Currently what it sounds like in McDonald's #fastfoodfwd
Currently what it sounds like in McDonald's #fastfoodfwd
"Edwin Guzman already lost his job once for union-organizing. But today, he and several hundred fast..."
"Edwin Guzman already lost his job once for union-organizing. But today, he and several hundred fast food workers across New York City are on strike anyway.
A few weeks ago, an organizer with the Fast Food Forward campaign, begun by New York Communities for Change (NYCC) and supported by the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) and other labor and community groups walked into the Burger King in Sunset Park, Brooklyn, where Guzman works. He had a petition with him, calling for a raise to $15-an-hour and union recognition for the workers. Guzman and some of his colleagues signed.
Not long afterward, he had to take a couple of days off for a court date—he was being evicted from his apartment, in part because of his steadily decreasing hours and low pay at his job. Like most of the city's fast food workers, he makes just $7.25 an hour and struggles with irregular scheduling. When he returned to work, his supervisor called him in to talk.
"He told me he had to let me go," Guzman explained. "He felt like I disrespected him. He felt violated that I signed the petition."
When Guzman told the organizers what had happened, they explained to him that firing workers for union activity is illegal, and that they'd support him if he wanted to fight back. With the help of City Councilman Brad Lander, after a meeting with the boss, Guzman and one of his other coworkers were reinstated. That cemented his commitment to the union campaign.
***
Today is the second citywide day of strikes in New York's fast food industry. On November 29, 2012, some 200 workers at McDonald's, Burger King, Wendy's, KFC, Taco Bell, and Domino's Pizza locations across multiple boroughs struck in what Jonathan Westin, executive director of NYCC, called "their coming out party." Before that, Westin explained, the workers had been organizing behind the scenes, keeping their plans quiet. Now, he said, even in the face of intimidation from their bosses, the workers have been able to grow their movement.
"We'll have double the number of strikers, four or five hundred workers on strike, and double the locations too," Westin said. "We will have several stores where it will not just be minority strikes like it was last time, we will have the majority of workers at several stores out on strikes, making it hard for them to do business on this day."
-
The McJobs Strike Back: Will Fast-Food Workers Ever Get a Living Wage? - Sarah Jaffe - The Atlantic
At least three fast food restaurants couldn't open today because a majority of their workers were out on strike. Minimum wage increase is coming for NY, but the fast food workers aren't waiting.
(via differentclasswar)
"If improving conditions in the workplace for women had been a central agenda for feminist movement..."
"If improving conditions in the workplace for women had been a central agenda for feminist movement in conjunction with efforts to obtain better-paying jobs for women and finding jobs for unemployed women of all classes, feminism would have been seen as a movement addressing the concerns of all women. Feminist focus on careerism, getting women employed in high-paying professions, not only alienated masses of women from feminist movement; it also allowed feminist activists to ignore the fact that increased entry of bourgeois women into the work force was not a sign that women as a group were gaining economic power."- bell hooks, "Rethinking the Nature of Work" in Feminist Theory From Margin To Center. Relevant. (via differentclasswar)
secretarysbreakroom: somethingclever219: what-a-lonely-lonely-l...
racebend -> the avengers
- Lenny Kravitz as Tony Stark
- Michael Ealy as Steve Rogers
- Naveen Andrews as Bruce Banner
- Jason Momoa as Thor
- Dichen Lachman as Natasha Romanoff
- Shemar Moore as Clint Barton
- Ken Watanabe as Nick Fury
- Chiwetel Ejiofor as Phil Coulson
- Mark Dacascos as Loki
- Lucy Liu as Maria Hill
Yesyesyesyedyesyesyesyesyesyesyes
This needs to be a thing.
LENNY KRAVITZ AS TONY STARK. YES YES AND YESSSSSS. OHHH THIS IS FUCKING PERFECT CASTING KEN WATANABE AS NICK FURY??!?!?!?!!? CHIWETEL AS PHI COULSON!!!! JASON AS THOR!!!!!!!! PERFECTTTTTTTTTTTTTTT. HOOOOO SHIT MARK DACASCOS AS LOKI???? YESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS
Okay, Lenny as Tony? WHERE CAN I GET THIS NOW.
I will take Jason Momoa as Thor any day.
For champagnecandy.
gotta say I would flip this and have Lucy Liu as Black Widow and Dichen Lachman as Maria Hill. BUT YOU KNOW.
"I used to like when people made me mad."
"I used to like when people made me mad."
melissa: It's true. Check the mastheads. You can only imagine...
It's true. Check the mastheads. You can only imagine what the staffs of Dissent and Reason get up to on the Nation cruise every year.
Feminism: accusing a woman reporter of only getting published because of who she fucks, then threatening to "investigate her."
Y'all can miss me with that.
TLC - Baby-Baby-Baby (by TLCVEVO) I turned to this song (and...
TLC - Baby-Baby-Baby (by TLCVEVO)
I turned to this song (and video) to cheer me up after a particularly depressing workday. I love everything about this. And them.
"Broadly, what unites us as a class is opposition to compulsory virtue, to whore stigma. I think it's..."
"Broadly, what unites us as a class is opposition to compulsory virtue, to whore stigma. I think it's fallen out of vogue now that "slut shaming" has been taken on as a term. But the theoretical precursor to that was "whore stigma," which was proposed in the early nineties by Gail Pheterson. I don't think she was a sex worker, but she's an academic who wrote a lot about sex work. And Jill Nagle ran with it in her book, Whores And Other Feminists, and she took it back to Adrienne Rich, to "Compulsory Heterosexuality and the Lesbian Existence." So if there is whore stigma–just like there's compulsory heterosexuality–then there is compulsory virtue. And all women are injured by compulsory virtue. That's a point of opportunity, to say, so long as the worst thing you can call any woman is a whore, are we going to stand up to that?"-
"opposition to compulsory virtue." Love it.
(via differentclasswar)
"Raising the minimum wage benefits more than just low-wage workers. When people make more money, they..."
"Raising the minimum wage benefits more than just low-wage workers. When people make more money, they spend more money and businesses benefit. The Economic Policy Institute estimated that raising the minimum wage to $9.80 would actually create jobs because more people could spend more money. Low-wage workers are more likely than any other income group to immediately spend any extra income on previously unaffordable basic needs or services. The increase in consumer spending increases demand, which in turn, results in new hiring. On top of the economic benefits, raising the minimum wage has strong public support. A recent poll found that 73 percent support raising the minimum wage to $10 an hour in 2014 and indexing it to inflation—both a higher wage and a shorter time line than the President's proposal. Another poll found that 78 percent of the general public believes the minimum wage should be high enough so that no family with a full-time worker falls below the official poverty line. So, if it's good for the economy and it has strong public support, why is raising the minimum wage such an uphill fight? Because wealthy and corporate interests would rather keep the wage low. In contrast to the broader public, only 40 percent of the wealthy support a minimum wage high enough to keep families out of poverty. When the minimum wage was last raised in 2007, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which strongly opposes raising the minimum wage, spent $53 million on lobbying. In short, raising the minimum wage is not a priority for wealthy and corporate interests, and as a result, it is not a priority for Congress."-
The Minimum Wage: Popular With the Public, But Not the Donor Class - The Demos Blog - PolicyShop
Mijin Cha makes a great point here that people who follow me are probably already aware of. But looking at it laid out like this raises the question: if raising the minimum wage would actually increase spending and demand, why are business groups so dead-set against it?
Ideology is a helluva drug. The anger at the (working) poor that comes out whenever I write about the minimum wage or the people who are paid it never ceases to surprise me. I get less hate tweets for writing about abortion.
To reiterate: $9 an hour is still too low, particularly for workers where I live in New York. (Gov. Cuomo is calling for a state minimum of $9.80; currently New York is at the federal minimum.) But a raise of $1.75 an hour would still make a difference in the lives of people like Naquasia LeGrand, who told me she'd gotten her first raise in a year and five months after striking her job at KFC—a whole twenty cents an hour.
(via differentclasswar)
"Saying a federal push has made his own efforts to raise the minimum wage in New York more "complex,"..."
"Saying a federal push has made his own efforts to raise the minimum wage in New York more "complex," Gov. Andrew Cuomo suggested Sunday he might drop language increasing the minimum wage to $8.75 from his budget proposal to allow for further negotiation."-
Cuomo recasts pay hike debate - Times Union
And here it comes. Cuomo's got the excuse he wanted not to have to raise the minimum wage after all: Obama's call for a federal minimum wage hike of $9/hour and indexed to inflation.
We all saw it coming—as Blake Zeff wrote, Cuomo has a history of pushing progressive social issues like marriage equality, that don't "upend the economic status quo." Thus his recent loud push for the Reproductive Health Act, as featured in the New York Times this weekend and as I reported on in-depth for RH Reality Check, fits perfectly into this framework.
Raising the wage, of course, does not.
If he can drop the minimum wage hike from his budget proposal, he'll please his big-money donors and he can claim that because Obama's plan is better than the one he was proposing ($9 an hour plus inflation as opposed to $8.75) he's actually still progressive.
Never mind that getting a $9 an hour indexed minimum wage through this Congress is about as likely as a Tupac/Biggie Smalls joint tour.
There's absolutely no reason for Cuomo not to push a minimum wage hike in New York; it's the most expensive state in the country and it's full of low-wage workers who would see a real material benefit in their lives from even a dollar an hour more.
The Times-Union also points out, "State law gives the governor a strong hand in negotiations by limiting changes legislators can make to budget bills; if Cuomo left language in, he could essentially dare legislators to pass it into law along with the rest of the budget or shut down state government if they refuse."
So this is in Cuomo's hands once again. A group of state legislators is calling for the state to embrace Obama's proposal and make it law here first, where the cost of living is much higher than most other states. The governor could make this state a leader not just on marriage or abortion rights, but on economic justice too.
We'll see if he wants to. I'm betting the answer is no.
(via differentclasswar)
"Today the main barriers to further progress toward gender equity no longer lie in people's personal..."
"Today the main barriers to further progress toward gender equity no longer lie in people's personal attitudes and relationships. Instead, structural impediments prevent people from acting on their egalitarian values, forcing men and women into personal accommodations and rationalizations that do not reflect their preferences. The gender revolution is not in a stall. It has hit a wall.
In today's political climate, it's startling to remember that 80 years ago, in 1933, the Senate overwhelmingly voted to establish a 30-hour workweek. The bill failed in the House, but five years later the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 gave Americans a statutory 40-hour workweek. By the 1960s, American workers spent less time on the job than their counterparts in Europe and Japan.
-
Why Gender Equality Stalled - NYTimes.com
Read this. That is all.
(via differentclasswar)
"But many lower-profile migrants have virtually no voice on the Hill. Undocumented women laboring as..."
"But many lower-profile migrants have virtually no voice on the Hill. Undocumented women laboring as domestic workers in private homes, or day laborers and dishwashers paid under the table, are no less in need of relief. But under the proposals in play, they can only hope for a more limited legalization process, which might impose deep financial penalties and drag on for years (some estimates suggest up to several million could be disqualified by barriers such as minor past convictions or English-language requirements). Moreover, it's unclear how far "comprehensive" reforms would go toward ensuring enforcement of labor protections for all—citizen and non, with or without papers—which labor activists see as a crucial step toward building a truly fair, inclusive workforce."-
Immigration Reform Set to Boost Business, Undermine Rights - Michelle Chen - In These Times
Read. Two-tier (or more) immigration policy is probably coming, and it's not good.
(via differentclasswar)
"As the figure shows, if the minimum wage had kept pace with average wages—i.e., if minimum wage..."
"As the figure shows, if the minimum wage had kept pace with average wages—i.e., if minimum wage workers saw their paychecks expand at the same rate as the average worker—it would be about $10.50 today. If the minimum wage had kept pace with productivity[i]—i.e., the economy's overall capacity to generate income— it would be almost $18.75 today. Finally, imagine if workers at the very bottom were seeing the same kind of raises as workers at the very top. If the minimum wage had gone up at the same rate as wages for the top 1 percent, it would be over $28 per hour.[ii]"-
Putting a $9 minimum wage in context | Economic Policy Institute
Just so you know.
(via differentclasswar)
"Don't ever think I fell for you, or fell over you. I didn't fall in love, I rose in it."
""Don't ever think I fell for you, or fell over you. I didn't fall in love, I rose in it.""-
Toni Morrison, "Jazz" (via ancestryinprogress)
ohhhh, I love this line. I love this entire book. So beautiful.
(via champagnecandy)
one more, because this line is so perfect it gives me chills all over my body.
"I envy them their public love. I myself have only known it in secret, shared it in secret and..."
"I envy them their public love. I myself have only known it in secret, shared it in secret and longed, aw longed to show it - to be able to say out loud what they have no need to say at all: 'That I have loved only you, surrendered my whole self reckless to you and nobody else. That I want you to love me back and show it to me. That I love the way you hold me, how close you let me be to you. That I love the way you hold me, how close you let me be to you. I like your fingers on and on, lifting, turning. I have watched your face for a long time now, and missed your eyes when you went away from me. Talking to you and hearing you answer - that's the kick.'"-
Toni Morrison "Jazz" (via sxyblkmn) (via therealkatiewest)
I love this book so much.
(via champagnecandy)
And happy birthday too to Toni Morrison, and I wish I had the free time to spend the day re-reading "Jazz". This book is everything.
"Of all the art forms, poetry is the most economical. It is the one which is the most secret, which..."
"Of all the art forms, poetry is the most economical. It is the one which is the most secret, which requires the least physical labor, the least material, and the one which can be done between shifts, in the hospital pantry, on the subway, and on scraps of surplus paper….As we reclaim our literature, poetry has been the major voice of poor, working class, and Colored women. A room of one's own may be a necessity for writing prose, but so are reams of paper, a typewriter, and plenty of time. The actual requirements to produce the visual arts also help determine, along class lines, whose art is whose. In this day of inflated prices for material, who are our sculptors, our painters, our photographers? When we speak of a broadly based women's culture, we need to be aware of the effect of class and economic differences on the supplies available for producing art."-
Audre Lorde, Age, Race, Class, and Sex: Women Redefining Difference (via ethiopienne)
Happy birthday, Audre Lorde. From my favorite piece of hers.
Kylie and Nick Cave (Live "Where The Wild Roses...
Kylie and Nick Cave (Live "Where The Wild Roses Grow") (by oba-ryan)
from John Nichols, who knows what I need.
angrybrownbaby: Oh. my. god. for IPP.
Oh. my. god.
for IPP.
theplanetofsound: Only a couple of days have passed since the...
Only a couple of days have passed since the Pope announced his resignation and we already have a few new candidates.
Ha Ha!
I would take up Catholicism if this happened.
"However much one cursed at the time, one realized afterwards that one had been in contact with..."
"However much one cursed at the time, one realized afterwards that one had been in contact with something strange and valuable. One had been in a community where hope was more normal than apathy or cynicism, where the word 'comrade' stood for comradeship and not, as in most countries, for humbug. One had breathed the air of equality. I am well aware that it is now the fashion to deny that Socialism has anything to do with equality. In every country in the world a huge tribe of party-hacks and sleek little professors are busy 'proving' that Socialism means no more than a planned state-capitalism with the grab-motive left intact. But fortunately there also exists a vision of Socialism quite different from this. The thing that attracts ordinary men to Socialism and makes them willing to risk their skins for it, the 'mystique' of Socialism, is the idea of equality; to the vast majority of people Socialism means a classless society, or it means nothing at all."-
Orwell, Homage to Catalonia, p 104.
I am reading this on my night in, and this paragraph is everything I love about Orwell. Marx might prove that capitalism is horrible and in need of replacement, and countless other thinkers have elaborated and analyzed and planned, but Orwell is the one who makes Socialism sound like someplace I want to live.
(via differentclasswar)
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