I keep seeing articles about the tech sector billionaires going mask off. I remember there being rumblings of a tech sector union. Also in the last 4 years there have been some ground gained for unions in the service sector too.
Wages are suppressed and with the looming tarrifs goods will be more expensive. Also anyone earning under 300k is going to see an increase in taxes with the proposed tax structure.
It seems around 30% of the population are really excited about Trump, 1% of that are funding efforts to support his platform. So what do the other 70% do? Do they strike?
Stop withholding tax from paychecks. Pay quarterly and make a bunch of small errors. If a million people do this they will be so overwhelmed, that the only reasonable choice will be to tax the rich.
There is a decent push for unions to try and sync their contract negotiations to 2028 right now. https://socialistcall.com/2024/07/15/are-we-up-for-a-general-strike-in-2028/
We have laws prohibiting general strikes so we have to have work arounds to be fully effective.
For directly working class facing work Im in favor of people working, helping and serving each other but just refusing to do work related to taking payments. Maybe hand them food in the first window and have the next window just say closed on strike.
The largest tech sector union I know of is the Tech Workers Coalition that got a shout out last year at the DefCon keynote. Which I feel with the tech oligarchy and a fascist government working towards a public private partnership is more needed now then ever.
It looks even less feasible than it does in countries with a far greater social conscience than the USA ever had. Come on, get real. Even a hundred years ago in Europe, with mass unionization, with the de-facto religion of communism running riot, with millions of angry factory workers empowered by their role in a recent world war - even then, general strikes never came to anything. What are you guys reading - or smoking?
The only way to change things for the better - I mean to really change them, not to turn society upside down and end up worse off than when you started (c.f.: communism) - is slowly, incrementally, patiently, by persuading people, by getting involved in politics locally, by being the change you want to see. The rest is pipedreams and delusion. It’s too boring and “milquetoast” and “sell-out” and “bootlicking” (etc etc) for you guys but unfortunately history is very clear about this.
Changing the system from the inside is one piece of the puzzle, that on it’s own can have limited effectiveness.
Protests and occupations, sometimes in the form of rowdy riots are an important factor of how Dutch people got their bike lanes. The 70s oil shock pushed the government to the goal, but they might have just stayed the course towards building cities for cars instead of people, if there were no protests.
You need a bit of both. Like protests groups disrupting the Davos meetings, and other young representatives participating in the same meetings.
Sure, nothing to disagree with there. Direct action as a spearhead to party politics and lobbying. Good cop, bad cop. I know the Dutch example well. Throughout history the Dutch have been the ultimate pragmatists. They became one of the world’s richest and most equal countries without ever needing to have a revolution or make war on the neighbors. Respect.
I was just pushing back against the (many) ignorant American wannabe revolutionaries on this forum who really think that rioting and assassinations and guillotines will somehow lead to the promised land of perfect equality, rather than make everything even worse than it already is.
