Good to hear from you Lawry.
REH From: futurework-boun...@lists.uwaterloo.ca [mailto:futurework-boun...@lists.uwaterloo.ca] On Behalf Of de Bivort Lawrence Sent: Friday, August 16, 2013 9:56 AM To: Ed Weick; RE-DESIGNING WORK, INCOME DISTRIBUTION, EDUCATION Cc: RE-DESIGNING WORK, INCOME DISTRIBUTION, EDUCATION Subject: [Futurework] Fast food strikes to massively expand: "They're thinking much bigger" It seems that we are in a deep transitional period, where significant portions of our labor force will -- not, if -- be replaced by machinery. So the question is, How will this significant number of workers who have in the past earned their livelihood from their labor now earn a livelihood? If they can simply move their labor to new emerging areas of the economy, the question answers itself easily. But I would posit that a significant portion of this machine-replaceable labor will not be able to do so. What then, for these folks? Our economy does not seem to have the mechanisms needed to either generate the necessary new human-based jobs, or to give access to income to those whose labor is no longer needed, at least without violating deeply embedded political beliefs (e.g. capitalism, individualism). So, new economic labor structures have to be conceived and tried. For instance: might it be possible for the automation-threatened portion of labor to go into the robotics design, production, and distribution business? After all, who better understands technically the work involved than the person who has been doing it manually for years? Or better knows the immediate work environment than the person who is working in it? The idea here is not that labor would find a few workplace for itself with such new initiatives, but would stake out a powerful equity position for itself, and earn its living from that equity position: dividends, and the sale of equity shares. Could unions not go into this business, its members as shareholders? It seems to me that the traditional economic tools of labor -- strikes, wage increase demands, conditions of work demands, and exclusion of non-union workers -- are generally becoming useless when it comes to the significant portion of the machine-replaceable that I am discussing here. Perhaps unions could begin to rethink the role of labor from first principles: the role of labor is to produce goods and services, and to provide income to the labor force. Unions should now be focusing on how to achieve these goals in an economy that is increasingly replacing a significant portion of the labor force with machines. It will require fundamentally different ways of looking at the issue. Are unions institutionally and intellectually up to the challenge? In the US, railroad companies lost out to the new airplane companies because they had a massive failure of imagination, and it may be that unions will also fail to generate the requisite imagination. We can hope that not all will, if not that portion of the labor force is in real trouble. -- Lawry On Aug 16, 2013, at 5:10 AM, Ed Weick <ewe...@rogers.com> wrote: Fast food strikes to massively expand: Service Employees International Union president Mary Kay Henry told Salon that SEIU members "see the fast food workers as standing up for all of us. workers are demanding a raise to $15 an hour and the chance to unionize without intimidation. ____________________________ Ah yes, but didn't I just read something about a robot being able to make 360 burgers an hour? Ed _____ From: michael gurstein <gurst...@gmail.com> To: Futurework <futurework@lists.uwaterloo.ca> Sent: Thursday, August 15, 2013 8:55:30 PM Subject: [Futurework] FW: [Dewayne-Net] Fast food strikes to massively expand: "They're thinking much bigger" A possibly unrelated set of developments. M -----Original Message----- From: dewayne-...@warpspeed.com [mailto:dewayne-...@warpspeed.com] On Behalf Of Dewayne Hendricks Sent: Friday, August 16, 2013 2:16 AM To: Multiple recipients of Dewayne-Net Subject: [Dewayne-Net] Fast food strikes to massively expand: "They're thinking much bigger" [Note: This item comes from reader Randall Head. DLH] Fast food strikes to massively expand: "They're thinking much bigger" Top union officials tell Salon the largest mobilization of fast food workers in U.S. history is about to get huge By JOSH EIDELSON Aug 14 2013 <http://www.salon.com/2013/08/14/fast_food_strikes_massively_expanding_theyr e_thinking_much_bigger/> Fast food strikers will escalate their campaign within the next week and a half, according to the key union backing their recent walkouts. In a Monday interview in her Washington, D.C., office, Service Employees International Union president Mary Kay Henry told Salon that SEIU members "see the fast food workers as standing up for all of us. Because the conditions are exactly the same." Henry was joined by SEIU assistant to the president for organizing Scott Courtney, who said to expect "a big escalation" from fast food workers in "the next week or 10 days." Two weeks after one-day strikes by thousands of employees in the growing, non-union, low-wage industry, Courtney said, "I think they're thinking much bigger, and while the iron's hot they ought to strike. No pun intended." As Salon has reported, SEIU has been the key player behind the past year's wave of fast food strikes, which began with a surprise walkout in New York City last November, spread this year to cities in the Midwest and West Coast, and escalated last month with strikes in seven cities over four days - by far the largest mobilization of fast food workers in the history of the United States. In each city, workers are demanding a raise to $15 an hour and the chance to unionize without intimidation. With fast food jobs becoming increasingly prevalent in - and representative of - the U.S. economy, and embattled unions exploring and experimenting with tactics like those the fast food workers have taken up, their showdown has far-reaching consequences. SEIU, one of the largest U.S. unions, has devoted millions of dollars and dozens of staff to the campaign, which is also supported by a range of local and national progressive groups. In contrast to some past union efforts, said Henry, "It's more about, 'How do we shift things in the entire low-wage economy?'" According to a labor source, organizing toward fast food strikes is also afoot in multiple cities in the South. (Sources were granted anonymity to discuss confidential discussions.) Asked about that prospect, Henry noted that an SEIU staffer organizing public employees in Gainesville, Fla., had received an unexpected call during the recent strikes from a Burger King worker wondering how to get involved. Henry said the SEIU office there is now hosting fast food worker meetings. "So yeah," she told Salon, "I think we should expect that there will be more activity like that. We don't yet understand the scale of it." A source who took part in a private SEIU meeting with allies last week in Las Vegas said that the union presented two tracks under serious consideration for transforming the industry. First, escalating pressure on fast food corporations - McDonald's, Burger King and Wendy's, in particular - with the goal of reaching a joint agreement under which the corporations would cover the costs of improved labor standards in their stores. And second, a legislative push for local living wage laws requiring improved compensation for fast food workers. Because most cities lack the legal authority to mandate higher wages for jobs that aren't publicly subsidized, that push would involve statewide ballot measures in 2014 to allow cities to hike private sector workers' wages. Asked about that account, Courtney - a key strategist in the campaign - characterized the Las Vegas discussions as preliminary and hypothetical. He told Salon that there's "a whole package of things" that could press the industry to change. Given that "people understand that these are the jobs of the future," said Courtney, and that McDonald's reaps billions in profits while workers remain in poverty, "The story is leverage in and of itself." And "the fact that workers are taking these risks I think is our leverage." [snip] Dewayne-Net RSS Feed: <http://www.warpspeed.com/wordpress> _______________________________________________ Futurework mailing list Futurework@lists.uwaterloo.ca https://lists.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework _______________________________________________ Futurework mailing list Futurework@lists.uwaterloo.ca https://lists.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework
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