“Oh [other profession] wants better working conditions? WELL [MY profession] is HARDER I work TWENTY HOUR DAYS and I am NOT ALLOWED BREAKS and I’m PAID FOR SHIT and I have NO INSURANCE and I NEVER SEE MY CHILDREN so WHY are YOU COMPLAINING LOL”
have you considered that maybe YOUR job ALSO should not suck that much
Story time. This is not so much for OP but for anyone else who might not have union experience: Bear in mind that there is a strong propaganda effort to get people to this viewpoint. They’re not being willfully obtuse.
I spoke to a neighbour the other day. She’d just taken voluntary a lay-off from her factory job because she had an ongoing injury and they wouldn’t let her adjust her hours in a sensible way. She’d been struggling to make it work anyway but her back was getting really bad. So when they put the word out that they were looking for volunteers to take lay-offs, she put up her hand. Still, she was proud to tell me that she was considered one of their best and fastest workers, even with the injury. She was frustrated that one of the newer workers seemed to have gotten various accommodations, even though that worker was nowhere near as good.
I could tell that she’d been having similar conversations with her coworkers on the factory floor for years. Who got extras they didn’t “deserve.” Who was a shoddy worker and made life harder for everyone. Who came in to work even though their parent had just died to make sure that nobody had to pick up their slack. And all of that pervaded with propaganda about “greedy unions” who slim down your already-skinny paycheque just because they’re all lazy slackers who don’t want to pull their weight and don’t appreciate the nice boss for hiring them. (This is the same across all types of jobs. Next story time I’ll talk about two university profs who grew to fame and fortune via unions and the social safety net and yet both engaged in union busting.)
My neighbour’s injury, incidentally, was a result of her work at the factory, but she didn’t want to try for compensation or anything else. She’d “never taken a single sick day in 20 years” and wasn’t “the kind of person who made waves” so she was just going the regular unemployment route but finding the systems obscure and challenging. She was hurt and shocked that her old employer would treat one of their best workers this way and leave them to deal with the fall-out by themselves.
Meanwhile, Canadian (federal) government workers were striking in Ottawa. And she expressed frustration that they felt “entitled to strike” when the (provincial) services she was accessing were so shoddy and difficult to navigate. Why did they “get to” strike if their work was apparently so poor? She had no sympathy for them.
I pushed back gently. Her factory floor job wasn’t union, but the admin staff was union. They seemed to get a better deal. We spoke about strength in numbers, and how hard it is to try and get your due from your employer without anyone to help you. And how they make all these forms complicated on purpose so it’s easier to deny you money or other support. And how it would be great to have someone to go to meetings with you, who knew all the legal stuff, and who could help you with the forms, and get you the money for the medical services you needed.
She wasn’t pro-union by the time I left, but we’d agreed on a few things, and I’d framed a few of her concerns in a way that made her more ambivalent about strikes (rather than outright hostile). Still, as we were saying our goodbyes, she said, “let’s hope they hurry up and get back to work eh!”
Because imagine what it would cost her to turn around and agree that unions are good, and strikes are good, and you should fight your employer for your fair compensation and your rights. Twenty years of taking no sick leave, working herself to the bone on not enough money, laid off and struggling with the system for basic support. She’s proud of her suffering, all the times she didn’t complain, all the times she pushed on even as the going got harder and harder.
Because if she can’t be proud of it… then what? She’s dumb for taking a non-union job? She should’ve organised and could’ve had better pay and a severance package and free physiotherapy for life? If she accepts that unions and strikes are good, she’s still in pain, still unemployed, still stuck with her lack of support, but now also feels like a fucking idiot for giving 20 years of her life to a boss who threw her out without a second thought.
So. Don’t put up with union busting and do talk to the people in your life about solidarity, but do realise that being anti-union isn’t just folks being aggressively wrong for the sake of it. They’ve been lied to. And they possibly have a lot of complex grief and identity and other experiences tied up in this.
“If she accepts that unions and strikes are good, she’s still in pain, still unemployed, still stuck with her lack of support, but now also feels like a fucking idiot for giving 20 years of her life to a boss who threw her out without a second thought.”
This.
And this applies to a lot of other things you might want people to change their minds about.
In the future, children will think our ways are strange. "Why do old people always grow so much milkweed in their gardens?" they'll say. "Why do old people always write down when the first bees and butterflies show up? Why do old people hate lawn grass so much? Why do old people like to sit outside and watch bees?"
We will try to explain to them that when we were young, most people's yards were almost entirely short grass with barely any flowers at all, and it was so commonplace to spray poisons to kill insects and weeds that it was feared monarch butterflies and American bumblebees would soon go extinct. We will show them pictures of sidewalks, shops, and houses surrounded by empty grass without any flowers or vegetables and they will stare at them like we stared at pictures of grimy children working in coal mines
We will be feeding our grandchildren strawberries and raspberries we grew in our gardens, dragging them along to the farmers' markets for tomatoes and eggs and goats milk and pickles and pecans and salsa and sunflower seed butter and jars of honey, as they complain and drag their feet because Gramma always stands around talking to people for like an HOUR
and we will say "When I was YOUR age, fruits and vegetables came from a supermarket and they were bred to get shipped 1000 miles in a truck and sit on shelves for weeks, and they tasted so sour and watery it was like eating paper compared to these ones. It wasn't even legal in some places to grow your own food"
and they will roll their eyes like yeah yeah just because everything was miserable in the 20s doesn't mean I have to have a smile on my face standing in the hot sun while you listen to that one guy talk about his bees FOREVER
But they will go, because there might be baby goats.
you guys know you can get USB connectable CD, dvd, and blu-ray players right. and you can buy external hard drives with crazy amounts of space for an amount of money that would make the average person from 2009’s head explode bc of how cheap it is. and if you do this and get ripping software such as handbrake for CDs and DVDs and makeMKV for blurays you can both own a physical copy of whatever media you want and make it accessible to yourself no matter where you are. do you guys know this
passports…should not expire
actually i have decided that passports shouldn’t exist at all
![[anonymous ask for @marisatomay]: no passports? how you gonna have people travel between countries? [answer from @marisatomay]: they just go baby](https://64.media.tumblr.com/cee670455601f333251a4399278ef5b8/ecc8e3ca158c399f-2f/s500x750/d39440dce08a4a31a87c9c1f322c98f9f3fc743d.jpg)
ALT![[unanswered anonymous ask for @marisatomay]: apparently assholes doing terrorism isnt a thing in your passport free world](https://64.media.tumblr.com/6d88e69e4fbb15dee03d766445301234/ecc8e3ca158c399f-f5/s500x750/3132e6bb7a8fe9ce091b95c316e68d007df61b8e.jpg)
ALTi love it here
Me when I'm about to do a terrorism but I am stopped by a cop asking for my passport
If a fella makes a nebula right in front of you, how are you not gonna pine after him for 6000 years?
two headed calf and his mother
Still feels weird that the same band made "You're Gonna Go Far, Kid" and "Pretty Fly (For A White Guy)"
It's like if Smash Mouth and Fall Out Boy were one band.
The Offspring are honestly a contender for the funniest punk band ever, made even funnier by the fact that Dexter Holland is pushing 60 now and has a PhD in virology.
Like imagine being on an academic committee and reviewing a dissertation on HIV protein-encoding genomes and it's from a guy with frosted tips whose greatest legacy is the Crazy Taxi soundtrack.
That's the Offspring.
i think it’s important to clarify that the aim of anti imperialist organising in the core is not to convince our governments to adopt ‘better’ policies. imperialism is integral and necessary to capitalism as it currently exists, so we’re not appealing to the good natures of the ruling class, we’re attempting to obstruct their ability to carry out their objectives. this is important not only because we have a responsibility to our comrades struggling in the global south, but also because if imperialism is integral to our societies in the core, it will be impossible to transform these societies without attacking the infrastructure and practices of imperialism and propagandising for alternative economic forms.