this post was submitted on 29 Jan 2024
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In that case, the whole tech industry should, in solidarity, refuse to look for work and let the tech companies that just launched major layoffs feel the foolishness of their actions. Those tech workers need to wait long enough to allow Google, MSFT, Meta, Apple, etc. suffer the consequences of automation. If they managed this, when they finally do come crawling back, tech workers can get fat raises using this solidarity and collective action.
Pro tip: you can actually get organized in a union and strike just to get more money, no need for AI or getting fired. CEOs hate this trick!
✊🏼
They’d need to unionize first.
It’s expensive to live in tech communities. All the workers would need to move their families to somewhere more affordable and demand to work from home, on top of everything else, and they’d need to have enough savings to afford that. Right now, tech workers tend to carry debt, which is the bane of collective action.
Sort of. But people in society CAN act in solidarity. It's obviously unlikely (something tech CEO's calculated in these layoffs).
Obviously, capitalist exceptionalism is going to cause them not to do this. No one wants to loan their neighbor some money to weather a strike that WILL eventually lift ALL BOATS because of the whole "fuck you, got mine" vibe of EVERYONE in cutthroat capitalist societies. If I had the money, I'd certainly take part in this kind of collective action...and I'd also argue that many tech workers can because they were paid INCREDIBLY well in comparison to most trades....but you and I know they won't.
I'm a member of a stagehand union that will NEED to strike during the summer (our busiest season) in order to gain some ground back from what price gouging, austerity, and inflation has taken from us. I can easily guess how likely the membership will be to endorse a strike when we will have been out of work for more than a year when negotiations start. That doesn't make what I said less true; just about as unlikely as a third power coming to power in the United States two party electoral system.
I agree with you but let's not pretend that that's not entirely BY DESIGN.
It being intentional or not doesn’t change the situation for those stuck in it
Agreed. But it does allow people to finally come to the understanding that agreeing to play by their rules of civility (censoring calls to action, for example) will never get us the freedom we seek and represents tacit support of that oppressive system.
Until those that finally put in the effort to organize past the censored calls to action get led around by the nose of some controlled opposition “grassroots” bullshit that is still meant to ensure nothing really changes
The interesting part of all this to me is that it makes me wonder if religious centers will find new life in this context — being places where non-family support each other financially during collective action.
I’m not talking mega churches here, but community churches, mosques and synagogues that still exist within suburban communities.
They already are. That’s part of what makes religion so difficult to excise.
They’re filling an ancient psychological social need, and we already know many will stay members of cults they know are false due to the community and perceived social support it provides.
So long as they can pay bills during that time.
The strike did not help writers as much as it’s pretending it did
In IATSE's case a few years ago, our (corrupt) leadership sold us on the lie that it was an "unprecedented contract" and helps all kinds of protected groups while, in reality, it was a huge pay cut when compared with inflation with inclusivisty initiatives tacked on to help them woke-wash their austerity.
There are so many things in the corporatist playbook that it's no wonder we get poorer and poorer while the studios try to starve us out of striking.
Yup. They wait for you to organize, because they have a million strategies to corrupt the head of the organization and make it more beneficial to themselves in the end
See also:
IATSE’s 2016 back room decision to endorse of Hillary Clinton EARLY in the primary without so much as a peep to the membership.
2020’s @iastories instagram that was a firebrand radical instance of union members sharing real stories about horrific filmmaking conditions suddenly changed their tune and stopped allowing comments a week before a strike authorization would go up for a vote.