-fae

congrats to ups for voting to authorize a strike if no deal is reached!!!

LET’S MOTHERFUCKING GOOOOOOOOO!

Today is Labor Day in America, and I wanna take a moment to highlight how Appalachian folk played a major role in the American Labor Movement all those years ago.

From August 21st to September 2nd, 1921, the Battle of Blair Mountain took place. It was the largest labor uprising in United States history. For those of you who don't know, coal mining is a major industry in the Appalachian mountains (and unfortunately, one that had taken a toll on both the locals and the environment), and has been since the late 1800s. Coal miners and their families were treated like garbage, between the industry enacting violence against these people to the unfair/low wages.

Take some time to read up on the history of coal mining in the Appalachian mountains, and further read up on the Battle of Blair mountain along with how coal mining has been affecting these mountains today.

Educational Links:

Coal Mining in Appalachia

What Made the Battle of Blair Mountain the Largest Labor Uprising in American History

The Battle of Blair Mountain (History)

The Battle of Blair Mountain (National Park Services)

Mining the Mountains

What is mountaintop removal mining?

The Coal Mine Next Door: How the Deregulation of Mountaintop Removal Threatens Public Health

Starbucks workers are going on strike on the chain's busiest day of the year. Find an event near you to support if you can.

Colbert went back to work so quickly when the strike ended that the Late Show Band's bassist, Endea Owens, who was on a trip to central Australia, could not physically get to NYC in time. That means that first show back was written, produced, and filmed, in like 48 hours, from a dead stop in work. These artists deserve all the pay and protections they fought for, and more.

Fran Drescher is on fire here. She could be talking about almost any sector of the economy.

URGENT: University of Michigan Classics graduate student instructors are on strike and need your help

see below cut for information on UM's actions to sabotage its graduate students, the Department of Classics' complacency, and a signable letter of solidarity.

Dear [Colleagues],

I am reaching out on behalf of the graduate students in the Department of Classics at the University of Michigan to ask if you might consider signing and circulating within your departmental or Classics-adjacent listservs a letter calling for Michigan faculty to refrain from submitting Graduate Student Instructors' grades while we are on strike for a fair contract.

Our graduate student union (GEO) has been in contract negotiations with Academic HR for the majority of this past academic year, but AHR has not bargained in good faith. Notably, they have refused to grant graduate student instructors a living wage, despite a skyrocketing cost-of-living in Ann Arbor. Our current contract from 2020 stipulates a 10.1% wage increase over three years, whereas the inflation rate from 2020–2023 exceeded 15%, according to the US government’s standard index. AHR’s most recent pre-strike offer of an 11.5% wage increase over the next three years would not bring graduate students to even the inflation-adjusted baseline of our 2020 contract. The raise would include a 5% raise in the first year, an effective pay cut (as current inflation rates are an estimated 6-7%). The proposed contract's raise is even lower for our colleagues on Detroit and Dearborn campuses, despite a similar cost of living, with a 2% raise in the first year.

When GEO went on strike on March 29, the University immediately took legal action by filing an injunction against the union rather than attempting first to resolve matters at the bargaining table. GEO defeated the injunction on April 10, but the University has continued to refuse good-faith bargaining and instead has called upon faculty to submit final grades in the place of their striking Graduate Student Instructors. On April 20, GSIs noticed in their accounts that wages for the pay period of April 1–30 would be withheld on the basis of attestation forms, leaving us with a total of $100 for the month of April, even though 10 days of the pay period remained outstanding. On that same day, President Santa Ono called the police to detain two graduate students who were protesting outside of the restaurant in which he was having dinner (the two students were later released).

Unfortunately, the Classics department has adhered to the University’s line every step of the way. Our faculty have not only taught classes in our stead, undermining the power of graduate students to withhold our labor in pursuit of a fair contract, but they have taken on immense grading loads which would be entirely impossible to complete without a considerable cut to pedagogical quality. In certain cases, faculty who had no prior affiliation with a course have stepped in to submit incorrect grades for students while knowing that graduate student instructors were withholding components of those students’ grades. The graduate students in this department have attempted to communicate with and educate our faculty on the importance of respecting our strike throughout the last month, but we have received minimal engagement from the majority of professors. We have no choice but to turn to the wider academic community as a last resort, in the hopes that our faculty will listen to you when they won’t listen to us.

Please consider signing this letter and passing it onto your networks—not just for the wellbeing of graduate students here at the University of Michigan, but for the wellbeing of our undergraduate students as well.

 

Kindly,

[Graduate Student at UM Classics]

signable letter of solidarity

I got fired from my job wrongfully during unionization. I’m a disabled, single mom, with generalized anxiety disorder, pervasive depression, adhd/autism. My financial situation has been precarious at best after leaving my abusive marriage, and now I am forced out of my tenured position. Starbucks ain’t shit, they don’t care about their partners who create massive profits for the company.

The positive side of the SAG-AFTRA strike is now we'll get content that isn't more remakes and prequels and sequels.

Finally some original content!

-fae

"Since even quite common men have souls, no increase in material wealth will compensate them for arrangements which will insult their self-respect and impair their freedom. A reasonable estimate of economic organisation must allow for the fact that, unless industry is to be paralysed by recurrent revolts on the part of outraged human nature, it must satisfy criteria which are not purely economic."

- R. H. Tawney, from Religion and the Rise of Capitalism, 1926.

Stay off NYTimes and nytimes affiliated sites tomorrow

Dumbass politicians calling everything that isn't the January 6th Insurrection "insurrection." to suit them.

The last time we had something like that was when we had The Battle of Blair Mountain.

I’m so happy for them

[Image Description: Castiel from Supernatural is saying I love you, underneath is an image of Dean Winchester with the caption: “After four months of striking the WGA has a reached a tentative agreement & finalizing the contract. If all goes well writers will get to return to work with better pay and protections. They did it. Go unions”]

(Source)