We're listening to a social artifact from #Australia in the #1970s.
#Unionism, the bush, serious young men, & bush dance music all packaged up by #PaulHamlynPtyLtd for consumers.
#FreedomOnTheWallaby by #DaveDeHugard and the Bush Band.
" ... independence, mateship and disregard for the boss had already been established by the convicts, early settlers and miners ...".
Good stuff. Though the #FairGo was restricted in who was eligible - women & Chinese being just some of those excluded.
Well, well, well… Angus Deaton of the International Monetary fund (imf.org) finally coughed it up:
“Like most of my age cohort, I long regarded unions as a nuisance that interfered with economic (and often personal) efficiency and welcomed their slow demise. But today large corporations have too much power over working conditions, wages, and decisions in Washington, where unions currently have little say compared with corporate lobbyists. Unions once raised wages for members and nonmembers, they were an important part of social capital in many places, and they brought political power to working people in the workplace and in local, state, and federal governments. Their decline is contributing to the falling wage share, to the widening gap between executives and workers, to community destruction, and to rising populism.”
It takes time for boffins and know-it-alls to get the picture. I’m just gald some of them have finally come to their senses.
@Cloudslave
Yes. I get that as we age we have a tendency to be more #conservative, more cautious about changes, less likely to want to rock the boat. But all of those sentiments are a far cry from supporting any Party which denies changes are happening and which are veering further and further to the right, into #fascism #racism, #elitism, #greed and #hate.
And surely, us older folks were more into #unionism than any cohort since (the historical numbers alone show us this) and hence too ‘#progressive’ to support the #LNP let alone the crackpot Parties. What happened? Endemic senility? A geriatric demise of mental faculties? Forgotten how to think things through? Have we, as a cohort, forgotten what it was like in our youth?
What has happened to the generation of ‘flower power’, the Age of #Aquarius dreamers, the #Moratorium crowd, the #Whitlam supporters (and to a lesser extent the #Hawke generation)? Where have they all gone? Why have we, boomers, seemingly become fossilised curmudgeons? What has changed us so dramatically?
I do not consider myself an outlier, an exception, or anything other than a #boomer. My years and financial situation mark me out as one of them. But damn it, boomers suck and need to wake up to themselves. I thoroughly repudiate what my generation has become based on what I see, hear and read.
Bodies may become frail in the winter of our years,but that is no reason to fear what tomorrow might (or might not) bring. For those of us who still have a mind there is nothing stopping us from figuring out that whatever the future is, it is surely in the hands of younger generations and we should do our utmost to help them with it, not stymie their efforts, crush their dreams, impose our misguided wills on them. To do so has no purpose other than bull headedness based on misguided and illogical thinking (pse let it not be envy). What kind of parents, grandparents or great grandparents has my generation become? Didn’t we all use to love our kids?
On May 1st 1890 in Paris, left-wing activists wore a red triangle:
🔻
One for 8 hours work,
one for 8 hours leisure,
one for 8 hours rest.
"Red triangle: the working-class origins of an anti-fascist symbol" (fr) https://www.solidaire.org/articles/triangle-rouge-les-origines-ouvrieres-d-un-symbole-antifasciste
#antiFascism #struggles #labour #labor #workHours #redTriangle #invertedTriangle #triangle #Mai1st #unionism #tradeUnions #Paris #LabourDay #LaborDay #OTD
@fu #Libertarianism means small government. #Socialism means big government. How can the first and the second be coherently combined? How can libertarianism be coherently combined with #unionism?
"Eric Blanc’s argument in We Are the Union is that only “worker-to-worker” organizing can create union drives that are big enough and cheap enough to save the labor movement. It’s already happening, we need more of it; listen up, union leaders, Blanc says: you can afford it.
If Blanc goes a bit overboard on his points occasionally, that’s fine; he’s making a case. The book is a compelling case not only for organizing millions more workers into the labor movement but for doing it in a way that could help them build power in their unions and in their workplaces.
Blanc is clear that neither he nor the worker-organizers he writes about have invented the notion that workers should have control of their own organizing drives. He cites examples beginning with the early twentieth-century Wobblies to show that bottom-up, nonbureaucratized unionism is an ancient thread in our movement.
Today’s worker-to-worker unionism, in Blanc’s definition, means that workers train other workers in organizing methods, unlike the usual union practice of leaving that mentoring to staffers. The organizing drive itself is initiated by workers, rather than being chosen by union strategists. And the workers have a decisive say on day-to-day strategy — at least partly because there are just fewer staffers around. Hopefully, that’s also because the union has accepted the wisdom of letting workers lead."
https://jacobin.com/2025/03/blanc-worker-organizing-starbucks-uaw
Our struggle ended up on The Guardian, after many other international media outlets. I'm one of the workers who have been affected by the retaliation of #TeleperformanceGreece and have lost the job after 4 years and a half of work - always with short term contracts, crazy workloads and all the possible bullshit you can imagine.
#unionism #tradeunionism #workersstrike #Teleperformance #απεργία_teleperformance #unionbusting
Teleperformance Secret Santa: Did you go on strike? Here’s a layoff for you!
Salary stuck at the same level for a decade? – Check. Fixed term contracts that may even be limited to 1 month? – Check. Workplace bullying with stifling productivity checks? – Check. Special purpose stay permit? – Check. Misinformation about the right to strike? – Check. Wonder if this is some kind of labor hellhole? Of course not, it’s just a Great Place To Work! (a special certification for Greek companies assessing the “work experience” they offer)
Teleperformance is a company that employs over 13,000 people nationwide and had a financial turnover of €453 million and a profit of €61 million in 2023. This ranks it among the largest employers in Greece, where the state is trying to bring the much desired growth by creating a fertile ground for intensive labour exploitation and increased legal accommodations for large capitalist groups like Teleperformance, trampling on workers’ rights that have been fought over so far through our struggles. But what does all this mean for Teleperformance workers and for labour in general in “growth” Greece?
At a time when working hours are increasing and wages are not nearly enough to cover our needs, Teleperformance is steadily increasing its profits every year. While bragging about a “modern and inclusive work environment”, the company has stubbornly refused to make any wage increases for over a decade, invoking legislative accomodations that allow it to maintain an expendable workforce with very few rights, and has recorded a large number of complaints against it for injustices, bullying, and violative incidents. At the same time, intensification of labour is hitting red as, under the pretext of the contracts it has with its clients (giant companies in the digital technology sector), it obsessively insists on achieving unrealistic goals, resulting in the mental and physical collapse of its workers.
Against these working conditions, an important struggle has recently been taking place in Teleperformance. After years of attempts by the management to undermine any kind of struggle, the national labour union of Teleperformance, the SETEP, was created in response. The union has a significant number of members, a large part of whom are immigrants – something quite unprecedented for a union in Greece. Meetings are held entirely in English and the migrant workers played a crucial role in founding the union as some of them already had experience of struggles in Teleperformance in their countries of origin. Migrant workers are subject to a ‘special purpose visa’ scheme which prohibits them from working in another sector and possible non-renewal of their contract can lead to deportation. The union is demanding the signing of a Collective Labour Agreement that includes, among other things, substantial wage increases, permanent contracts and longer breaks. At the same time, through demonstrations at the Ministry of Immigration, the union has managed to secure a commitment from the ministry to revise the terms of the special purpose visa so that renewals of stay permits do not require the presentation of a work contract.
SETEP in its first 11 months counted 10 strike actions and some victories with rehiring of layoffs, with paid leave for the time they had to wait while moving from one project to another and with free transportation to the offices for workers in Chania, Crete. At the same time, especially people working remotely established a common physical space to meet and discuss their problems. However, the union’s constant demand for the signing of a collective agreement is being resisted and mocked by the management, resulting in the escalation of the mobilizations to a 48-hour nationwide strike on 19-20/11.
This escalation brought a series of retaliatory measures on the part of Teleperformance to safeguard its profits and to suppress any claim that could affect the smooth functioning of this well-planned system of recycling flexible and vulnerable workers. Management has proceeded to retaliatory layoffs and non-renewal of contracts of union members and workers who participated in the strike actions. At the same time, it is trying various tactics to divide the workforce into local and migrant workers, to lure people from departments with the highest participation in the mobilisations with meagre bonuses and to deter participation in the strikes by trying to convince people that they will not achieve anything that way.
The example of Teleperformance and the workers’ struggle has a wider relevance for class antagonism. Teleperformance is a company that is methodically implementing digital restructuring at work by utilising the latest technologies of artificial intelligence and remote work. At the same time, it has established a complex system of labour exploitation and precariousness by recycling workforce from HR companies with short-term contracts of duration limited to even one month.
Supporting the struggle of the Teleperformance workers contributes to a broader resistance to modern work hellholes, to the individualism that is brought about by defeatism, to the insecurity and fear of survival, of how to make a living covering your basic (and non-basic) needs. The widening of the struggle at the sectoral level has already scared the telecommunications bosses who are making “black lists” of workers involved in the mobilisations!
We are not afraid of the layoffs – the bosses should be afraid of wildcat strikes!
Solidarity with the strike rallies on Monday 23/12 8am and 7pm at the Teleperformance offices (Gravias 25, Piraeus)!
re/traverse – exiting the hellholes of precarity
This is a call for a big demo and the start of a general strike the 5th of december 2024.
#iww #unionism #generalstrike #CIT #ozzip #usi #fora
@iwwita @belfastiww @northumbriaIWW @IWWRuhrgebiet @IclCit @pracownicza
#Historical #UnionSolidarity #Art.
“The Hand That Will Rule the World” by Ralph Chaplin. June 30, 1917.
The symbol of the clinched fist has been a symbol of #solidarity as early as 1917. “The Hand That Will Rule the World” by Ralph Chaplin is an illustration referring to the #IWW (Industrial Workers of The World). Industrial unionism began when skilled workers were displaced by modern machinery and the #monopolization of industries. It was a union that believed industries should be controlled by the workers, benefiting the many instead of enriching the few, and create better working conditions.
In this image, the workers are uniting their arms and creating one giant fist, which represents solidarity and #unity, while holding tools, representing manual labor, while factories in the backdrop symbolize the machinery displacing the workers.
📖 Num artigo publicado na Revista de História da Sociedade e da Cultura, o João Gabriel Caia disseca "a dinâmica da primeira eclosão sindical da história do trabalho rural em Portugal", bem como "o seu impacto na sociedade rural eborense".
🔓 Para ler em #AcessoAberto: https://doi.org/10.14195/1645-2259_24-1_7
#Histodons #TrabalhadoresRurais #Sindicalismo #Évora #LutaDeClasses #RuralLabour #Unionism #ClassStruggle #HistoryOfPortugal #HistóriaDePortugal #OpenAccess #PeasantsRights #Peasants #PrimeiraRepública
How #Biden's #NLRB has Boosted Bottom-Up #Unionism (& Why this Matters) --
The Board's impact at #Starbucks, #Amazon, and beyond underscores the stakes of #November5
https://www.laborpolitics.com/p/how-bidens-nlrb-has-boosted-bottom
#AusPol #CFMEU #Greens #ALP #Unionism #UnionBusting #MaxChandlerMatherMP #GreenLeft
Labor, and the ABC, supposedly left-left wing organisations, are attacking the Greens and Max Chandler-Mather for supporting the CFMEU.
Hands off the CFMEU, we have a right to protest!
https://www.greenleft.org.au/content/labor-abc-attack-greens-supporting-cfmeu
#AusPol #CFMEU #Protest #Unionism #Naarm #Gadigal #MaganDjin #Brisbane #Sydney #Melbourne #GreenLeft
Hands Off the CFMEU! Protest the union busting laws pushed through by Labor. Join Socialist Alliance in Magan-djin (Brisbane), Gadigal Country (Sydney) or Naarm (Melbourne) this Tuesday or Wednesday.
#CFMEU #unionism #AusPol #GreenLeft #democracy #workersRights #perth #boorloo #ALP
These photos are courtesy of Alex Salmon, a comrade. The article is Green Lefts coverage of the national mobilisation.
https://www.greenleft.org.au/content/tens-thousands-unionists-condemn-labor-actu-over-anti-cfmeu-law
#cfmeu #auspol #perth #boorloo #ALP #unionism
Today I marched with ~1000 unionists and pro-union activists to demand that the ALP stop the attacks on the CFMEU. It was a great turnout for Perth. I got over 100 signatures for a petition to the federal government to stop these attacks. If you are an Australian and in a union, check to see if your union has a statement backing the CFMEU and if they don’t ask them to write one. An injury to one is an injury to all. These attacks won’t stop with the CFMEU.
Socialist Alliances (my party) statement on the recent attacks on the CFMEU:
https://socialist-alliance.org/our-common-cause/2024-07-18/stop-attack-cfmeu-solidarity-construction-workers
#SocialistAlliance #CFMEU #Unionism #AusPol
Phil Moorhouse dismisses Sinn Fein's numbers with "Well … you know." thinking that just because they won't affect Westminster voting they are irrelevant.
But Northern Ireland is, like #ReformUKLtd and the Conservative and Unionist Party, another ironic tale of Unionists fracturing, with the DUP's losses being the UUP's, AP's, and TUV's gains.
https://youtu.be/YxzSBFaT6_E?t=615
#UKPolitics #SinnFein #Unionism #ADifferentBias #NothernIreland
No Paisley in Nothing Ireland politics for the first time since 1970.
That is seismic and transformational. Plus the #DUP have went from eight to five seats. Bad night for #Unionism.
No Allister in #Stormont - should work slighty better with him out of the way!
No Paisley in #Westminster - the expenses system breathes a sigh of relief!
Unfortunately, Allister is now in #Westminster Sorry lads in the House of Commons - you have to suffer him now too.
See https://mastodon.scot/@JdeBP/112690094425666446 .
You have probably already figured out what RUL is abbreviating. (-: Yes, it's the limited company one.
After all, the CUP is looking set to become another single-country Unionist party today, unless it gets that 1 seat in #Scotland, just like the ones that we already comfortably know as the DUP and the UUP.
Ironic that all of these Unionists aren't in one big multi-country party, isn't it? (-:
