You nerds can join specific comms to see posts about all sorts of topics
• 💙 Hexbear’s algorithm prioritizes comments over upbears
• 💜 Sorting by new you nerd
• 🌈 If you ever want to make your own megathread, you can reserve a spot here nerd
• 🐶 Join the unofficial Hexbear-adjacent Mastodon instance toots.matapacos.dog

Links To Resources (Aid and Theory):

Aid:

• 🌈 LGBTQ+ Resource Post
• 💚 Resources for Palestine
• 🐌☕ Zapatista Coffee

Theory:

• ❤️Foundations of Leninism
• ❤️Anarchism and Other Essays

On September 24, 1918, the Canadian government made membership in the Industrial Workers of the World illegal. The maximum sentence for membership in the IWW was five years to be served in one of 24 internment camps.

War brings out the worst in people and part of the propaganda of government in war time is to play on fear; fear of the “other”, fear of the “unknown”. During the First World War it was radical groups and publications, many whose membership came from Eastern Europe, that were targeted.

Within weeks of the start of the war in August 1914, Canada’s parliament passed the War Measures Act. In 1916, the press censorship was introduced by an Order-In-Council. In total of the 253 publications banned during the war, 164 were in a language other than French or English. But it was the 1917 Russian Revolution, and its withdrawal from the war, that caused the Canadian government to crack down harder on any social dissent.

By Order-in-Council PC2384, the federal government outlawed political and labour groups, focusing on German, Russian, Ukrainian and Polish speakers. It banned freedom of association, assembly, and speech for many Canadians.

One of the labour groups banned was the radical Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), or as they were known “Wobblies”. This industrial union organization had been founded in 1905 in Chicago and quickly spread across North America. By 1906, the first Canadian chapters had been formed in B.C.

The IWW espoused the idea that workers should all be in one union as opposed to the tradition of Trades. It organized all workers including women and workers of colour. It organized unskilled laborers, the poor, and recent immigrants, all who were often on the margins of society. The IWW believed in “revolutionary syndicalism” where, once organized, workers would initiate a general strike and replace capitalism with a society run by workers. The Wobblies also opposed the First World War and the price paid by working people and, as a result, became an enemy of Prime Minister Robert Borden and the Canadian government.

On September 24, 1918, Borden’s government made membership in the Industrial Workers of the World and thirteen other (primarily ethnic radical political organizations) illegal. The maximum sentence for membership in the IWW, or affiliation with the banned organizations, was five years to be served in one of 24 internment camps.

The ideas of the Wobblies were harder to stop, however. When western Canadian workers formed an organization called the One Big Union (OBU) in 1919, its ideas were closely aligned with those of the IWW. Today every time “Solidarity Forever” is sung on a picket line or at a union convention the IWW spirit lives on because that was their song!

Megathreads and spaces to hang out:

• ❤️ Come listen to music and Watch movies with your fellow Hexbears nerd, in Cy.tube
• 💖 Come talk in the New Weekly Queer thread
• 💛 Read and talk about a current topics in the News Megathread
• ⭐️ September Movie Nominations ⭐️

reminders:

• 💚 You nerds can join specific comms to see posts about all sorts of topics
• 💙 Hexbear’s algorithm prioritizes comments over upbears
• 💜 Sorting by new you nerd
• 🌈 If you ever want to make your own megathread, you can reserve a spot here nerd
• 🐶 Join the unofficial Hexbear-adjacent Mastodon instance toots.matapacos.dog

Links To Resources (Aid and Theory):

Aid:

• 🌈 LGBTQ+ Resource Post
• 💚 Resources for Palestine
• 🐌☕ Zapatista Coffee

Theory:

• ❤️Foundations of Leninism
• ❤️Anarchism and Other Essays

Votes are earned.

Firefighters with NFFE [National Federation of Federal Employees] sit down for a roundtable conversation about the Wildland Firefighter Paycheck Protection Act. We discuss the upcoming vote, how to support it, and what’s in it. They were very honest and open about the next steps involved, what comes after getting this passed, and the future of the Tim Hart Act.

This conversation includes former Hotshots, Smokejumpers, Engine Captains, and more. I appreciate their openness about this process, the obstacles that have slowed things down, and the positive outlook moving forward.

https://www.fs.usda.gov/inside-fs/delivering-mission/excel/firefighter-pay

https://www.cbsnews.com/colorado/news/deadline-looms-wildland-firefighter-pay-colorado-congressman/

The union representing federal wildland firefighters is warning of a mass exodus by the end of the month.

It says thousands of federal wildland firefighters could walk off the job by Sept. 30 unless Congress intervenes to prevent a 50% cut in pay.

Those impacted include some of the most skilled firefighters in the country, including the Alpine Hotshot Crew based in Rocky Mountain National Park.

Two years ago, as historic wildfires threatened lives and homes, straining local and state resources, Alpine Hotshots came to Colorado's rescue.

An elite federal crew, it's been on the front lines of many of the state's biggest wildfires. Capt. Tom Dillon says they take on the most dangerous assignments, going to work not knowing if they'll go home, and yet he makes nearly 70% less than his counterparts at the state level.

"You're continually chasing overtime in order to make sure the coffers are full for the winter," he said.

Dillon works 1,000 hours in overtime every year, he says, just to make ends meet. But it's taken a toll: "Really the sacrifice -- a lot of it is made by the people at home; our wives and kids. I've had to pass up funerals, I've had to pass up weddings. It's a commitment."

He's made the commitment for 19 years while making less than the state's minimum wage at times. Two years ago, firefighters convinced Congress to approve a 50% pay increase, but it was temporary.

"Right now, we're staring at a potential $20,000 pay cut coming Oct. 1 and do you think that effects my mental health? One-hundred percent it affects my mental health and everyone I work with," Dillon said.

God damn America. That's in the bible.