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#strike stories
la-tramontana · 10 months
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I'm seeing some union support but not many stories about what exactly a strike can be like to experience personally, which I certainly didn't know about before it happened. I think more of us should share experiences.
When I was on strike, there was a period when I had the assignment to ride around on a bicycle and photograph every dumpster at our worksite, mark locations, and find out which fellow unions were in charge of emptying them.
(this didn't end up happening because my health collapsed, but it was something I was expected to do)
The reason for this was that we had sympathy from groups like the Teamsters who drive UPS trucks. By law they could refuse to deliver across a picket line, but that line could not be the metaphorical line of a struck workplace. It had to be a literal picket line and as our internal support for the strike flagged we were going to send groups of about 10 people to form picket lines around dumpsters and loading docks.
Because keeping our wages so low was driving a large and comfortable margin of profit for our employer, losing a large portion of their workforce to our labor action didn't do that much. We had workers at other sites waking up early to form picket lines at worksite construction sites, and picketing loading docks, stopping deliveries of substances that needed to be frozen, which ruined them.
We had a strike kitchen which served a lot of bad coffee and butternut squash.
We had riotous memey chats and constant arguments with our union staffers, fellow workers, and everyone split on whether to demand disability rights and childcare or give up or what. We were constantly, nonstop fighting. My phone would overheat and I'd look at it at 11 PM with more than new 900 signal messages.
At one point there were serious and pointed conversations about whether the lead negotiator for the other side was hexing our guys and about whether we needed to supply the bargaining team with protection from the evil eye.
We had folks scouting ahead on bikes ahead of the lines checking for cops.
We had multiple cars charge our picket line and clip workers.
We had a picket line drag show.
We shut down bus access to our worksite for days by staging a dance party around the entrance to the terminal for hours. Bus systems need to be reliable for them to be worth running. After blocking the terminal enough times our employer shut down the bus.
We had folks from HR standing far off and taking photographs of our pickets and movements. I got a feeling of constantly being watched, both by worksite labor relations and the staffers in my own union.
We had local anarchists barricading entrances to the worksite with makeshift structures, including just a wall of bikes. One of the barricades was charged by a car, which dragged a bike beneath it for some 50, 60 feet.
The anarchists also liberated workplace cafeterias so that for hours and hours no one had to pay and everyone ate for free, they spread leaflet material that was anti-union boss at our staging area and ran away, they chalked up anti-cop messages. How we loved 'em!
Staffers tried to go behind my back to pull another lead strike captain for my turf but they didn't succeed in cutting the head off the snake. My companions were true to the end.
Some of them are now organizing their apartment buildings. Some won positions in union leadership.
We passed a contract that we all agreed was horseshit, with inadequate protections, and we're all-in now on defending the letter of it as our employer tries to claw it back.
Support the labor movement. Corruption happens, but it isn't the job of bystanders to regulate or manage it.
The union is the people and right now, we need support for every strike, every time. One day longer... one day stronger... to the line, to the line, to the line.
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etchedstars · 3 months
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the internet isnt enough i need to appear in my mutuals rooms and gossip while hanging upside down off their beds
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chiokedmachi · 8 months
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On The Picket Lines: #SAGAfrtaStrong
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bisexualgoth · 10 months
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all workers' strikes are good. yes even if they're inconvenient. even if they're making your life harder. even if you don't get to watch your favourite tv show. workers fighting for their rights is ALWAYS a good thing
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ishipgenfics · 8 months
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Outsider POV on Somewhere Else Jonathan Sims must be just. so much.
Like imagine. You're part of a support group, and a new guy decides to join. You ask him his name and he says, "Jonathan," and then after a long pause, "Blackwood. Jonathan Blackwood. But call me Jon."
He doesn't like tape recorders. You only know this because the person who hosts the support group is into retro things, and tries to keep a couple around. She turned one on once when someone asked about it, and you noticed Jon clutching his nails into his hands so tight he's nearly breaking the skin. You lean over and whisper, "Do you want me to ask her to stop?" He says, "It's fine," and you nod, but you still try and change the subject whenever people bring up tape recorders from that point on.
He full-body flinches one day when someone says Hello, Jon. Nearly slams into a wall and everything. He tries to play it off, but after that people say Hi Jon, or Nice to see you, or things like that. Anything but Hello.
He says he used to work at a 'non-profit for studying the supernatural'. Someone asks where it was and he says London. You tell your wife about it, and two days later she emails you an article. Magnus Institute Burns Down In 1999. It was in Manchester. You tell her not to bring it up again.
The guy is snarky and blunt and downright rude at times, but when a woman comes in and tells them about being trapped in a empty warehouse for a week, he comforts her in a way none of the rest of them know how. "I believe you," he says, repeats it like a mantra, like a prayer. "I believe you." He says 'I'm sorry' less like he's sorry this happened to her, and more like he's taking the blame onto himself.
He talks about Martin, sometimes. His reason, he calls him. Normally you'd point out that while it's of course good to love your partner, you should have other reasons to live, but you stay quiet. This guy needs all the happiness he can get.
You leave a little late that day, and when you do you hear him on the phone talking to someone. "She'd been touched by the Lonely, Martin!" he says. "Which is bad, of course, but--" he seems to choke up, "Martin, I didn't feel any compulsion for a Statement. A-at all. I think it's really gone."
You just walk by.
You don't know what's going on with Jon, but it really isn't any of your business. You're an anxious queer lesbian and he's a traumatized ace guy, and you aren't going to make his life any harder than you have to.
Just. Jonathan Sims in a support group.
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thecryptkeeper · 4 months
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fighting back tears at work from this story
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gay-jewish-bucky · 8 months
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PSA American Horror Story is employing scabs to create the new season
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coffeenonsense · 1 year
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I rarely post personal stuff on here but irl I'm a writer whose work covers tech and AI quite a bit and with the WGA strike ongoing, I really want to stress that the reason Hollywood execs and higher-ups think they can just replace writers with chatgpt or have someone come and edit AI generated text is because they already think writing is that easy.
these people look at their shows, movies, etc as marketable (re, profitable) content so all they are watching for is "okay this show performed badly" and "this movie performed well" and I can promise you in a boardroom the quality, the time and effort that went into the actual writing is NEVER discussed as a contributing factor when it comes to the difference between those two things.
That's also the reason tools like chatgpt seem like magic to these people, because they've devalued the act of creation and everything that goes into making something that resonates with its audience, so naturally something that can scrape the entire digital world and spit something out that falls in line with what you asked seems like a wizard's spell, because they ALREADY think of writing as an afterthought, something where they just go "I need a show that appeals to the 16-24 age range" and writers can just fill in the blanks and they won't have to PAY PEOPLE for that.
There's a vast difference between art and content, and if you want to see more of the former, you should be furious they're trying to replace writers with what is essentially a programmable template generator. Pay your writers.
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lunacias · 5 months
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of five people, three must pay a price
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pendwelling · 6 months
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!!! Wow! So you have a favourite story, too?
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otaku553 · 9 months
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Haha
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forgotmynametag · 10 months
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Somethin somethin somethin, we WIN
(Nimona's out on Netflix, go give it a watch!)
Textless vers:
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nessa007 · 1 year
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IT’S TRUE!!!
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heybiji · 4 months
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he has a library card
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artemis-pendragon · 6 months
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So fucking happy that SAG AFTRA reached such a good deal!!! Absolutely terrified of what's gonna happen when post-GO2 Michael "I kissed David Tennant on international TV" Sheen is released from his cage tho
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ryllen · 6 months
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Was giving these analysis a read [ x , x , x , x ]
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