The Air Canada strike situation is an unmitigated disgrace.

First of all, getting no pay for mandatory work while the plane is on the ground is fucking insane, and it apparently being industry standard practice (which I had no idea of before today) makes it so much worse. Unions explicitly agreeing to it in the past doesn't make that any less true; I dearly hope those unions had damn good reasons at the time, because any union worth its salt would know that this is textbook wage theft, and sends the message that this type of labour is not valuable. A message that is, of course, a lie, because if it wasn't valuable it wouldn't be mandatory!

The other prong of this hellscape is that forcing people back to work should never be allowed, in any industry, in any context. Causing economic damage is precisely the purpose of strikes; that's what motivates the company to give the workers what they want. If the company is so big and central to the economy that a strike will significantly damage the entire economy, then that's not a reason to force people back to work; it's a reason to break up the company!

#airCanada #airCanadaStrike #airlines #antiTrust #business #canada #canPol #canPoli #CUPE #strike #union #unions #workers #workersRights

"Another farmworker, Gabriel, who came out to speak, brought a backpack full of yellow envelopes containing all his tax documents over the decades.

“These are my taxes. I have been paying my taxes for 19 years, without rights,” he said, as he pulled out each envelope and threw them on the ground in front of the podium. “I’ve been doing this year, after year, after year. For a promise that I would get my citizenship, this is my testimony that I am not a criminal. We are not criminals.”"
#farmworkers #food #farming #immigration #workers #labor #California #HumanRights
lamag.com/news-and-politics/fa…

Another aspect of the housing crisis:

For newly qualified teachers & nurses living in a flat share is often the only viable option; across England in around half of Council areas, a one-bedroom flat is unaffordable on their pay.

If you want to retain newly qualified staff, they need to be able to move from a model of student accommodation (a shared house) to something reflecting their privacy & welfare needs... we need better (affordable) housing for key workers.

#housing #workers

"How does Elon Musk use the word 'fraud' to dismantle the US federal government?

The term is not as an attempt to describe the world, but to change it. It is a political tool, used by a politician to justify a political action: regime change to oligarchy."

~ Timothy Snyder

#Musk #Trump #FederalGovernment #fraud #firings #workers #billionaires #EconomicElites #TaxCuts #Medicaid
/3

snyder.substack.com/p/the-frau…

The "Fraud" Fraud

How DOGE destroys

^{Timothy Snyder (Thinking about...)}

"A recent poll suggests that 70% of Americans believe government expenditures are filled with waste, fraud, and inefficiency....

The GOP is now broadly using the fraud trope to justify cutting any popular program. Medicaid is up next."

#Musk #Trump #FederalGovernment #fraud #firings #workers #billionaires #EconomicElites #TaxCuts #Medicaid
/2

"Musk and Trump’s focus on fraud is nothing new. Fraud has always served as a powerful political trope, one that provides a rationale for cutting government. Accusations of fraud were used to discredit Black elected officials during Reconstruction. Ronald Reagan’s Welfare Queen was an especially effective trope directed against poverty-based policies."

~ Pamela Herd and Don Moynihan

#Musk #Trump #FederalGovernment #fraud #firings #workers #billionaires
/1

donmoynihan.substack.com/p/mus…

Musk’s Fraudulent Fraud Squad

A tired trope gets a new lease of life

^{Pamela Herd (Can We Still Govern?)}

As someone whose never got on with open offices I endorse this message.

#workers #OfficeLife #gender #neurodivergent

When self-described capitalists don’t actually seem to know what capitalism actually is.

#capitalism #capitalists #workers #unions #labor #markets #scarcity #shortage #WorkersShortage #economics