#work to rule

[mostlysignssomeportents]

"Efficiency" left the Big Three vulnerable to smart UAW tactics

Tomorrow (September 22), I'm (virtually) presenting at the DIG Festival in Modena, Italy. Tomorrow night, I'll be in person at LA's Book Soup for the launch of Justin C Key's "The World Wasn’t Ready for You." On September 27, I'll be at Chevalier's Books in Los Angeles with Brian Merchant for a joint launch for my new book The Internet Con and his new book, Blood in the Machine.

It's been 143 days since the WGA went on strike against the Hollywood studios. While early tactical leaks from the studios had studio execs chortling and twirling their mustaches about writers caving once they started losing their homes, the strikers aren't wavering – they're still out there, pounding the picket lines, every weekday:

https://www.cnbc.com/2023/08/09/how-hollywood-writers-make-ends-meet-100-days-into-the-writers-guild-strike.html

The studios obviously need writers. That gleeful, anonymous studio exec who got such an obvious erotic charge at the thought of workers being rendered homeless as punishment for challenging his corporate power completely misread the room, and his comments didn't demoralize the writers. Instead, they inspired the actors to go on strike, too.

But how have the writers stayed out since May Day? How have the actors stayed out for 69 days since their strike started on Bastille Day? We can thank the studios for that! As it turns out, the studios have devoted so much energy to rendering creative workers as precarious as possible, hiring as little as they can getting away with and using punishing overtime as a substitute for adequate staffing that they've eliminated all the workers who can't survive on side-hustles and savings for six or seven months at a time.

But even for those layoff-hardened workers, long strikes are brutal, and of course, all the affiliated trades, from costumers to grips, are feeling the pain. The strike fund only goes so far, and non-striking, affected workers don't even get that. That's why I've been donating regularly to the Entertainment Community Fund, which helps all affected workers out with cash transfers (I just gave them another $500):

https://secure2.convio.net/afa/site/Donation2?df_id=8117&8117.donation=form1&mfc_pref=T

As hot labor summer is revealed as a turning point – not just a season – long strikes will become the norm. Bosses still don't believe in worker power, and until they get their minds right, they're going to keep on trying to starve their workforces back inside. To get a sense of how long workers will have to hold out, just consider the Warrior Met strike, where Alabama coal-miners stayed out for 23 months:

https://www.thenation.com/article/activism/warrior-met-strike-union/

As Kim Kelly explained to Adam Conover in the latest Factually podcast, the Alabama coal strikers didn't get anywhere near the attention that the Hollywood strikers have enjoyed:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UvyMHf7Yg0Q

(To learn more about the untold story of worker organizing, from prison unions to the key role that people of color and women played in labor history, check out Kelly's book, "Fight Like Hell," now in paperback:)

https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Fight-Like-Hell/Kim-Kelly/9781982171063

Which brings me to the UAW strike. This is an historic strike, the first time that the UAW has struck all of the Big Three automakers at once. Past autoworkers' strikes have marked turning points for all American workers. The 1945/46 GM strike established employers' duty to cover worker pensions, health care, and cost of living allowances. The GM strike created the American middle-class:

https://prospect.org/labor/2023-09-18-uaw-strikes-built-american-middle-class/

The Big Three are fighting for all the marbles here. They are refusing to allow unions to organize EV factories. Given that no more internal combustion cars will be in production in just a few short years, that's tantamount to eliminating auto unions altogether. The automakers are flush with cash, including billions in public subsidies from multiple bailouts, along with billions more from greedflation price-gouging. A long siege is inevitable, as the decimillionaires running these companies earn their pay by starving out their workers:

https://www.businessinsider.com/general-motors-ceo-mary-barra-salary-auto-workers-strike-uaw-2023-9

The UAW knows this, of course, and their new leadership – helmed by the union's radical president Shawn Fain – has a plan. UAW workers are engaged in tactical striking, shutting down key parts of the supply chain on a rolling basis, making the 90-day strike fund stretch much farther:

https://prospect.org/blogs-and-newsletters/tap/2023-09-18-labors-militant-creativity/

In this project, they are greatly aided by Big Car's own relentless pursuit of profit. The automakers – like every monopolized, financialized sector – have stripped all the buffers and slack out of their operations. Inventory on hand is kept to a bare minimum. Inputs are sourced from the cheapest bidder, and they're brought to the factory by the lowest-cost option. Resiliency – spare parts, backup machinery – is forever at war with profits, and profits have won and won and won, leaving auto production in a brittle, and easily shattered state.

This is especially true for staffing. Automakers are violently allergic to hiring workers, because new workers get benefits and workplace protection. Instead, the car companies routinely offer "voluntary" overtime to their existing workforce. By refusing this overtime, workers can kneecap production, without striking.

Enter "Eight and Skate," a campaign among UAW workers to clock out after their eight hour shift. As Keith Brower Brown writes for Labor Notes, the UAW organizers are telling workers that "It’s crossing an unofficial picket line to work overtime. It’s helping out the company":

https://labornotes.org/2023/09/work-extra-during-strike-auto-workers-say-eight-and-skate

Eight and Skate has already started to work; the Buffalo Ford plant can no longer run its normal weekend shifts because workers are refusing to put in voluntary overtime. Of course, bosses will strike back: the next step will be forced overtime, which will lead to the unsafe conditions that unionized workers are contractually obliged to call paid work-stoppages over, shutting down operations without touching the strike fund.

What's more, car bosses can't just halt safety stoppages or change the rules on overtime; per the UAW's last contract, bosses are required to bargain on changes to overtime rules:

https://uaw.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/Working-Without-Contract-FAQ-FINAL-2.pdf

Car bosses have become lazily dependent on overtime. At GM's "highly profitable" SUV factory in Arlington, TX, normal production runs a six-days, 24 hours per day. Workers typically work five eight-hour days and nine hours on Saturdays. That's been the status quo for 11 years, but when bosses circulated the usual overtime signup sheet last week, every worker wrote "a big fat NO" next to their names.

Writing for The American Prospect, David Dayen points out that this overtime addiction puts a new complexion on the much-hyped workerpocalypse that EVs will supposedly bring about. EVs are much simpler to build than conventional cars, the argument goes, so a US transition to EVs will throw many autoworkers out of work:

https://prospect.org/labor/2023-09-20-big-threes-labor-shortages-uaw/

But the reality is that most autoworkers are doing one and a half jobs already. Reducing the "workforce" by a third could leave all these workers with their existing jobs, and the 40-hour workweek that their forebears fought for at GM inn 1945/46. Add to that the additional workers needed to make batteries, build and maintain charging infrastructure, and so on, and there's no reason to think that EVs will weaken autoworker power.

And as Dayen points out, this overtime addiction isn't limited to cars. It's also endemic to the entertainment industry, where writers' "mini rooms" and other forms of chronic understaffing are used to keep workforces at a skeleton crew, even when the overtime costs more than hiring new workers.

Bosses call themselves job creators, but they have a relentless drive to destroy jobs. If there's one thing bosses hate, it's paying workers – hence all the hype about AI and automation. The stories about looming AI-driven mass unemployment are fairy tales, but they're tailor made for financiers who get alarming, life-threatening priapism at the though of firing us all and replacing us with shell-scripts:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/03/09/autocomplete-worshippers/#the-real-ai-was-the-corporations-that-we-fought-along-the-way

This is why Republican "workerism" rings so hollow. Trump's GOP talks a big game about protecting "workers" (by which they mean anglo men) from immigrants and "woke captialism," but they have nothing to say about protecting workers from bosses and bankers who see every dime a worker gets as misappropriated from their dividend.

Unsurprisingly, conservative message-discipline sucks. As Luke Savage writes in Jacobin, for every mealymouthed Josh Hawley mouthing talking points that "support workers" by blaming China and Joe Biden for the Big Three's greed, there's a Tim Scott, saying the quiet part aloud:

https://jacobin.com/2023/09/republicans-uaw-strike-hawley-trump-scott/

Quoth Senator Scott: "I think Ronald Reagan gave us a great example when federal employees decided they were going to strike. He said, you strike, you’re fired. Simple concept to me. To the extent that we can use that once again, absolutely":

https://twitter.com/American_Bridge/status/1704136706574741988

The GOP's workerism is a tissue-thin fake. They can never and will never support real worker power. That creates an opportunity for Biden and Democrats to seize:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/18/co-determination/#now-make-me-do-it

Reversing two generations of anti-worker politics is a marathon, not a sprint. The strikes are going to run for months, even years. Every worker will be called upon to support their striking siblings, every day. We can do it. Solidarity now. Solidarity forever.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/21/eight-and-skate/#strike-to-rule

#pluralistic #strikes #uaw #labor #automakers #big three #big car #eight and skate #work to rule #tactics

[scavengedluxury]

This is just what I’ve been doing anyway my entire working life lol

#quiet quitting #work to rule #join a union

[lemonsharks]

#union strong #labor rights #labor unions #work to rule #union memes for striking workers

[doctorfoxrabbit]

“shop lifting affects people who work there”

no. companies account for shoplifting and stock losses beforehand. if a boss is taking it out on their employees, it’s because they can, because they ant to and because corporate lets them get away with it. Unless they work in security, they cannot be held accountable for security issues because those arent a part of their fucking job.

“quiet quitting* affects people who put effort in”

‘quiet quitting’ is just newpseak for ‘work-to-rule’. ‘work-to-rule’ is a way to prevent yourself from getting exploited more than the legally and socially agreed-upon limits without getting punished for it. it is also a way to rebel against inane rules created to hurt or exploit employees. you are not to blame for doing exactly what you have been paid to do and no more. it’s not your fault if other people like being exploited and think you should too.

“not coming in on your day off to cover for someone affects people who come in”

if one person being off sick or taking their contractual vacation day fucks everyone over, the company is using lean staffing to exploit its workers. ‘lean staffing’ is where a company hires the minimum amount of employees possible because it is cheaper than hiring a functionally sustainable amount of employees.  it is not your fault that the company you work at is understaffed and you do not have to make up for the company’s short falls.

ordinary people are not to blame for the suffering their companies intentionally or negligently cause their employees. don’t let them guilt you into obedience.

#capitalism #anti capitalism #corporations #exploitation #shoplifting #work to rule #quiet quitting #lean staffing #understaffing

[vanishingsydney]

One week left in the election campaign until next Saturday's Federal Election, and things appear to be going very well indeed for the Australian Labor Party; a lack of policy mistakes and they should win Government. Just to make sure, why not implement a "go-slow" or "work to rule" until they whip those Tories' arses at the ballot box? And demand an immediate 10% wage rise while we're at it. Anti-capitalist street poster. Leichhardt.

#street poster #anti capitalism #politics #australian election #street scene #it's a sign #facade #paste up #worker's rights #go slow #work to rule #ephemeral #inner west sydney

[rapicho]

I hate the term quiet quitting sm like first of all as addressed in another post it’s a long standing form of protest known as work to rule, but second and more importantly people are saying millennials came up with the term or whatever but some rando fucking finance people did and use of the term only helps those in power.

They want it to be thought of as ‘quitting’ so they can start using it as a justification for firing people for not being dramatic over performers. The memeification of the word and making it commonplace is not good or beneficial to workers. This is an attempt to subtly influence culture to ultimately hurt members of the working class.

#mine #work to rule #quiet quitting #this is a fucking stupid term

[msfbgraves]

I've been down a rabbit hole of "this capitalist system is criminally insane in that it disincentives meaningful work while making everybody do either meaningless labour or forcing those doing meaningful things while labouring into poverty." So far so hellscape. The more insane take of that is to then encourage people to find meaning in their working life. Because people doing meaningful work are more productive. But please fam. Jobs that pay enough to live on exist for one reason and one reason only and that is to make already rich people even richer.

That's not what work is for of course, but that is what jobs are for. Remember, meaningful labour or work is paid fuck all.

That is not what they told me. They told me to go find a well paying job that is fullfilling. And those don't exist by fucking design.

Changing a system either requires a lot of bloodshed - if it is to be done quickly - or a lot of graftwork which is glacially slow. So the obvious answer, if you need a fair amount of money - and I am disabled enough to hurt every day but not disabled enough to qualify for any assistance, good times - is to find meaning anywhere you can, but certainly not primarily in a job. This takes away a lot of the alienation because of course this shit is meaningless. It's meant to make me too tired to overthrow the system.

So what does have meaning? How can I further that, or, if they steal all my time, at least fund that?

Now employers want you to take a job personally because you work harder but in most cases, that way madness lies. I mean fantastic if you can find both, but again, that is the antithesis of what many jobs are supposed to do, which is keep you depressed and passive outside of work.

Kafka's problem was not that he didn't see it, it was that he took it seriously.

So how can you sustain yourself while finding meaning, if it's not in your nature to choose violence?

I think I would have lasted a lot longer if I had shamelessly disregarded "company time". Fuck it. Fuck them! Fullfill your contract if you don't want trouble but fuck everything else. And here I was, feeling guilty for not doing much work from home. What work outside of crunch time? Lie, cheat. Further your own objectives. Again, fullfill your contract, but if your job has no tangible purpose, there will be empty time. Make it yours to get to what brings you meaning.

People get miserable because they buy into the idea that a job should have meaning and if it doesn't, there is something wrong with them.

But if you cannot happily exist doing meaningful work - and the majority of us can't - than work for or at least fund other kinds of meaning. The misery of selling your life away is lessened, because it's not our fault. We're basically POW's of class war here.

I'm seriously considering taking an office job and using it to write a dissertation on wage slavery.

Honestly I think that'd be hilarious.

#work life #capitalism #quiet quitting #work to rule #resistance #meaning

[earhartsease]

new hashtag a friend told me about, relevant to the whole "quiet quitting" propaganda thing

#actyourwage

#work to rule #labour rights

[kontextmaschine]

It actually took me a bit to get that "work to rule" meant like "in accordance with officially documented procedure as contracted" and not "for the purpose of ruling"

#work to rule #solidarity forever

[lesbiansandgayssupporttheminers]

Lots of people on twitter etc talking about how teachers should “work to rule” not strike.

“Working to rule” doesn’t actually exist in the UK- it would be something like action short of a strike. In general, in teaching, this hurts kids more, because they miss out on things like clubs and trips, and potentially even marking and feedback, but it happens over a longer period.

It does however minimise disruption to parents and therefore the economy.

A strike that succeeds in closing or partially closing schools disrupts parents and the economy. As (hopefully) a short sharp shock, it minimises disruption to students (genuinely for most students, 4 days of missed school will not be significant).

As a teacher, guess who I care about more ;P

#uk politics #strike #neu #work to rule #industrial action #this is not to say work to rule #or action short of a strike #is not a valuable tool #but

[quantumarts-productions]

#tutorials #funny memes #meme #left #work to rule #quietquitting #giphy #giphyartist

[kalikoke]

If your colleagues' "quiet quitting" (as in, doing their job as expected) is causing you problems, then that says more about your work culture than it does about them. You should absolutely not have to pick up the "slack" for them, of course. If your employer insists on seeing you or your colleagues "go the extra mile" without any rewards/raises/promotions, the problem isn't with your colleague, it's with your managers.

#I mean yes there are some people who truly are just slacking but doing the bare minimum isn't necessarily a bad thing #you're just doing your job #work to rule

[drmonkeysetroscans]

Unquiet quitting.

#work to rule

[empahla]

Work to rule is the correct choice.

Employers don't own us. We forget this too often. #capitalism #quietquit

We live in strange times. The world of work has become very odd. Employment is supposed to be that thing you do that allows you to live your life. You work for the paycheques, and the income lets you pay your bills and do other things. Some jobs are callings, and some are just employment, marking time. But none of them should have an element of ownership. None of them should be your…

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#capitalism #dailyprompt #dailyprompt-1899 #economics #employement #quiet quit #work #work to rule

[juegodelpalo]

#work to rule

[blackestabel]

#work to rule