Power to the People

[Mike]

The UAW has begun their rolling strike. Their position is simple:

In 2008 and 2009 during the great recession, American auto companies were in danger of going under. The UAW agreed to concessions that included paycuts and reduction of benefits to help keep things afloat. The companies also took massive taxpayer funded bailouts.

Now over a dozen years later, all of the Big 3 are showing record profits yet again at a pace that outmatches inflation, while worker compensation has barely moved.

When times are tough, the pain and sacrifice is offloaded to workers and taxpayers. When times are good, the wealthy hoard it all for themselves.

Fuck these people. Fuck the system that is designed for exactly this. And fuck the politicians who keep accepting their grift money to perpetuate it.

The writers have been on strike for four months and the actors not far behind. And no one's freaking out too much over them, because the studios haven't run out of ready content yet. But let's add the UAW and the new federal changes in union regulations, and I am hopeful for a pro-labor wave to bring meaningful reforms.

Unfortunately, my own union is a government union, therefore, we have no right to strike and very little actual leverage. But improvements for unionized employees everywhere else has the delayed effect of improving things for ALL labor when government and non-union joints find they can no longer attract workers.

I am cautiously hopeful for the future.

[Mike]

https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZT8jCsoDs/

[Mike]

“We need to see unemployment rise. Unemployment has to jump 40, 50%, in my view. We need to see pain in the economy. We need to remind people that they work for the employer, not the other way around. There's been a systematic change where employees feel the employee is extremely lucky to have them as opposed to the other way around. So it's a dynamic that has to change. We've got to kill that attitude, and that has to come through hurting the economy, which is what the whole global, you know, the world is trying to do. The governments around the world are trying to increase unemployment to get that to some sort of normality. And we're seeing it. I think every employer now is seeing it. I mean, there's definitely massive layoffs going off. People might not be talking about it, but people are definitely laying people off. And we're starting to see less arrogance in the unemployment market. And that has to continue, because that will cascade across the cost balance."
--Tim Gurner, Australian billionaire

[Kyle]

I saw this last week. What a tool. "Yeah, the problem with the economy is that the working class is too greedy. They need to remember who's in charge here!"

[Phoebe]

Be careful what you wish for when you decide to build that great big wall at the border!