ratboy [they/them]

  • 6 Posts
  • 46 Comments
Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: August 17th, 2023

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  • Hmm I don’t really know about that. I think regardless of union representation, within the NLRB or not, the boss is gonna do what the boss is gonna do. I think laborers with specialized skill sets will always have more power. Service workers who are represented by a union under the NLRB often still get laid off, replaced, retaliated against regardless of what the “rules” are, and in my experience are restrained by their local because if your local is yellow they will go to any lengths to keep you from striking or being militant and they might even hurt you at the bargaining table. Even with the NLRB you can only strike for two reasons, the vote takes months to process, work stoppages are not allowed, etc. So I think it can be equally harmful to any worker, but that all depends on the unions willingness to get rowdy.

    I fear the NLRB being dismantled because most workers in the US are not at a stage where they are willing to put the work in to organize and be militant. They want all that work done for them, so I feel like unions would all but dissolve without the apparatus we have now. People will just shrug their shoulders when theirs goes away, so at least with the shitty system we have now there is some sort of shield and protections if your local cares about you, anyway



  • UFCW seems to be one of the worst unfortunately. My first job was a brief stint at a grocery store represented by them. This is when self checkouts were first introduced. Over half of the cashiers were laid off, and a couple had to relocate to stores that would’ve doubled their commute. Before that a cashier told me that when he started his job, there were only like 8 steps to journeyman pay, but during later negotiations it got doubled to 16 or something crazy like that.

    I feel for you when it comes to the emotionality of it all. Myself and some of my comrades put our EVERYTHING into that struggle for close to 3 years, just for the department to dissolve just a couple months after the contract was ratified. I’m still kinda fucked up from how terrible and demoralizing it all was and I havent been at that job for nearly a year



  • Let me join biaoqing-copium

    Tbh while this is kinda scary, I do think it will lead to people becoming more militant/radicalized as the other comrade replied.

    There was someone on r/union who mentioned that his MAGA coworkers thought that the tariffs would increase their work, but instead they are facing layoffs and work stoppages they stopped wearing the or trump hats and are taking off their bumper stickers. Kinda gives me hope that more people will come over to the commie side. Or they just become more fascist I guess shrug-outta-hecks




  • Yeah, it kind of seems to me that the US has the monopoly on information warfare, repression, propaganda, surveillance, etc. and I would be curious if there are/were any other governments that could even come close to the level of control that the US has. There is also such extreme individualism baked into our culture, there is no national identity to tie people together…Segregation is fundamental to the history of the country… I could go on, but you know all of the factors already.

    I have faith that history will march on, it’s inevitable that the empire will crumble. That said, it does seem to me to be a set of very unique circumstances to try to overcome. I don’t believe in Mamdani at all, though, electoralism is not the way. I’ll he pleasantly surprised if he sticks to his promises, but for whatever reason I’m considered a doomer if I’m anything besides ecstatic about him shrug-outta-hecks







  • Eh, just a synonym for tankie, mostly. Found on revolupedia:

    Campism is a revisionist position among nominal communists which believes that the current world is divided into two geopolitical “camps” — the imperialist West led by the United States and European Union and the “anti-imperialist” East led by the Russian Federation and People’s Republic of China. Campists omit the capitalist and imperialist nature of both Russia and China, the latter of which they view as being “socialist,” and combine this view with the belief that these imperialist powers will create a state of “multipolarity” without reference to the condition of each bloc’s exploited proletariat and its liberation.[1] Most campists are followers of Dengism.

    Campism can be viewed as a modern iteration of the social-chauvinist and militarist views adopted by the Second International during the First World War, in which opportunist parties supported the imperialism and bourgeoisie of their home country against the working class of another. Both versions of this chauvinist view are contrasted with the Marxist–Leninist understanding of revolutionary defeatism.

    A cute quote from a write up about campists:

    The logic is something like this: X is an enemy of the United States, therefore X is anti-imperialist, therefore we support it, and since it is anti-imperialist, it must be progressive. It follows that any criticism of country X is reactionary. People who criticize any anti-imperialist nation such as X must be on the side of imperialism. So, for example, since the United States is an imperial power, and China opposes the United States, then China must be progressive (some will even say socialist). So then, the argument goes, those who criticize China for putting some 1.5 million Uyghurs in concentration camps or for its crushing of the democratic movement in Hong Kong, must be allied with the United States government and are objectively pro-imperialist. This is the campist logic.