Purity culture (SOSTA/FESTA) meets practical monopoly and provides the excuse for theft:
It is legitimately easier to purchase firearms than sex toys in the US, and looked upon more favorably.
This is one of the many reasons why, unless I absolutely cannot avoid it, I will not buy from Amazon. Because they can and do have the power to unilaterally break their contracts and are so flush with cash and lawyers thst getting recompense is near impossible unless you, too, are a multi-billionaire.
It doesnât have to be this hostile. I was recently in a large staff info-session where the manager encouraged employees to work in union positions.
In fact, I would argue that any decent employer who fights hard against a union isnât actually a decent employer. Union âdemandsâ generally arenât unreasonable. Pay a decent wage, for the industry, min and maximum hours before overtime kicks in, scheduling X number of days ahead of a shift, can only fire someone for documented cause, etc.
The bullshit takes like âif you have a union you canât get rid of peopleâ are bullshit: I have seen it happen. âThey just take a portion of your hard-earned money!â â yeah, and they negotiate you benefits and guaranteed wage increases (if theyâre doing their job), with a transparent wage scale. You are paying them for labour done on your behalf. Go price out a consultant who will do that for you on an individual basis. If you can find one. And if youâre the kind of amazing negotiator who can always get the best deal and a great compensation package, good for you! Have you considered joining your unionâs negotiqting team? Then instead of being proud that you got yourself an extra two bucks per hour, you can say you got 100 (or 1,000 or 10,000) people an extra two bucks per hour, because you are kickass.
I was raised to hate, or at least be suspicious of unions. I am a strong union supporter, partly because I have seen what has happened to the working world since the 1980s and the anti-union culture wars and their propaganda, and partly because as an ND individual, I can appreciate the labour they save me by negotiting on my behalf and ensuring that âlooked at me funnyâ isnât a fireable offense.
Besides, Bezos is Rockefeller, Carnegie and Hearst all rolled into one. If anyone ever needed to be unionized against, itâs him.
And Musk, but I would also settle for Musk personally piloting a Tesla where only one Tesla has gone before. I can be generous.
Itâs tempting to scoff and say âtheyâre bankersâ, but an 80 week is not humane.
It doesnât matter what the compensation is. Thatâs actually part of the problem. It actually helps in disconnecting them from their hunanity and empathy, and enables the kind of atrocities that cause us to scoff and say âtheyâre bankers.â
Especially since the low-levels arenât raking it in. Thatâs just the bait to lure the few who are willing to destroy everything for $$$.
I was raised to love unionsâŚexcept in the auto industry, and apparently many others, the corporate management and the union management seem to be familiar bedfolks. And the air-traffic-controllersâ strike of 1981? My dad nearly went rabid over Ronnieâs response, being that he too belonged to a government-employeesâ union, the National Association of Letter Carriers (great retiree and spouse-of benefits, btw).
And the Battle of the Overpass? I mean, people have DIED for the right to organize, even before industry got more technologically sophisticated.
This is so fucked upâŚ
When MGM adapted Pearl S. Buckâs novel The Good Earth in 1937, Anna May Wong, a straight-up movie star at that point, campaigned to play the female lead. But she was never really a serious candidate: The lead was set to be played by Paul Muni in yellowface, and for Wong to act alongside the white actor would violate the Hays Code, which forbade depictions of miscegenation. The part went to Luise Rainer, and Wong was offered the role of the duplicitous concubine instead, which she refused.
The Joker depicted a lazy DC villain origin story. What was great about the movie, apart from the whole Fred Trump as Batmanâs dad, were the âterroristsâ in the riot scene with the âkill the richâ signs.
For me this is less about the Joker and more about the fact that to these landlords, providing a basic, safe living space in exchange for the rent monies they get is just too much of a burden.
Much of the stuff is fixable in-house, but HVAC upgrades might be difficult during the pandemic.
Exactly.
Why are workers so anti-union?
My guess is that the heads of the unions are just as corrupt as corporate management. Which may or may not be true in this case; I wonder what kind of propaganda has been going around from both sides?
When I worked for HOUR Media, LLC, myself and one other employee went to a meeting with a union rep about forming a union. But we couldnât get anyone else. Itâs the fear of losing income - same thing that was going on a hundred years ago. And I live in one of the areas where unions really did make a difference. I really think that the twisting of history and making corporations people (which isnât working out so well for the GOP now, is it, tee hee?) has had a lot do with it.
And itâs hard to get POC and white people together these days when it comes to collective bargaining by industry to get things to change, rather than by the vote. These divisions have been exploited by the GOP for decades to stop people from organizing, and it kills me to think that folks who do the same jobs and see each other more than they see their own FAMILIES fercrissakes are prevented from coming together for the purpose of gaining better working conditions. Thatâs just sick sociopathic greedy bullshit.
I had one union job, and it was the worst job I ever had. It was with Federated Department Stores. We were their only unionized store, and the union did nothing. In fact we had worse conditions than the non-unionized stores. Basically the union created a system by which the workers could be terminated in an systematic, methodical fashion. And that was about it.
So unions are unfortunately not always the answer.
I guess a lot depends on the people running it.
The best job Iâve ever had, at the FDA, had a union of government workers. We couldnât strike of course. IMO their most important work was to lobby congress against budget cuts, but they also helped with cases of management retribution against whistle-blowers and other minor unfair labor practices. And of course the sillier stuff, like who gets an office vacated by a retiree.
What I thought was weird were other engineers and scientists who seemed to think that by being professionals they were above being in a union. But how else can people shift the balance of power?