If I can’t share a Curly Wurly it’s not a revolution

  • 4 Posts
  • 28 Comments
Joined 1 year ago
Cake day: July 6th, 2023
  • CurlyWurlies4All@prxs.sitetoPolitics@beehaw.org•High school boys are trending conservative
    6·
    1 year ago

    I spent nearly every dollar I had saved to live in London, and don’t think I’d ever seen such visible displays of wealth disparity once I got there. I got a good paying job but often struggled to save and pay all my bills.

    I got to live through the Brexit debate while living behind a chip shop in a poorer, multicultural neighbourhood and heard all the bullshit about immigration being directed at brown people while I worked there as an immigrant myself but because I was white I was largely accepted.

    I learned a new level of contempt for the pointless wealth of the monarchy and had to deal with a boss who was plainly bad at his job but because he had an OBE everyone around me worshipped him like he could do no wrong.

    I also worked for some very large companies and realised they aren’t anything special, just willing to exploit more people.

  • CurlyWurlies4All@prxs.sitetoPolitics@beehaw.org•High school boys are trending conservative
    45·
    1 year ago

    My first election out of high school I voted for a right wing candidate because that’s what my Dad voted for, but also because I was entrenched in Christian ideaology and patriarchal propoganda.

    After that I started paying a bit more attention to politics and slowly moved to the left with a few leaps along the way. Nowadays I find the Labor party of Aus to be about as conservative as I can stand. I can barely hide my disgust with anything to the right of them.

    Real life experience can be far more radicalising than any immature ideas you inherent in high school.

    Edit: My major leaps were: Having an employer illegally underpay me, seeing my friends lose ‘stable’ jobs in 2008, having a close friend come out as gay, leaving the church, volunteering with unhoused people, living in the UK, living in a rental controlled by a landlord with over 100 properties, and doing disaster relief work.

  • CurlyWurlies4All@prxs.sitetoMemes@lemmy.ml•what if?
    2·
    1 year ago

    Anarcho-communism is just the longer name of what came to be called anarchism by most observers. The tenets of anarcho syndicalism are fairly close to Marx’s ‘ideal’ communism in theory but obviously Marx, Bakunin and Kropotkin all had differing views on how to achieve those goals.

  • CurlyWurlies4All@prxs.sitetoMovies and TV Shows@lemmy.film•Bryan Cranston Tells Bob Iger ‘Our Jobs Will Not Be Taken Away’ by AI in Rousing Speech: You Will Not ‘Take Away Our Dignity’English
    1·
    1 year ago

    They want to pay for an actor’s likeness once then own it for a lifetime. Hollywood should take a lesson from their own anti-piracy ads of the 90s. ‘You wouldn’t download an actor.’

    As for is resistance futile. Here’s just a few things that resistance has bought us just in Australia (a nightmare capitalist society):

    Annual Leave

    Paid Annual Leave was first won after a campaign by printing workers in 1936. The Arbitration Commission granted the workers paid leave, which was then gained by other workers through their unions in different industries. Annual leave loading of 17.5 per cent was first won by workers in the Metal Industry in 1973.

    Awards

    Awards are legally binding documents that set out the minimum entitlements for workers in every industry. The first industrial award, the Pastoral Workers Award was established by the Australian Workers Union in 1908, mainly covering shearers. The shearers had experienced a terrible deterioration of their wages and conditions during the 1897 Depression and decided to take action to protect working people. Since 1904, awards have underpinned the pay and terms and conditions of employment for millions of workers. Awards are unique to Australia and integral in ensuring workers get ‘fair pay for a fair day’s work’.

    Maternity leave

    Australian unions’ intensive campaigning for paid parental leave ended in victory with the introduction of the Paid Parental leave scheme by the Gillard Labor government. Under the scheme, working parents of children born or adopted after 1 January 2011 are entitled to a maximum of 18 weeks’ pay on the National Minimum Wage.

    Superannuation

    Prior to 1986, only a select group of workers were entitled to Superannuation. It became a universal entitlement after the ACTU’s National Wage Case. Employers had to pay 3% of workers’ earnings into Superannuation. This later increased to 9% and on November 2, 2011 the ACTU and its unions’ “Stand Up for Super” campaign celebrated another win for working Australians, when the Labor Government moved to increase the compulsory Superannuation Guarantee to 12% over 6 years from 1 July 2013 to 1 July 2019.

    Equal Pay for Women

    Although there were attempts to introduce equal pay going back as far as 1949, the principle of equal pay for women was finally adopted by Australian Conciliation and Arbitration Commission in 1969.

    Health and Safety and Workers’ Compensation Workers compensation laws first came into existence in West Australia in 1902. For many years unions agitated and campaigned for health and safety laws which compelled employers to provide a safe working environment. In Victoria, legislation was introduced in 1985 which saw the active role of workers in maintaining safety on the job. Building unions agitated for many years to ban the use of asbestos, finally succeeding in the 1980’s.

    Long service leave

    Coal workers went on strike in 1949 over a 35 hour week and Long service leave. Long service leave was finally introduced in New South Wales in 1951. Unions in other states followed.

    Meal Breaks, rest breaks

    Before unions agitated for meal breaks and rest breaks to be introduced, workers were required to work the whole day without a break. In 1973, workers at Ford in Melbourne engaged in industrial action over many issues, one of their demands being a proper break from the production line.

    Unfair Dismissal Protection

    Unfair Dismissal Protection came from the concept of a “fair go all round”, after the Australian Workers Union took a case to the Conciliation and Arbitration Commission on behalf of a worker who had been unfairly sacked in 1971. Since then, unions have campaigned for laws that reflect that ‘fair go’ principle, which is about having a valid reason to sack someone and that the dismissal cannot be harsh, unjust or unreasonable.

    Green Bans

    ‘Green bans’ and ‘builders labourers’ became household terms for Sydneysiders during the 1970s. A remarkable form of environmental activism was initiated by the builders labourers employed to construct the office-block skyscrapers, shopping precincts and luxury apartments that were rapidly encroaching upon green spaces or replacing older-style commercial and residential buildings in Sydney. The builders labourers refused to work on projects that were environmentally or socially undesirable. They developed a ‘new concept of unionism’ encompassing the principle of the social responsibility of labor: that workers had a right to insist their labour not be used in harmful ways.

    Proper unionised workers fighting in solidarity CAN protect their interests through resistance.