"Refusal to handle military equipment for war in Palestine

While a genocide is underway in Palestine, workers at the various airports in Belgium are seeing weapons headed for war zones.

The loading and unloading of these weapons enables the resupplying of organizations killing innocent people.

We, the different unions active in the ground handling sector, call on our members not to handle flights that ship military material to Palestine/Israel as there were also clear agreements and rules at the start of the conflict with Russia and Ukraine.

We call for an immediate ceasefire and ask the Belgian governments to be consistent and not to tolerate arms shipments through Belgian airports. As unions, we declare our solidarity with those who are taking action for peace.

The common trade union front"

In my local cafe run by a no nonsense grandma I met a man who said don't vote it doesn't do anything.

He was a white retired, divorced man with an adult son and daughter.

I was about to protest what he said.

But he continued 'do you think the suffragettes got women's rights by voting, do you think black south Africans ended apartheid by voting, do you think black Americans ended segregation by voting'

Turns out he was a former trade union worker and took part in Britain's largest anti-war protest.

He spoke passionately about the people of Gaza and comment on how everyone needs to continue with protests and boycotts.

It was actually quite refreshing as social media really has demoralised me as a lot of people don't seem to care.

Any way, free gaza until gaza is free and then punish Israel

🍉🍉🍉🍉🍉

Sixty-six staffers at Warner Bros. Animation and 22 at Cartoon Network filed a petition for a union election with the National Labor Relations Board on Wednesday and simultaneously requested voluntary recognition from management at the Warner Bros. Discovery subsidiaries. Collectively, the group includes workers in roles like production manager, digital production assistant, IT technician, production coordinator, production assistant, design production coordinator, assistant production manager and senior assistant production manager. The effort was announced on a joint Zoom call around noon on Wednesday with production workers at the Warner Bros. Discovery brands and TAG members. The staffers involved work on an array of shows, including Warner Bros. Animation’s Batman: The Caped Crusader, Harley Quinn and Teen Titans Go! and Cartoon Network’s Adventure Time: Fionna and Cake, We Baby Bears and Craig of the Creek. “Although many might not think it, production is a specialized skill; we might not be artists or writers, but what we bring to the table goes beyond traditional creativity and gets content on the air,” Warner Bros. Animation production manager Hannah Ferenc said in a statement about the organization effort. “Having lived through the existing state of the animation industry for the past seven years, I want to make sure that not only our current workers, but all those who choose to join us in the future, can feel secure in following their passion by earning livable wages and being treated with the dignity and respect they deserve.”

Looking at the WGA Strike, I have a question. What exactly is preventing the major studios from just hiring new writers and just leaving the old writers out in the cold? Yeah, there will be writers that will be turned off on working for the corporations due to the strike, but I am sure there are plenty of writers who are too eager to get their foot in the door to care about that.

Scabbing is a phenomenon that happens in almost all strikes, but the problem with "getting your foot in the door" is that if you scab, you will be permanently blacklisted from union membership and all future union work. Which makes it profoundly counter-productive as a career move.

So. Don't. Cross. The. Picket. Line.

reminder to support your local strikes.

whether that be by joining picket lines, donating to strike funds, or just spreading awareness of any industrial action that's going on, any assistance helps.

don't listen to the anti-union rhetoric being pushed by the right, both in and out of government. the reason it's become so prevalent in recent years is that the establishment is so afraid of losing out on even the smallest amount of profit, that they'll do anything they can to suppress it.

Miners Strike memorial march at Hatfield Main today

The Water Transport Workers union in India will not load any arms to Israel The union has 3,500 members working across 11 major Indian ports.

I had a random gut feeling that if writer and actor strikes in USA continues, capitalists may start using their pundits to incite fascists to go after the protesters. Your opinion on this perspective?

We don't know about that Anon, that seems a bit far-fetched. It's not like fascists have a 100+ year history of attacking strikers and trade unions. Unless of course you count Benito Mussolini hiring out his blackshirts as strikebreakers in 1919. Or the fascist attacks & disruptions of the 1926 general strike in the UK. Or Hitler making trade unions illegal in 1933 and then sending trade unionists to be murdered in concentration camps. Anyways, that's all ancient history and there are no examples of recent fascist activity targeting trade unions. Aside from the fascist attack on striking railway workers in Manchester in 2019. Or the murder of Bolivian miner union leader Orlando Gutiérrez in 2020 by a mob of fascists protesting the outcome of the country's election by beating him to death. Or the 2021 attack on the headquarters of an Australian construction workers' union in Australia in 2021 by far-right extremists and anti-public health conspiracy theorists, who broke into the building and attacked union officials and union staff. Or the attack by members of the fascist Forza Nuova party on a union office in Rome, Italy that same year. Or the (failed) attempt by fascists in Albi, France to assault trade union members (only to be badly beaten themselves by the union members!) in October 2021. Or the November 2021 attack on two union members in Paris by a fascist gang. Well anyways it's not like fascist leaders like the UK's Alek Yerbury are currently calling for his followers to target union offices, picket lines, and strikers.

You see? Nothing at all to worry about and anti-fascists shouldn't bother showing their support and solidarity with working people striking in an attempt to raise the working conditions and lives of all of us! OR MAYBE WE SHOULD???

what does it mean when people say stuff like individual morality or action is incompatible with class analysis or class struggle?

alright so like one of the key ideas about class analysis is the idea that classes (as a whole) have economic interests that affect all their members but don't extrapolate out to an individual analysis.

for example, let's say that you can't find a job, and somebody offers to pay you below the table for below minimum wage. it's in your individual interest to do this--it beats having no job! but as a member of the working class, once this practice becomes normalized, suddenly the standards of pay for everyone are lower because people know that they can just pay less than minimum wage under the table. competition between workers for jobs drives wages down for everyone, leaving them all in a worse situation overall even if each individual choice to scab, to accept lower pay, to resist unionization, etc, leaves the person who makes it better off. cf. karl marx on what happens when wages and working conditions deteriorate:

The labourer seeks to maintain the total of his wages for a given time by performing more labour, either by working a great number of hours, or by accomplishing more in the same number of hours. Thus, urged on by want, he himself multiplies the disastrous effects of division of labour. The result is: the more he works, the less wages he receives. And for this simple reason: the more he works, the more he competes against his fellow workmen, the more he compels them to compete against him, and to offer themselves on the same wretched conditions as he does; so that, in the last analysis, he competes against himself as a member of the working class.

— Karl Marx, Wage Labour & Capital

similarly, any individual member of the working class is completely dispensable and replaceable by capital. if one person refuses to work unless they're paid a higher wage, they'll be fired and replaced with somebody who doesn't. the individual worker has no economic leverage whatsoever. but the working class has incredible economic leverage! and so does the intermediate stage between the working class and the individual--organized segments of the working class (e.g. trade unions) have economic leverage. if one person strikes, the capitalist can fire them. if 40,000 people strike, your industry is going to shut down.

so the reason why class analysis is compatible with individual action is that your incentives measurably change when you start organizing--it's in the interests of the individual to compete, but in the interests of the class to cooperate. and obviously you cannot just expect everyone to spontaneously coordinate! you, the individual, are disposable to capital! if you, personally, refuse to take the under-the-table offer, either on moral grounds or because you recognize your class interest, your neighbour's going to take it--unless you and her get together and agree that neither of you will take it. that's the only way that the guy making the offer is going to have to give in and offer the job for a living wage.

and this is what organization is--trade unions (although they have severe limitations!), communist parties, and other worker's organizations allow the working class to pursue their collective interest--which can only be pursued by collective action, because engaging in the strategies of collective action as an individual, without the cooperation of your peers, is high risk for no reward.

Visual effects workers for the first time in history will have union representation. On Wednesday, the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees (IATSE) announced that Marvel VFX workers successfully passed a National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) ballot and will now join IATSE. The vote comes after a supermajority of Marvel’s internal VFX workers first signed authorization cards with the union on Aug. 7. IATSE says that because Marvel had declined voluntary recognition of the union, a vote with the NLRB was necessary. With the vote passing, it’s the first time any people who work in the visual effects space across Hollywood will have any sort of representation from a union. A simple majority of Marvel’s internal VFX staff was required in order to IATSE to represent them, but the union was of course seeking a strong number of votes to strengthen the resolve of the new branch within IATSE. The vote was 32-0 out of 41 eligible voters. 7 votes were challenged. The next step for the union is to engage in collective bargaining negotiations with Marvel to draft their first contract, or collective bargaining agreement (CBA). As of this writing, no negotiation dates have yet been scheduled.

The telegraph wants us to be outraged that a union is functioning as intended?

Can I ask why the Pinkerton agents get such a bad rap online? All I know from them comes from the Sherlock Holmes novel The Valley of Fear, where they help take down a gang of extorsionist coal miners.

So the Valley of Fear concerns a real-life incident that helped to shape the Pinkertons' reputation: their destruction of the Molly Maguires in the coalfields of Pennsylvania. An early trade union of miners of mostly Irish extraction, the leadership of the Molly Maguires were accused of murder, arson, kidnapping, and a whole host of other crimes by undercover Pinkerton agents who had infiltrated their ranks on behalf of the Philadelphia and Reading Railroad, who the Molly Maguires were fighting over wages, hours, and working conditions. Dozens were sent to jail for long stretches of time, and ten men were ultimately hanged as a result of Pinkerton testimony.

The fact that the evidence against the Maguires largely stemmed from undercover informants paid by management to disrupt and destroy their organization and other suspect sources of evidence like jaihouse snitches, and that the prosecutions against the Maguires were personally carried out by the CEO of the Philadelphia and Reading Railroad in the midst of labor conflict over who ran the coalfields, has led a lot of labor historians to conclude that the Molly Maguires were stitched up in the courts and that the Pinkertons committed wholesale perjury, acted as agents provocateur to provoke the crimes they then testified to, and caused the judicial murder of ten men.

That was just the start of their long and inglorious history of being the favorite goons of anti-union robber barons: the gun thugs who were outfought at Homestead were Pinkertons, as were the private armies who fought for capital during the Great Railroad Strike of 1877 who had to be once again bailed out by the National Guard. Likewise, their foray into bearing false witness continued with the manufactured confession that named UMW leader Big Bill Haywood as the man who arranged for the assassination of Governor Frank Steunenberg of Idaho.

So yeah, the Pinkertons have earned every last drop of their evil reputation. There is blood on their hands.

The UK in 2023 … like to charge, reblog to cast.