Picket Line, Day 3:
“The bosses tried to get our white-collar coworkers to scab. But I couldn’t be happier to tell you that they have chosen SOLIDARITY instead! And have engaged in a TOTAL WORK STOPPAGE! That’s right, since they took over not ONE CAR has come off the assembly line!”
Inside the plant as the entire line of salaried workers try desperately to perform material labor they are untrained for:
A forklift with F-150 doors stapled on comes off the line
“They’ve made an artistic recreation of the Frankenstein that is Capitalism!”
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A Christmas movie for the ages.
0–this-is-harder-than-looks in 15 seconds.
I’m sure it’s just like that port mission in GTA5
But wait, how could they possibly do that, surely those white collar jobs are just as important and if you take people off of them everything will fall apart just as much, otherwise it would be ridiculous to pay those white collar workers more for much easier jobs than the factory workers
Joking aside, I do accounting work for a large company. There are weeks where I genuinely work 40 a week, but…far more frequently I never come close. It can sometimes be stressful, but again, far more often it carries little to no stress. Working retail in college was more stressful on the day to day, and I got paid orders of magnitude less (not to mention, I had to actually be ‘working’ for every second I was on the clock, even if it was just cleaning up the check out isle in front of my register).
I am considered one of the more productive and knowledgeable people in my group.
There are certainly exceptions, but white collar work is largely a joke, an exercise in bureaucratic nothingness.
Just goes to show how low the capitalist society considers the lowest-paid workers. The idea of demanding 8 productive hours from white-collars would get one laughed out the room, while minimum wage workers can’t get caught peeking at their phone.
Are you me right now?
I think the justification is that the white color jobs (things like r&d/engineering) can be more flexible in their deliverables. While physical product not being created is a quantifiable drop in revenue.
It’s definitely hurts the company to do it, but as a temporary solution, it can be molded around. Keep in mind, those white collar employees are still collecting white collar paychecks.
“Sure thing boss!”
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Art.
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Has this ever worked?
Has this ever not ended in the destruction of several million dollars in delicate equipment?
Don’t be mean the people making these decisions are business majors they’re trying their best.
This really needs to be done in baby voice with an “UwU” at the end.
Any half decent business major knows this is a terrible idea. They’re thinking with their stubbornness and greed, not their academic background
It’s counter propaganda for the stock market
How hard could it be, it’s unskilled labor that anyone could do, after all, the rates they’re being paid were decided by the free market, which is infallible. They’re being paid less, so their work is easy and anyone who is paid more could do it with ease. Ever heard of “meritocracy”?
every time i have seen this story, within like 36 hours of it supposedly happening, management returns to the table with massive concessions.
it’s the panic move. everybody knows that work and responsibilities are always pushed down. disorganized workers are always getting a superior’s responsibilities fobbed off on them. the majority of times, whenever i have needed a superior to cover a simple task for me as a one-off due to an unforeseen situation–ranging from an environment of agricultural labor all the way up into the lofty halls of the academy–the manager/owner/superior fucks it up. they don’t pay attention when shown, they don’t take notes, they fail basic time management and just completely flake on doing the thing.
either they are incompetent to the tasking or the know that if they handle it well, they will be asked to do it again. people don’t rise up in organizations without learning strategies of sidestepping work or at least how to insist on better compensation and then manipulate others into getting it done.
Didn’t John Deere try to do this? Iirc it didn’t go well lol
You mean replacing skilled laborers with unskilled office workers is a bad idea?
They had to call an ambulance within 6 hours.
Also harkens when Nixon tried to use military reservists to replace the postal employees during the 1970 wildcat strike. It barely lasted a week, iirc
What’s a wildcat strike? Why do so many American idioms start with wildcat? Is that good or bad from a leftist perspective? Are there even any wildcats involved?
As a non-first language speaker or whatever that’s called this wildcat word is very confusing.
What’s a wildcat strike?
It’s when union members strike without authorization from the Union Leadership.
Why do so many American idioms start with wildcat?
This is a much mroe interesting question that I don’t think I have a satisfying answer for. USians have loved Wildcats (or Lynx, Bobcats, Ocelots) since like the 1800’s.
E) I think the first broadly publicized use of it by US Americans was calling the senators who declared war on Britain in 1812 “Wildcats.”
Is that good or bad from a leftist perspective?
I think the correct answer to this is “It depends.”
Are there even any wildcats involved?
No, not in most cases.
Wildcat strike where you just release a bunch of wildcats into the executive suite
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From my (2nd) favorite website: https://www.etymonline.com/word/wildcat
“sense of “one who forms rash projects” is attested from 1812”
I get the idea that there’s a pejorative sense to the word. Rash is not typically a synonym you want used in place of wildcat in most of the uses I’ve seen, ie: wildcat strikes.
Also, “She’s a wildcat”
I remember that. Tractors crashed on the first day. Ambulances called all over the place due to accidents. So many accidents they stopped publicising the figures. Any white collar Ford workers reading, you know what to do: don’t cross the picket line! Because it’s scabby and you’ll probably lose a limb.
In communist totalitarian authoritarian dictatorships where human rights and democracy do not exist, a corrupt and out-of-touch elitist bureaucracy allocates labor in a highly inefficient manner based on personal connections rather than skill or merit, resulting in society-wide supply problems as well as needless death and suffering.
This is so dumb.
As a white collar worker, it seems really dumb to waste a TON of time and money throwing new designs back by weeks just to get an extra couple hundred units of product out the door, that probably won’t be good because everyone with experience is on strike.
As another white collar worker, I guarantee that putting me in charge of a forklift is, at best, going to get you a broken forklift.
Lmao right? Same. I would have one hell of a time before breaking it though!
The point is to threaten the strikers, not to directly make product.
True, true!
White collar workers have a chance to do some comradely shit and make some “accidents”.
Seems like a method of trying to set white collar workers against blue collar workers.
I have worked in the auto industry for years and you are 100% correct. If you are white collar you basically get hammered with “UAW = bad”. Talk of joining the UAW or starting a union is severely frowned upon. Before the last round of layoffs there was a lot of talk about forming a union. Haven’t heard from those people since. Most were let go for poor performance or just left. Seems like management was able to squash the white collar union talk, well until shit like this comes up
It’s almost like trying to create racial identities for workers. Same techniques of splitting the workers up and setting them against each other but applied to a specifically workplace environment.
I’m amazed every day at how my place of employment has even managed to pit shifts against each other. Second shift absolutely hates first shift, first shift talks mad shit about second, third shift hates them both equally and first and second both equally hate third shift. You’re all in the same union!
Also a good way to kill a few of them. No that’s not a joke or a dig, forklifts are dangerous and you need a license and proper training to operate them.
Which miiiight also suggest that “blue collar” labour is also deserving of same level of regard and compensation as “white collar” labour, orrrr maybe we should all stand as a united front as just workers with no distinction between what kind of work to fight our exploiters, but that would be ridiculous amirite?
STRIKE
STRIKE STRIKE STRIKE STRIKE STRIKE STRIKE STRIKE STRIKE STRIKE STRIKE STRIKE STRIKE STRIKE STRIKE STRIKE STRIKE STRIKE STRIKE STRIKE STRIKE STRIKE STRIKE STRIKE They know it would be a shitshow if they put office workers on the line. I would assume they’re doing this on purpose to stoke anti-union sentiment and drive a wedge between them and the strikers.
If it doesn’t also fuck up their logistics somehow then that white collar work doesn’t need to take 40 hours and could quite possibly be worthless
