Author Topic: "Great Resignation" labor movement and strikes  (Read 487 times)

Zea_mays

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 563
    • View Profile
"Great Resignation" labor movement and strikes
« on: November 08, 2021, 02:47:30 pm »
Some information about this was posted in a different thread, but I will make a new thread for this since I think it's a distinct phenomenon worth discussing on its own.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Resignation


In addition to the millions of people who have been removed from the labor force due to dying from Covid, millions more have taken early/unexpected retirements, and millions more have quit. Some families have moved from 2 income-earners to 1, because childcare is too expensive to justify both parents working, others have moved in with family since they cant afford to live independently and can therefore survive prolonged unemployment, others have been able to reduce their living expenses and quit their 2nd or 3rd job. I think many others have simply quit, even without a long term plan, because they are sick of being exploited.

In the US, "essential workers" were called "heroes", yet paid minimum wage (which is not enough money to afford rent anywhere in the US), abused daily by mentally ill rightists who think Covid is a hoax (and some have even been murdered for telling people to wear masks), have risked contracting Covid daily (and many have had employers who told employees to come in while sick with Covid!). Despite unemployment reaching levels not seen since the Great Depression, the stock market has gone up and rich people have made literally trillions in profit due to the pandemic. Meanwhile, non-elite people are starving.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/billionaires-pandemic-1-trillion-wealth-gain/


Business owners have tried to control the narrative by calling it a "labor shortage" and saying "no one wants to work" or "no one will apply for jobs". Yet it is not uncommon for young people with college degrees and respectable resumes to apply to literally hundreds of jobs and not hear anything back. Recently, one person applied to 60 job openings from employers who complained "no one wants to work". Yet only one bothered to interview him:

https://www.wptv.com/news/national/florida-man-goes-viral-after-applying-to-60-entry-level-jobs-getting-1-interview

Seems like businesses are trying to extract as much work as they can from existing understaffed employees, without raising their pay or hiring new workers.

---

In the US, workers in many large corporations have recently gone on strike:

Quote
Striketober is the labor strike wave in October 2021 by workers in the United States in the context of strikes during the COVID-19 pandemic. During the month, more than 100,000 workers in the United States either participated in or prepared for strikes in one of the largest increases of organized labor in the twenty-first century.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Striketober

Quote
Is America experiencing an unofficial general strike?
[...]
Americans are also quitting their jobs at the highest rate on record. The Department of Labor reported on Tuesday that some 4.3 million people quit their jobs in August. That comes to about 2.9% of the workforce – up from the previous record set in April, of about 4 million people quitting.

All told, about 4 million American workers have been leaving their jobs every month since the spring.

These numbers have nothing to do with the Republican bogeyman of extra unemployment benefits supposedly discouraging people from working. Reminder: the extra benefits ran out on Labor Day.

Renewed fears of the Delta variant of Covid may play some role. But it can’t be the largest factor. With most adults now vaccinated, rates of hospitalizations and deaths are way down.

My take: workers are reluctant to return to or remain in their old jobs mostly because they’re burned out.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/oct/13/american-workers-general-strike-robert-reich

Quote
But academics at Cornell University launched a strike database on May 1 that uses social media and Google alerts to keep track of all the strikes and protests happening in the U.S., even if they involve just a few workers. The database shows a picture of growing worker activism, of small actions that tell a story of how people at workplaces small and large are feeling after 19 months of a global pandemic, says Johnnie Kallas, a PhD student who is the director of Cornell’s Labor Action Tracker. It has documented 169 strikes so far in 2021. “Workers are fed up with low pay and understaffing, and they have more labor market leverage with employers needing to hire right now,” he says. “You are seeing a little bit more labor unrest.”

Of course, compared to half a century ago, there still aren’t many strikes in the U.S. There were 5,716 strikes in 1971 alone, according to government data from when the government tracked smaller strikes. And the share of unionized workers in the U.S. is near an all-time low, with just 12.1% of workers represented by unions last year.

But the activism comes at a time when approval of labor unions—even among Republicans—is trending upwards—and when a low unemployment rate is giving leverage to workers who have long put up with poor conditions and pay.
https://time.com/6105109/workers-strike-unemployment/


Many of the workers on strike are Republican voters, yet they don't see the irony in the fact that Republican politicians don't support non-elite Americans.
Quote
Notably absent in this show of support, however, are any Republican elected officials — even those who directly represent the Battle Creek area.

Neither U.S. Rep. Peter Meijer (R-Grand Rapids) nor state Sen. John Bizon (R-Battle Creek) have publicly commented on the Kellogg strike. Meijer and Bizon did not respond to requests for comment.

“I can tell you that our plant in Battle Creek is probably 70% Republican,” said Heather Greene, a 15-year warehouse crew leader at Kellogg. “[But] this isn’t a left or right issue. … There’s no place for politics when it comes to a living wage.”

“Even though we aren’t hearing from the elected Republicans, this isn’t about party, and I personally hope that they will see that and … realize that it is OK to support striking workers,” Greene said.
https://www.metrotimes.com/news-hits/archives/2021/10/29/as-kellogg-strike-stretches-past-3-weeks-workers-say-theyve-noted-lack-of-gop-lawmaker-support

Share on Facebook Share on Twitter


Zea_mays

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 563
    • View Profile
Re: "Great Resignation" labor movement and strikes
« Reply #1 on: December 04, 2021, 05:48:19 am »
Wall Street has named the Antiwork Reddit forum as one of the "long-run risks" of becoming a prolonged labor movement. (For reference, this forum has over 1 million subscribers and is larger than the Reddit conservative forum).



This means that the forum is already being astroturfed (as users have already noticed), and the forum will continue to be disrupted by elites in order to prevent its from effectively leading a labor movement.

I would recommend everyone scroll through some of the posts to see workers' complaints now, before the quality of the forum declines:
https://old.reddit.com/r/antiwork/

Quote
Quote
if this sub was not compromised they would not provide a direct link here. I think they are building the base here to then steer everyone into their own direction in an effort to control everyone, their perception, opinions, and ultimately decisions to benefit the owner class.

Quote
Never Forget the abject **** failure that was OWS. Never let things get so muddied and out of focus here. They know exactly what levers to pull to attempt to get everyone divided, and they've been winning for a solid decade. We need to keep this **** honed.

They absolutely are already here, and are assuredly taking notes and planning moves.
https://old.reddit.com/r/antiwork/comments/qulffi/antiwork_movement_may_be_longrun_risk_to_labor/hkr8kr2/


--

Some people are beginning to engage in bare minimum direct action:

https://old.reddit.com/r/antiwork/comments/qt7fu0/made_flyers_for_the_break_room/

https://old.reddit.com/r/antiwork/comments/qulrth/did_the_thing_with_the_flyer_wish_me_luck/

https://old.reddit.com/r/antiwork/comments/qwf1vc/i_posted_the_25_or_walk_flyer_in_a_real_life/

https://old.reddit.com/r/antiwork/comments/qx6oty/i_put_up_anticapitalist_posters_in_store/

https://old.reddit.com/r/antiwork/comments/r1e2o7/this_just_came_out_of_my_receipt_printer_at_work/


Could this be the next Occupy Wall Street? The forum seems to be hitting critical mass recently.

--

This is one of my favorite posts:

Multi-billion dollar medical company thanks its overworked nurses by....giving them a pet rock.
https://old.reddit.com/r/antiwork/comments/qpocb1/happy_nurses_week_from_kaiser_permanente/



No wonder so many people resign.
Funny Funny x 1 View List

Zea_mays

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 563
    • View Profile
Like Like x 1 View List

Zea_mays

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 563
    • View Profile
Re: "Great Resignation" labor movement and strikes
« Reply #3 on: December 16, 2021, 07:25:38 pm »
The Lying Flat movement and the Great Resignation/Antiwork movement linked together by Wall Street this time:



(I searched for the title, but I don't think there's an article for this, just the instagram post?)

guest55

  • Guest
Re: "Great Resignation" labor movement and strikes
« Reply #4 on: December 16, 2021, 09:38:00 pm »
The world as we know it is ending. Why are we still at work?
Quote
From the pandemic to climate change, Americans are still expected to work no matter what happens. 
https://www.vox.com/2021/12/16/22837830/covid-pandemic-climate-change-great-resignation-2021

guest55

  • Guest
Re: "Great Resignation" labor movement and strikes
« Reply #5 on: December 26, 2021, 08:38:43 pm »
Ubisoft Devs Are Quitting At Such An Alarming Rate That Workers Call It "The Great Exodus"



Zea_mays

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 563
    • View Profile
Re: "Great Resignation" labor movement and strikes
« Reply #6 on: January 11, 2022, 11:53:53 am »
Another Wall Street article linking Lying Flat and Antiwork.

Will China embrace this and win the culture war? The US Antiwork "movement" doesn't have any big picture goals besides "have tolerable work conditions", whereas the Lying Flat movement is an entire worldview which is anti-consumerist.

Quote
‘Lying Flat,’ ‘Antiwork’ And The ‘Great Resignation’ Spreads Worldwide As Young People Protest Against System

There’s a growing worldwide movement led by young people. Weighed down with overwhelming college debt, unable to find decent paying jobs (leading to the inability to purchase homes), stuck in low paying jobs with no future and being forced into the gig economy made Gen-Zs and Millennials feel misled and betrayed by their elders.

They were told if they went to school, followed all the rules, they’d live the American Dream—a nice large home in the suburbs with a white picket fence, or a cool New York City apartment, couple of kids, pets, fancy vacations and luxury automobiles. For many, this dream never materialized.
[...]
In the Great Resignation trend, roughly 40% of the jobs that people quit were in the restaurant, hotel, travel, bars, warehouses, manufacturing and healthcare sectors. These folks contend with long, constantly changing hours, rude customer behaviors, low wages and high stress. 
[...]
The younger generation may be the first group in modern history that won't do better financially than their parents. With tens or hundreds of thousands in student-loan debt, young adults find it almost impossible to purchase a home, get married and start a family. The debt burden, along with rising home prices and inflation, doesn’t leave them with sufficient funds to afford the lifestyle that Baby Boomers took for granted.

This is happening in China too. Multibillionaire Jack Ma, founder of Alibaba, championed the work culture known as "996." This number refers to Ma’s belief that everyone in his company should happily work from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m., six days a week. It's equivalent to America’s “hustle- ****,” rise-and-grind culture that resonated in the pre-pandemic time period.
[...]
President Xi Jinping is not too pleased with this trend, stating, “It is necessary to prevent the stagnation of the social class, unblock the channels for upward social mobility, create opportunities for more people to become rich, and form an environment for improvement in which everyone participates, avoiding involution and lying flat.” He is concerned that the lying flat is in direct conflict with the “Chinese Dream” or a “great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation.”
https://www.forbes.com/sites/jackkelly/2021/12/30/lying-flat-antiwork-and-the-great-resignation-spreads-worldwide-as-young-people-protest-against-system/

Only a traditionalist would reject an idealistic counterculture movement with the energy and promise for a real "national rejuvenation"...

guest55

  • Guest
Re: "Great Resignation" labor movement and strikes
« Reply #7 on: January 11, 2022, 08:04:21 pm »
Japanese man who rents himself out to 'do nothing' for a living says he will 'reply to chitchat, but that's it'
Quote
Shoji Morimoto works as a so-called "Do Nothing Rent-a-Man."
People hire the 38-year-old to join them in activities like eating, shopping, and going for walks.
"I don't make any special effort," he told CBS News, adding, "I reply to chitchat, but that's it."
https://www.businessinsider.co.za/japanese-man-shoji-morimoto-do-nothing-rent-a-man-chitchat-2022-1

And he comes with a mask attached:  ;)


So, uhhhmmm, I was reading in your resume that you don't actually do anything, is this correct?

Yes! This is correct!

You're hired!!! :D


guest55

  • Guest
Re: "Great Resignation" labor movement and strikes
« Reply #8 on: January 18, 2022, 12:12:19 am »
Where are all the workers?
Quote
Where have all the workers gone? It's a question that politicians, business owners, and economists are all asking. CNN Business’ Jon Sarlin dives into just what's behind the unprecedented labor market.
#CNN #News

Zea_mays

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 563
    • View Profile
Re: "Great Resignation" labor movement and strikes
« Reply #9 on: January 18, 2022, 12:56:02 am »
The reward for the essential workers who businesses call "heroes"? Homelessness.


guest55

  • Guest
Re: "Great Resignation" labor movement and strikes
« Reply #10 on: January 19, 2022, 12:08:05 am »
These Western corporations sure do have a lot of chutzpah!

guest55

  • Guest
Re: "Great Resignation" labor movement and strikes
« Reply #11 on: January 19, 2022, 07:30:44 pm »
Quote
Bungie, Sony, Obsidian & WB Devs Boycott! Rockstar REJECTS Red Dead Hope & EA Slams BF2042 Criticism


This type of stuff seems to be happening across the entire video-gaming industry at this moment:
Quote
Battlefield 2042 Is So Deserted & Busted Even Cheat Makers & Sellers Are Abandoning The Game


Video-gamers also seem to be the biggest part of the anti-NFT and CryptoLand demographic, which is interesting in itself....

Star Wars Battlefront 2 Is So Broken Players Can't Kill Each Other, EA & Dice Respond Months Later

Zea_mays

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 563
    • View Profile
Re: "Great Resignation" labor movement and strikes
« Reply #12 on: January 25, 2022, 01:20:41 am »
Why don't people want to work at terrible chain businesses? Because it's not worth being murdered by irate customers for minimum wage.

Quote
Argument over BBQ sauce leads to teenage Wendy's employee being shot in head
https://cbsaustin.com/amp/news/nation-world/argument-over-bbq-sauce-leads-to-teenage-wendys-employee-being-shot-in-head-restaurant-shooting-investigation-police-phoenix-suspect-violence-handgun

Quote
Police: McDonald's employee shot in argument over discount over french fries
https://krcgtv.com/news/local/police-mcdonalds-employee-shot-in-argument-over-discount


(See also, all the articles about employees being murdered for telling sub-humans to wear masks, etc.)

guest55

  • Guest
Re: "Great Resignation" labor movement and strikes
« Reply #13 on: February 04, 2022, 01:42:38 pm »
Secretary Of Labor Reacts To Shocking Jobs Report
Quote
United States Secretary of Labor Marty Walsh joined Chris Jansing to discuss the White House’ response to January’s surprising jobs number that showed 467,000 jobs were added, and how these positive results will impact the government’s strategy for tackling lingering inflation and supply chain issues. “This is a good report, it’s another sign of positive gain, but it’s saying that there’s a ‘but’,” says Walsh. “We still have a lot of work to do … the president has a plan to work and ease inflation across the country.”


How does adding jobs help the economy if no one wants to work the jobs you added? This is how ridiculous Western economics are. It's just all about numbers to these people....

guest55

  • Guest
The Age of the Influencer Has Peaked. It’s Time For the Slacker to Rise Again
Quote
There are signs that our individualist culture of achievement and brand alignment has jumped the shark.

Quote
Nirvana, patron saints of nineties slacker-dom.  Photo by Getty Images/Mark and Colleen Haywar
Quote
It’s hard to remember a time when scrolling through Instagram was anything but a thoroughly exhausting experience.

Where once the social network was basically lunch and sunsets,
it’s now a parade of strategically-crafted life updates, career achievements, and public vows to spend less time online (usually made by people who earn money from social media)—all framed with the carefully selected language of a press release. Everyone is striving, so very hard.

And great for them, I guess. But sometimes one might pine for a less aspirational time, when the cool kids were smoking weed, eating junk food, and… you know, just chillin’.

Back in the 1990s, our heroes were slackers: the dudes and the clerks, the stick-it-to-the-man, stay-true-to-yourself burnouts we saw in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, and Slacker, and Reality Bites. In the latter, Winona Ryder’s character, Leilana, chooses the disillusioned musician (Ethan Hawke) over the TV exec (Ben Stiller), and it’s presented as an excellent choice. Nobody cool was trying to monetize their lifestyle back then, or rake in the brand endorsements. Selling out (remember that?) was whack.

Quote
The cast of ‘Reality Bites,’ a celebration of slacker-dom.  Photo by Universal Pictures
Quote
But somewhere in the early 2000s, the slacker of popular culture lost ground to the striver. I am not immune to this thoroughly aspirational mindset, and you probably aren’t either. Whether we have side hustles, personal brands, gig economy jobs, or entrepreneurial leanings (I’ve had all four), to survive in the modern economy is to aspire to something much greater than what we are.
9/11 ended the counter-culture, as it was intended to.
Quote
The internet influencer is the apotheosis of all this striving, this modern set of values taken to its grotesque extreme: Nothing is sacred, art has been replaced by “content,” and everything is for sale. This is true even when the message is swathed in the language of counter-culture: Eco-conscious influencers see no issue in flying long-haul on free trips from brands. Yoga gurus who traffic in anti-consumerist spirituality promote tea brands owned by Unilever.
The devil\Yahweh is a much better "influencer" than any clown on social media could ever hope to be. This is why most 'influencers' are influenced fools themselves, and make choices they would never even have come up with by themselves. If they ever truly took the time to know themselves of course.... 
Perhaps a better title for this article would have been: The Age of the Westerner Has Peaked. It's Time For the Slacker to Rise Again ?
Quote
But as anyone who has lived a few decades knows, youth culture swings like a pendulum. The buttoned-up post-World War II period gave way to the countercultural Free Love generation (arguably the original slackers, as they were the first to have middle class comfort to rebel against). Similarly, the 1980s excess of Gordon Gecko’s Wall Street set the stage for the slackers amid the economic recession of the 1990s, with their flannel shirts, skater culture, Beastie Boys and Nirvana records.

Quote
Skater culture doesn’t strive.  Photo by Reuters/Lucy Nicholson
Quote
Of course, it’s reductive to lump the experience of the billions of people living through those ages into one mostly American cultural trope. But there’s always something to glean from the dominant youth culture of an era. What was cool—what the kids were into—tells us something fundamental about what we valued. And seen through that lens, there’s a marked difference between today’s striving and the slacking of the 1990s.

And, in a modern aspirational marketplace so saturated that fake influencers are now posting advertising-like content that nobody even paid them for, there are signs that our individualist culture of achievement and brand alignment has jumped the shark. If the cycle of history is any guide, once our culture of striving flames out, it may well be time for the slacker to rise again.
Quote

The Neoliberal Self


For the internet influencer, everything from their morning sun salutation to their coffee enema (really) is a potential money-making opportunity. Forget paying your dues, or working your way up—in fact, forget jobs. Work is life, and getting paid to live your best life is the ultimate aspiration.

This existence is perfectly aligned with what Will Storr, in his 2017 book Selfie: How the West became self-obsessed, described as the defining person of our age, the neoliberal self: “an extroverted, slim, beautiful, individualistic, optimistic, hard-working, socially aware yet high-self-esteeming global citizen with entrepreneurial guile and a selfie camera.” And while the generation most associated with this archetype—millennials—gets flack for their entitlement and unwillingness to work toward a typical middle class life, there are plenty of reasons millennials have so thoroughly embraced and innovated upon this neoliberal ideal.

“You can see why that happens in terms of the shrinking of middle class industries and the economy,” says Laurence Scott, author of Picnic Comma Lightning: In Search of a New Reality, an exploration of the nature of reality in the digital age, and a lecturer at NYU’s London campus. “Neoliberalism has hollowed out so many ways of [making a] stable income that it’s not surprising that the influencer economy has risen up in this really precarious economic climate for millennials.”

That neoliberal sensibility—emphasizing the importance of markets above the intervention of the state, and typified by the attitude that the tide of growth and globalization will lift all boats—has also given rise to the thoroughly modern affliction that we now call “millennial burnout.” A coinage by Anne Helen Petersen in her memorable piece for BuzzFeed, the idea is that all this self-optimization in the digital age is taking a toll, and leaving us with multiple afflictions, including “errand paralysis.”

Petersen argues that we’re obsessed with self-optimization because—post-financial crisis, saddled with student debt, with little hope of a pension—we simply have to be: “We couldn’t just show up with a diploma and expect to get and keep a job that would allow us to retire at 55. In a marked shift from the generations before, millennials needed to optimize ourselves to be the very best workers possible.”

The result is an economy where it’s more possible than ever to be your own boss, and a lot less possible to buy your own home. And one where it’s literally unimaginable that we’ll ever be able to stop working—at the end of the workday, or in the later years of our lives.

It’s enough to make you want to throw up your hands and admit defeat, if only for a moment of respite. And it’s easy to see how this exhaustion could precipitate the next cycle of slackerdom.

Scott first raised that idea in an interview on Russell Brand’s podcast. “The generation after [this one] may just look and think, ‘I cant believe there was that kind of economy and that’s how people were presenting themselves,'” he said. “There may be a slight distaste to it and reemergence of a slacker 1990s pendulum swing, rather than this quite needy attention-seeking.”
Entire article: https://getpocket.com/explore/item/the-age-of-the-influencer-has-peaked-it-s-time-for-the-slacker-to-rise-again?utm_source=pocket-newtab

I already feel this way. I believe the current culture is extremely sick and all "influencers" really do is spread the sickness around, at the cost of their own spirit obviously.

25 Years After Kurt Cobain: Where Is the Counterculture?
Quote
What happens to the art isn't important. What's important is that it was being made. I remember that raw feeling of someone standing up for what they believe, and not caring what anyone thinks. I haven't felt that feeling in a while.
Quote
In 1991, Kurt Cobain was the definition of cool.

The Billboard charts that year were overrun by mainstream hits by Paula Abdul, Vanilla Ice, and Boyz II Men. Music was about looking good. And lip singing.

And then in September of 1991, Kurt Cobain and Nirvana came out with Nevermind, and it felt like the biggest **** you to mainstream culture.

I remember Kurt wearing a "Corporate Magazines Still Suck" t-shirt on the cover of Rolling Stone magazine. And I remember thinking of all the other celebrities on the magazine that year, and how they must of worked so hard to project an image of "looking good."

I remember the band open-mouth kissing during the SNL credits just to "**** off the redneck homophobes" and how it probably did.

I remember that raw feeling of someone standing up for what they believe and not caring what anyone thinks.

I haven't felt that feeling in a while.
Entire article: https://www.huffpost.com/entry/25-years-after-kurt-cobain_b_9619740

How I too long for days were people stop caring what everyone else thinks of them....