MSNBC’s Katy Tur detailed the violent death threats reporters are receiving because of Donald Trump’s rhetoric: “And in case you want to argue this has nothing to do with the president, the most recent note I got ended with MAGA.”
This isn’t because Burger King is nicer in Denmark. It’s the law, and the US is actually the only so-called “developed” country that doesn’t mandate jobs provide a minimum amount of paid vacation, sick leave, or both.
kinda debunks that claim that they can’t afford to pay their workers those sort of wages and still make a profit
Its corporate greed, plain and simple.
It is the same in Sweden. It is so funny every time an american company opens up offices here and then tries to do it the american way and all the unions go “I don’t think so”.
They refused to sign on to the union deals that govern such things as pay/pension and vacation in Sweden. Most of our rights are not mandated by law (we don’t have a minimum wage for example) but are made in voluntary agreements between the unions and the companies.
But they refused, saying that they had never negotiated with any unions anywhere else in the world and weren’t planning to do it in Sweden either.
Of course a lot of people thought it was useless fighting against an international giant, but Handels (the store worker’s union) said that they could not budge, because that might mean that the whole Swedish model might crumble. So they went on strike in the three stores that the company had opened so far.
Cue a shitstorm from the press, and from right wing politicians. But the members were all for it, and other unions started doing sympathy actions. The teamsters refused to deliver goods to their stores, the financial unions blockaded all economical transactions regarding Toys ‘r Us and the strike got strong international support as well, especially in the US.
In the end, Toys ‘r Us caved in, signed the union deal, and thus their employees got the same treatment as Swedish store workers everywhere.
The right to be treated as bloody human beings and not disposable cogs in a machine.
and that story right there? is exactly why Republicans in the US work so hard to bust unions. it’s because unionizing WORKS and they’re terrified of workers actually having some power.
In Bucharest (Romania), tens of thousands of people (even 100.000 as estimated by Digi24) went out in Victoriei Square to protest against the government.
They protested against the huge level of corruption that’s happening in Romania and also against the the fact that the politicians are trying to change the penal code. They want to weaken the rule of law so that it will be more suitable for them when they will be in jail.
The demonstration was peaceful until several groups of people started throwing bottles, pavement pieces and other things at the policemen guarding the protest and they fought back with tear gas and a water canon.
Hundreds of people were hurt, some of them even had to go to the hospital.
the gendarmerie just made a statement about last night, saying that their response was justified and proportionate to the protesters’ level of violence. the order to use teargas and water cannons was given by the city’s prefecture. people are now asking why, instead of removing the small number of violent protesters from the crowd and dealing with them separately, the police shot teargas randomly into the otherwise peaceful crowd and beat up people who had their hands up.
some of the psd politicians are already expressing their support for the gendarmes and saying their attacks were justified. romania’s president reacted by making a facebook post about how appalled he is and how totally not ok this is. fuck every single one of these people sideways with a police baton.
Hawaii voters will go the polls Saturday in the state’s midterm primaries. The most watched race is perhaps the Democratic contest in the state’s Honolulu-area 1st Congressional District, where a crowded field of candidates is running and the Democratic nominee-elect will very likely win November’s general election. A poll last month suggested the state’s Democratic moderates have a lock on the race. Former congressman Ed Case was in the lead at 36 percent. Current Lt. Gov. Doug Chin was in second at 27 percent. Former state Senate President Donna Mercado Kim came in third with 14 percent. But it is the fourth-place candidate, 29-year-old state Rep. Kaniela Ing, who has received the most national attention.
Ing has been endorsed by the progressive group Justice Democrats and the Democratic Socialists of America as well as democratic socialist and Democratic NY-14 candidate Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who stumped for Ing this week. The team behind a viral ad that brought Ocasio-Cortez to national prominence earlier this year has been making ads for Ing as well. The first, a largely biographical ad released late last month, highlights housing costs in the state, student loan debt, and Democratic political complacency. The campaign’s new ad, released Wednesday, is more abstract—almost existential in its concerns. It is one of the most remarkable campaign spots released by a major party candidate in recent memory.
As he sits on a beach at sunset plucking away at his ukelele, Ing offers nothing short of a new way of living:
When we talk about policies like Medicare for All, universal health care, housing for all, public education through college, cancelling student debt—these are policies that would just make everyday working people’s lives dignified, and would make sure that they’re not just living just to work.
[…]This idea that we just need to grind, grind, grind, grind—you have billionaires that barely lift a finger. The money just works for itself. There’s more than enough resources to go around for everyone. […] If you ask people the question, “What would you do if you didn’t have to worry about finances and you had your basic needs met?” the answers are amazing. People would start businesses. They’d get into art, they’d get into music and all these things that are lacking in our world. All this stuff is possible.
There have been a lot of debates over the past several months about whether the policies being advocated by self-described socialists like Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez actually amount to socialism at all rather than a return to the welfare state liberalism that defined the Democratic Party from the New Deal through the 1980s. What Ing offers in this ad is bona-fide Marxism. It is a case for policies like single payer not just to materially benefit the middle class and workers, but to allow them to radically de-center the role of work in their lives—a case for the redistribution of wealth specifically with the intention of enabling leisure. The history of post-work leftism is long; an early text is a section of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels’ The German Ideology:
[A]s soon as the distribution of labour comes into being, each man has a particular, exclusive sphere of activity, which is forced upon him and from which he cannot escape. He is a hunter, a fisherman, a herdsman, or a critical critic, and must remain so if he does not want to lose his means of livelihood.
In communist society, where nobody has one exclusive sphere of activity but each can become accomplished in any branch he wishes, society regulates the general production and thus makes it possible for me to do one thing today and another tomorrow, to hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, criticise after dinner, just as I have a mind, without ever becoming hunter, fisherman, herdsman or critic.
Steel Phoenix Studios 