#Labour Union

[anarchistin]

His name is Cedric Liechti, afaik he's the "secretary general" of the energy workers's CGT of Paris. He pronounced this speech at the garbage workers picket line which blocks the entry of one of the garbage incinerators in Paris.

tweet and subtitles to the video by @TheCollierPerles

[damnesdelamer]

On the picket line the other day, I saw a former lecturer of mine, and we got talking. Part of the whole dispute we in UCU are involved in is around the fact that Higher Education as a sector has over £40 billion in reserves nationwide, and many universities have chosen to dump that into vanity projects like shiny new buildings (many of which are both exorbitantly expensive and also not fit-for-purpose), rather than invest in staff during the biggest cost of living crisis in living memory.

My former lecturer, a staunch liberal, intimated that £40 billion seems like a lot, so who knows if that money even exists. So I told him, here’s what I do know: three years ago, my managers, who were responsible for allocating a £5 million bid of government funding, ignored the advice of me and another expert on practical teaching equipment, and chose instead to spend more on products from existing contracts. This could be seen as corruption, but technically I think it’s just laziness. But it also amounts to a mutual agreement among university management and external contractors and suppliers to continue to profit off government funds, rather than invest in staff.

Over the last ten years, workers across Higher Education are being paid 25% less in real terms, due to stagnating wages, due to inflation, due to increased cost of living. This is to say nothing of the fallout from covid, or the arguably substantial decline in education standards new students receive (in spite of all the money dumped into new buildings and equipment).

Meanwhile, my institution’s student intake has nearly doubled in the past five years, which both means greater workload and, in theory, greater revenue. But who sees that money? Not me, nor even the lecturers who make twice as much as me, but you can bet that money is going somewhere.

Initially we had no offer of increased pay, then we went on strike and got an offer of 3% (again, in the face of a loss of 25% over the last decade in real terms), and then 5%. These ‘offers’ have been overwhelmingly rejected by UCU members, in part because they prove that that money does exist, and is available for our employers to give us our due. But more importantly, this is not just about pay, and the problems of workloads, pensions, mismanagement, and discrimination, which sparked the current strikes, won’t be solved by throwing money at them.

Nevertheless, slowly but surely, we are making advances. Industrial action works. Support the Unions and support the strikes!

Solidarity forever.

[widthofmytongue]

[morganablenewsmedia]

Allow each Governor negotiate what it can pay - Governors

Their call came as the Nigerian Governors’ Forum, NGF, said on Wednesday night that it would not cease to engage the stakeholders to reach a consensual solution to the new minimum wage crisis. Although President Bola Tinubu, in an unusual manner, was in attendance at the National Economic Council, NEC meeting often chaired by Vice President Kashim Shettima but silent throughout the meeting. It…

[myengineers]

The incessant labour union strike, from ASUU to the NLC, has become a regular staple in Nigeria’s litany of underdevelopment characteristics. And the industrial disputes usually result from labour unions reactions to what is perceived as government’s recurring insensitivity to the plight of workers in the dynamics of governance.

[djuvlipen]

i went to a leftist festival last month and there was a panel dedicated to prostitution, why abolition is the only road to go for leftists and how to help and support prostituted women exiting the trade, and i keep thinking about that union organizer who said, "we hear more and more that 'sex work is work', but if that were true, then there'd be professional trainings leading to a qualification for prostitution, then there'd be prostitution diplomas, then high schoolers could send applications to follow those trainings and become prostitutes. but we all know that all these things don't exist, and if they did exist we would all recognize them for what they are: a grooming business encouraging pedophilia and violence against women and girls." and what she said later; "trade unions that argue that 'sex work is work' never engage in legal battles against pimps or brothel owners. they don't even recognize that pimps are the bosses of the prostitution market. "sex workers' trade unions" don't fight pimps because sex workers' unions don't represent the alleged "workers" (prostituted women), they represent the bosses: pimps."

and that made me think of what Kajsa Ekis Ekman said about the trade unions that consider prostitution to be work and prostituted women to be workers: they offer trainings about condom use and spend millions of dollars funding "worker peer education" about "safe sex".

So one again, it's prostituted women who are held responsible for the spreading and the prevention of STDs - not the johns, not the pimps. the prostituted women, many of them victims of sex trafficking. "As human trafficking expert Malka Marcovich has pointed out, this means a return to nineteenth-century ideals of hygiene, where the onus was “primarily on the women to take responsibility for the health of ‘the customer’, so diseases would not be spread to their families” (2007, p. 347)."

It's quite obvious to any trade union organizer that prostitution is not work and the sex trade can't be organized as a trade union. a few months ago, the biggest unions in my country (which included the traditional left-wing trade unions as well as students' unions) issued a paper condemning the 'sex work is work' narrative and the pimp lobbies got so mad about that because they know their strategy isn't working because leftists know what left-wing politics look like and they know women's liberation doesn't come from prostitution. Now it's interesting that the biggest voices of the "sex work is work" movement come from the USA, where the anticapitalist left doesn't exist. American liberals love to pass reactionary politics as revolutionary but not because they are stupid in their own country does it mean they should influence the actually left-wing labour movement in other countries, right?

[mossterious]

God I love the episodes of Leverage that are like “yes Eliot is working class. yes he grew up surrounded by trades people and “menial” labourers. yes he knows so much about those jobs and will ALWAYS support those workers and their job choices.”

Because it’s something that really does set Eliot apart from the other characters. Like, Sophie is all about the finer things in life, and even if she did ever grow up poor or around labourers, she doesn’t exactly respect that life style. She’s all about getting away from that, if she ever was that lower class, which I don’t think she ever really was. Nate is Office Worker tm, just in vibes. That man has never seen a shovel. And while Parker and Hardison both went through the system, they’re both very city centric. And I mean, Parker has never once thought about real jobs or anything, ever. And Hardison definitely has a bit of a thing about age of the geek, and def starts out looking down on “menial” jobs.

But Eliot, throughout the entire show, is very much all about that. The mining episode in particular is such a favourite just because of the respect and care for these workers that Eliot shows. And I really like how different all of the leverage characters are, not just in skills but also in backgrounds, and how those backgrounds affect how they treat people. Eliot comes from a family of workers and a community of workers, and he holds those people in such high respect.

[nidarchhattisgarh]

INTUC CHHATTISGARH :- इंटक के राष्ट्रीय महासचिव एवम छत्तीसगढ़ इंटक के प्रदेश अध्यक्ष संजय सिंह व प्रदेश महासचिव जय प्रकाश पर 420 का मामला दर्ज

इंटक के राष्ट्रीय महासचिव एवम छत्तीसगढ़ इंटक के प्रदेश अध्यक्ष संजय सिंह व प्रदेश महासचिव जय प्रकाश पर 420 का मामला दर्ज मजदूर हितैषियों पर लगा शोषण का आरोप  NCG News desk Korba :-  कोरबा। बालको इंटक के कार्यकारी अध्यक्ष एवं प्रदेश अध्यक्ष संजय सिंह और इंटक के महासचिव जय प्रकाश पर पैसे लेकर नौकरी लगाने के नाम पर ठगी करने की शिकायत बालको कर्मी ने थाने में की है। शिकायतकर्ता ने पुलिस को साक्ष्य…

[aspensmonster]

Oh look! It's a single graph that shows why sector-wide bargaining is crucial!

Source

unionize unionize unionize

[originalleftist]

This is what happens when you elect Democrats- no talking points lifted from the Third Reich, no constant whining and lying on Xitter, no coup attempts.

Just steady, competent governance that no, may not fix everything all at once, but does keep the country running while making life meaningfully and measurably better for the working class.

[noblemalone]

What if Dragon Age but they all work at Costco

it’s been 20 minutes and I’m already obsessed with this AU

More

[damnesdelamer]

Together we bargain and alone we beg.

[lesbiansandgayssupporttheminers]

[birdofdawning]

Here's how to help support those making your shows!

[lumaxmayclair]

TIL that UK Labour law is so anti Union that according to this Variety article, in general you will have to continue to work on projects under Equity* contract even if you're a SAG-AFTRA member otherwise you can face consequences such as dismissal or even being sued for breach of contract.

I'm sharing this in case there are questions about why this or that actor seems to continue to work during the strike. We don't know their contract and if it's Equity instead of SAG, they're not scabbing. It's not their fault, it's the fault of the studios in the US and the government in the UK.

*Equity is the UK version of SAG-AFTRA

[smartsmears]

Happy Labour Day everyone.