Watching the Biden admin is wild. At one minute he’ll be escalating the wars in the Ukraine and Palestine, but the next he’ll be funding the NLRB and addressing the housing crisis in a way that improves walk-ability.

It’s like, he has two settings: “actually useful moderate” and “KILLKILLKILLKILL”

Unfortunately, this makes him the best US president since carter

Getting people to live in offices is good because it brings people back to walkable, urban cores.

Turning the dial to AOC good and looking back at Chapo Chat like a contestant in the price is right

Honestly, the idea that housing is a commodity is insane to me

I take it you’ve never been to LA?

Can’t we just put the trees in a tree museum?

You’re right. I thought it was 35mg / 8 oz. I was wrong I should written 180

Man, my drug use is outta control. I’m just blasting off daily. Every morning I’m like “I can’t do this until I’ve ingested at least 60mg of caffeine” as I bust out my percolation set up.

Somewhere between non-profit grant-writer and boiler inspector.

I am sitting in the parking lot outside work. Please tell me to go in and do my (genuinely very important) job even though I’m anxious and sleepy

Idk how big your workplace is, but at mine, everyone in the Organizing Committee picked a few leaders to talk to on an ongoing basis. and that way, the most influential people in the workplace were getting their opinions on union stuff from us. That way the 4 person OC was able to reach all 60 workers with pro union messaging.

I’m gonna be frank: organizing for a strike starts now or it doesn’t happen. Do not count on the reps to do it. If you’re going to make friends with deep pockets, it’s on you and no-one else to reach out.

If you’re going to have the “start saving” conversation, do it now.

On the management retaliation:

Unfortunately, my experience is that the rep filed a grievance and it was out of my hands. What is important imo is immediately framing it as retaliation and making the boss the bad guy before the boss can blame the union. Make it an issue to organize around or management will.

Management can give you a raise whenever they want. Ant “my hands are tied” rhetoric is the bosses trying to blame the union for their own retaliation.

On the coordinated bargaining: you don’t have to bargain at the same time this time around to line up expiration dates and bargain at the same time in 3 years.

I’d talk to nurses if you can, they often strike and deal with the same issue. People die during nurses’ strikes.

One thing they do is give a month’s warning, so that the hospital can find scab labor, knowing that the scabs will be much more expensive to employ

See if you can negotiate your contract ending at the same time as the other departments. That way, next time you can negotiate together, with the power of three units threatening strike instead of just one.

To answer your question about selective raises, that’s retaliation and a ULP. They did it to us at my last job and we had to fight it.

A lot of reps are fairly new, or are used to a particular wheelhouse, or know more about organizing than labor law, or more about labor law than organizing. That’s why it’s so important to have worker leadership.

Have you read Labor Law for the Rank and Filer and no contract, no peace?

A lot of times a ULP is just a legal justification to go on strike. That’s where they’re most useful imo

Trots were big on “industrializing” which is going into buisness unions to improve them. Labor Notes is actually partially the result of this movement.

So a lot of our collective knowledge about relating to larger unions is from trot experiments.

Oh thank God. This is a huge break for anti colonial movements in Africa

The fact that you’re fishing for attention by building yourself up instead of tearing yourself down says that you’re a fun person to hang out with.

Is anyone else really bad at drinking? Like, I spill coffee on myself like a solid quarter of the time. I keep an extra shirt in my car so I don’t have to do field work with coffee on my shirt