Capitalism is only sustainable through a system of violence and social control
I still have a copy of the t*rget team lead guide to dealing with union activity that I nicked from the office when I worked there, it’s mostly the same stuff but it also revealed just how much of their management tactics were intended to frustrate any unionizing activity. For instance, they said that cross-training in multiple departments was the best way to get reliable hours, and encouraged everyone to do it; according to the manual, however, it was their way of keeping departments mixed up and jumbled, making it impossible for any single department to unionize (and forcing anyone who wanted to unionize to get the entire store to do it).
And that’s just part what the store managers are taught. Throughout, it mentions holding off on action and consulting a labor relations officer in the company on how to proceed. Who knows what kind of shady shit the people a step above do?
If you’re in retail and wondering how to go about unionizing, contact an existing retail workers union.
They are all very familiar with the anti-union tactics of retail owners and managers, and will have some advice for you, some literature to distribute, and strategies to counter these tactics. It has historically been extremely hard for retail and fast food employees to unionize specifically because the owners and managers keep us scared, disorganized, and are happy to fire us for unionizing, labor laws be damned. Their entire business model hinges on us being overworked and underpaid. Contact a union for help organizing in your store.
adults, while forcing all children above the age of 5 to sit still, be silent, and obey orders for 7-8 hours a day with minimal breaks, reducing their exposure to fresh air and sunlight to almost nothing, forcing them to alter their natural sleeping patterns to increase productivity, and repeatedly telling them their self worth depends on their being able to follow these instructions perfectly for 13 or more years: kids these days are so lazy! they never go outside! they never want to do anything! clearly it’s not because of us!
The way we treat children is extremely inhumane, but so many adults want to dismiss it because it’s so normalized
You… You do realize that’s what it’s like to be a working adult…? And our days are even longer.
thats because an 8 hour work day is extortion and should be illegal. next question.
Either you’ve never had a job or you’re just lazy af. There’s nothing wrong with 9 to 5 jobs. Nobody is forcing people to work them and people need the hours to make more money. People get breaks too.
Please take a biology class & get some help. People shouldnt have to do work 80% of the day to survive.
2. capitalism is forcing people to work. i could just quit my job and hang out at home – but then i would lose my house and most likely starve to death, because of the way our economy works.
3. breaks for most establishments are a mere 30 minutes for an 8-hour shift; at my first job, for a 6-hour shift, your break would only be 15 minutes and any longer shift would only get 30. studies say people are more productive if for every hour you work, you get a 15-minute break – meaning, for an 8-hour shift, you’d need an hour-long break, and so on and so forth.
the way modern society views work is unhealthy for loads of reasons, not just what i mentioned here. the fact that we’re preparing children for such a torturous lifestyle is horrific.
Also like…. small children are not adults. Small children should not be held to the same standards as adults. Even if the 8 hour work day WAS healthy, it would be inhumane to hold a small child to the same standard.
The school system was literally designed to train people for factory work back when child labour was legal so that should tell you how fucked that is
And the 8 hour workday isn’t some gold standard or ancient tradition. It’s just the best that the union warriors could get at the time. They were hoping we’d build on their victories.
What I think is really interesting about the papyrus account of the workers building the tomb of Rameses III going on strike to demand better wages is really fascinating to me because if you look at the description given by the royal scribe you see that there was an attempt to satisfy the workers by bringing a large amount of food at once but that was rebuffed by the workers who declared that it wasn’t just that they were hungry at the moment but had serious charges to bring that “something bad had been done in this place of Pharoah” (is poor wages and mistreatment). They understood themselves as having long term economic interests as a -class- and organized together knowing that by doing so they could put forward their demands collectively. It so strongly flies in the face of narratives that are like “in this Time and Place people were happy to be serve because they believed in the God-King and maybe you get some intellectual outliers but certainly no common person questioned that”. If historical sources might paint that sorta picture of cultural homogeneity it is because those sources sought not to describe something true but invent a myth for the stability of a regime.
Since this is getting notes here’s a link to a translation of the papyrus scroll and here’s an article that gets further into the economic situation surrounding the strike and giving an explanation of the events. The workers didnt just refuse to construct Rameses III’s future tomb, they actually occupied the Valley of the Kings and were preventing anyone from entering to perform rituals or funerals. Basically they set up the first ever recorded picket line
Again the workers went on strike, this time taking over and blocking all access to the Valley of the Kings. The significance of this act was that no priests or family members of the deceased were able to enter with food and drink offerings for the dead and this was considered a serious offense to the memory of those who had passed on to the afterlife. When officials appeared with armed guards and threatened to remove the men by force, a striker responded that he would damage the royal tombs before they could move against him and so the two sides were stalemated.
Eventually the tomb workers were able to win the day and acquire their demands and actually set a precedent for organized labor and strikes in Egyptian society that continued for a long time
The jubilee in 1156 BCE was a great success and, as at all festivals, the participants forgot about their daily troubles with dancing and drink. The problem did not go away, however, and the workers continued their strikes and their struggle for fair payment in the following months. At last some sort of resolution seems to have been reached whereby officials were able to make payments to the workers on time but the dynamic of the relationship between temple officials and workers had changed – as had the practical application of the concept of ma’at – and these would never really revert to their former understandings again. Ma’at was the responsibility of the pharaoh to oversee and maintain, not the workers; and yet the men of Deir el-Medina had taken it upon themselves to correct what they saw as a breach in the policies which helped to maintain essential harmony and balance. The common people had been forced to assume the responsibilities of the king.
[…]
The success of the tomb-worker/artisan strikes inspired others to do the same. Just as the official records of the battle with the Sea Peoples never recorded the Egyptian losses in the land battle, neither do they record any mention of the strikes. The record of the strike comes from a papyrus scroll discovered at Deir el-Medina and most probably written by the scribe Amennakht. The precedent of workers walking away from their jobs was set by these events and, although there are no extant official reports of other similar events, workers now understood they had more power than previously thought. Strikes are mentioned in the latter part of the New Kingdom and Late Period and there is no doubt the practice began with the workers at Deir el-Medina in the time of Ramesses III.
The problem with the idea of 8 hours of work, 8 hours of sleep and 8 hours of recreation as a structure for a day is that it simply can’t work that way. If I’m expected to be at work at 9, then my work day must begin at 7. Allowing myself a rushed experience to wake up and get to work. And I live close to work. So either my recreation or my sleep needs to take a hit, but for some people it could be more. 8 hours a day, 5 days a week as a basis for full time work is honestly unreasonable at that point. Because it isn’t actually 40 hours a week, it’s 50 hours a week lost to a job, of which 10 is unpaid.
some of my coworkers have 2h of transit to get to work, which takes 4-5h off their free time. working full time is a bad idea and shouldve never been a thing
And let’s not forget that maintaining a clean home and providing food for yourself takes over 20 hours a week (appx 20 hours in-house, and varying hours spent running outside errands) if you are completely abled.
SCOTUS just ruled, 5-4, in an opinion written by Neil Gorsuch, that workers no longer have the right to collectively sue their employers .Rather than being able to respond to the oppression of large employers as a collective voice (think class action lawsuits), employees will now need to arbitrate with employers “1-on’1,″ which really means “1-vs.-a giant corporation’ and will greatly diminish the ability of employees, particularly those of limited means, to seek recourse for mistreatment by their employers. This is probably the biggest blow to labor in the US this century, and represents another oligarchical push against the ability of the working classes to hold employers accountable.
Employers getting to unilaterally decide the terms of their contracts with employees has never gone wrong before.
Ronald Reagan fired over 11000 workers, blacklisted them, destroyed their union, replaced them with scabs, and his name is going to be up on the Labor Hall of Fame along with Eugene Debs and A. Philip Randolph.
My grandfather was fired by Reagan. This is disgusting
Its hard not to see this as intentional shitting on the history of labor in the US
wupacing 