I’m kinda frustrated. Living in Europe in a country where you are more or less protected against layouts, were unions are allowed to exist. Jet it is so difficult to get the people to get their head out of their butts to do some solidarity or even improve their own conditions.
Companies doesn’t respect some basic laws and rights, people has been angry for 15 years and always complaining.
Despite of that, when asking people to organize, join an union or do even at least a day of strike, people start saying that it is not worth it, that it is not important. The most they accept doing is stop to work a couple of hours to complain at the gate like a kids rant.
I know for sure that workers have power. The company makes more money per worker and day that double de amount they pay us, so stopping working would hurt them more than us. Why do people lacks so much class conciseness? It is even more hurting for people working at a desk with a suit and doing economics, it’s like they think of themselves as if they were some kind of privileged when are just workers. Why do people chicken out so much when going on strike?
The last time there was a serious strike in Seattle, we formed a General Strike Committee, which organized everything. They scheduled trash collection, organized laundry service, delivered food, and took over the hospitals so that healthcare continued. It’s trendy in today’s politics to act like striking is so easy – you just stay home from work! just go to the store the day before! – but to strike fear into the heart of the capitalist, you must provide a credible threat that you can keep on striking indefinitely, and that requires a lot of work and a lot of organization. Who has time for that when they’re working 3 jobs just to make rent?
Or, threathen to make them actively lose money. For example, where I live it is legal for bus drivers to strike.
But they can’t strike by continuing their route and not charging for the ride. They explicitly made that illegal, making a general public transport strike not only less effective but it also turns the public against them because they are inconvenienced. All intended, ofcourse. Deny the workers an effective method of striking while still being able to say that they are “allowed” to strike.
It also requires a lot of free labor and money from other workers that are willing to donate or put in time voluntarily. When you’re only just able to put food on the table and a roof over your head, that’s hard - and it’s harder to organize it all because you don’t have a critical mass of unions that communicate and understand each other’s struggles.
even 1 job, and that high paying tech job can be gone in an instant if a employer finds out, although tech arnt likely to strike.
I don’t get this. so you’re arranging for the same work to be done, just by different people? How does that hurt them or change anything