shennong posted:
CBC used to be NABET, which was super hardcore and used to strike every three years or so. ultimately they fucked themselves with the legalistic shit though, at one point tape rewinding was in the job desc of a particular NABET contract and you needed to find a tape rewinder in order to rewind a tape. if you couldn't find one you were SOL and if someone saw you rewinding a tape w/o designated tape rewinder they'd file a grievance and make you apologise for rewinding the tape lmao

fast forward ten years and NABET is out on its ass, CMG is in, who is far less legalistic (anyone who's qualified to do a job can do it at any time irrespective of their contract status), but they're also pansies and never strike. had NABET been more flexible they might have kept that shop and the workers would almost certainly be doing better

in my industry you cant touch any wires at all cuz that's union work. so you basically have to drag out a linesman if you see a mistake or something. ppl (the type of people that talk about common sense) rage about it but i think it's really funny

shennong posted:

animedad posted:

shennong posted:
CBC used to be NABET, which was super hardcore and used to strike every three years or so. ultimately they fucked themselves with the legalistic shit though, at one point tape rewinding was in the job desc of a particular NABET contract and you needed to find a tape rewinder in order to rewind a tape. if you couldn't find one you were SOL and if someone saw you rewinding a tape w/o designated tape rewinder they'd file a grievance and make you apologise for rewinding the tape lmao

fast forward ten years and NABET is out on its ass, CMG is in, who is far less legalistic (anyone who's qualified to do a job can do it at any time irrespective of their contract status), but they're also pansies and never strike. had NABET been more flexible they might have kept that shop and the workers would almost certainly be doing better

in my industry you cant touch any wires at all cuz that's union work. so you basically have to drag out a linesman if you see a mistake or something. ppl (the type of people that talk about common sense) rage about it but i think it's really funny

i dont really see a problem with it there, i was just thinking of LB at a gov't agency where iirc the technical staff and admin staff etc were all under the same contract. the industrial union model doesn't make any sense for a workplace like that any more than the corporate management/labour model does (altho re: the OP i def think it makes sense for kitchens)

I assume I'm LB? Full disclosure: the unionized job to which I'm referring was one where I shelved books at a public library, back in high school. This was before the advent of smart phones (which I suppose dates me at least slightly) so what was I going to do with my 10 or 15 minute coffee breaks - read a book? If I was reading anything at all dense, I could barely reorient myself before I'd have to get back to work. After a couple of weeks on the job, I decided I wasn't getting enough out of the breaks for it to be worth taking them.

Now, I did also work for awhile as an intern with a government agency where my co-workers would make comments like "you're working a lot harder than the average civil servant." They were half-joking, but the tone was such that I could read between the lines to hear "don't try too hard or you'll make us look bad." Having said that, the main constraint on them getting shit done was a lack of funding for the programs they worked on. Yes, maybe they were lazy, but if they had worked any harder they just would have have been running into the labyrinthine walls of bureaucracy at full tilt instead of slowly, clumsily bouncing along them towards some unknown destination. I was non-union and, now that I think about it, they were probably unionized, but I don't remember that ever coming up in conversation. I certainly didn't get the same kind of flack from them that I did from my co-workers at the library.

shennong posted:
my favourite union story is from teh steel mill where a good chunk of my family used to work. back in the day when there were strikes and they'd have the police in to break them to let scabs thru, the women in the community would wait until the scabs got off work, jump them, hold them down, and take turns pissing on them

Whoa that's awesome. Is there a book of cool union stories somewhere that I can read

fape posted:

shennong posted:
my favourite union story is from teh steel mill where a good chunk of my family used to work. back in the day when there were strikes and they'd have the police in to break them to let scabs thru, the women in the community would wait until the scabs got off work, jump them, hold them down, and take turns pissing on them

that line between "worker solidarity&empowerment" and "anarchy"?? what? i thought that was a long jump board.

dont fuck with steelworkers wives. ameen

Myfanwy posted:
I read someone say that because of student protest stuff in the 60s and 70s the US university system was shifted from the traditional liberal arts idea of teaching rich kids how to be well rounded human beings into being trade school for professionals. Is that true? I dont know anything at all in this world

ya basiccally, if youre in business, law, engineering, or medical school. the traditional lib arts tho are still the same more or less unless youre in a piece of shit school

Groulxsmith posted:

theres like 2 levels of high school in britain

Myfanwy posted:
I read someone say that because of student protest stuff in the 60s and 70s the US university system was shifted from the traditional liberal arts idea of teaching rich kids how to be well rounded human beings into being trade school for professionals. Is that true? I dont know anything at all in this world

isn't it like that in britain too

everyone in the usa, all the kids in k-12, are taught by teachers and drilled to believe that college is effectively nothing more than an investment into yourself, and the self being an objectified commodity that sells wage hours for a monetary compensation

Myfanwy posted:

shennong posted:
my favourite union story is from teh steel mill where a good chunk of my family used to work. back in the day when there were strikes and they'd have the police in to break them to let scabs thru, the women in the community would wait until the scabs got off work, jump them, hold them down, and take turns pissing on them

Whoa that's awesome. Is there a book of cool union stories somewhere that I can read

most of this stuff is just collective memory. for some reason it seems liek all the writing is about the winnipeg strikes even though there were active insurrections (which had to be put down by the military) in the maritimes in the 20s and 30s. those just get written out of history for the most part, tho theres the occasional tidbit like this NFB film which isn't important enough to put online in its entirety i guess

http://www3.nfb.ca/objectifdocumentaire/index.php?mode=theme&language=english&theme=6&film=32&excerpt=33

shennong posted:

Myfanwy posted:

shennong posted:
my favourite union story is from teh steel mill where a good chunk of my family used to work. back in the day when there were strikes and they'd have the police in to break them to let scabs thru, the women in the community would wait until the scabs got off work, jump them, hold them down, and take turns pissing on them

Whoa that's awesome. Is there a book of cool union stories somewhere that I can read

most of this stuff is just collective memory. for some reason it seems liek all the writing is about the winnipeg strikes even though there were active insurrections in the maritimes in the 20s and 30s. those just get written out of history for the most part, tho theres the occasional tidbit like this NFB film which isn't important enough to put online in its entirety i guess

http://www3.nfb.ca/objectifdocumentaire/index.php?mode=theme&language=english&theme=6&film=32&excerpt=33

When I lived for a few years by fffffFFffffFLinttown all of my friends' parents were UAW workers who owned two boats. Now the only economic activity is the relentless expansion of medical facilities paid for by gm retiree healthcare plans. And no one would ever tell me any stories because I was too haughty and foreign.

I guess we'll hear enough after unions are made de facto illegal in 12 years and people who are toddling now will have to go back to street fights and being shot in the back by gun thugs

Myfanwy posted:
Do you guys think there's any way to get the university cat back in the bag, make high school diplomas the normal job permission slip that bachelor's degree has become, and strip finance out of education.

Not while there's money to be made in it

Myfanwy posted:

fape posted:

Myfanwy posted:
I read someone say that because of student protest stuff in the 60s and 70s the US university system was shifted from the traditional liberal arts idea of teaching rich kids how to be well rounded human beings into being trade school for professionals. Is that true? I dont know anything at all in this world

ya basiccally, if youre in business, law, engineering, or medical school. the traditional lib arts tho are still the same more or less unless youre in a piece of shit school

Do you guys think there's any way to get the university cat back in the bag, make high school diplomas the normal job permission slip that bachelor's degree has become, and strip finance out of education. Or maybe just publicly fund everything so anyone can learn what they want?

wardine be cry