Rats!
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Categories: Economic Fairness & Security, Corporate Accountability / Workers' Rights
Categories: Economic Fairness & Security, Corporate Accountability / Workers' Rights
This may seem frivolous:
...but it is symbolic of a simple, very important issue: corporate elites in our society control the law. They use their control of the law to infringe on the ability (not just the right) of working people to convey information to other working people.
And working people accept this! We allow our unions to accept this! That's why we're so exploited, controlled, powerless.
The judge in this case ruled that a rubber rat "is a signal to third persons that there is an invisible picket line they should not cross." What is a working class conscience, if not an ethical compass that determines whether working people should stick together? This judge has ruled against working people communicating effectively with each other about their own ethical bearings.
In fact, the legal system routinely thwarts the ability of working folk to fight against the corporations by any effective means. Sympathy strikes, sitdown strikes, slowdowns, general strikes, work to rule campaigns, all the effective tools of organized labor have been declared illegal. We're left with the simple all-or-nothing strike, a double-edged weapon which is as damaging to working folk as it is to the greedy bosses who force its use.
Any particular decision may seem unimportant, but the continual chipping away has resulted in unions powerless to stop the offshoring of jobs, and without a real say in divisive issues that affect workers such as free trade agreements or immigration policy. And now another right of free speech is taken away from working folk.
I can guarantee, if grandma's coffee club wanted to have a big rubber tea cup to let others know about tea parties, no judge in the nation would rule against her. But if grandma used that tea cup as a symbol of the need to organize workers at Starbucks, she'd be hauled before the judge.
Get angry! Elect union leaders who'll get angry too! Not about rubber rats, but about a sorry, rat-infested system that forces working people everywhere into a subservient relationship with powerful corporations. We're headed for an economic system comprised of wealthy, powerful elites and worker drones, with nothing in between.
The inflatable rubber rat, bucktoothed bane of strikebreakers and emblem of union wrath, may be headed for retirement. The National Labor Relations Board is now considering a case that could make it harder to employ one on a picket line.
www.nytimes.com/2005/12/28/nyregion/28rat.html
...but it is symbolic of a simple, very important issue: corporate elites in our society control the law. They use their control of the law to infringe on the ability (not just the right) of working people to convey information to other working people.
And working people accept this! We allow our unions to accept this! That's why we're so exploited, controlled, powerless.
The judge in this case ruled that a rubber rat "is a signal to third persons that there is an invisible picket line they should not cross." What is a working class conscience, if not an ethical compass that determines whether working people should stick together? This judge has ruled against working people communicating effectively with each other about their own ethical bearings.
In fact, the legal system routinely thwarts the ability of working folk to fight against the corporations by any effective means. Sympathy strikes, sitdown strikes, slowdowns, general strikes, work to rule campaigns, all the effective tools of organized labor have been declared illegal. We're left with the simple all-or-nothing strike, a double-edged weapon which is as damaging to working folk as it is to the greedy bosses who force its use.
Any particular decision may seem unimportant, but the continual chipping away has resulted in unions powerless to stop the offshoring of jobs, and without a real say in divisive issues that affect workers such as free trade agreements or immigration policy. And now another right of free speech is taken away from working folk.
I can guarantee, if grandma's coffee club wanted to have a big rubber tea cup to let others know about tea parties, no judge in the nation would rule against her. But if grandma used that tea cup as a symbol of the need to organize workers at Starbucks, she'd be hauled before the judge.
Get angry! Elect union leaders who'll get angry too! Not about rubber rats, but about a sorry, rat-infested system that forces working people everywhere into a subservient relationship with powerful corporations. We're headed for an economic system comprised of wealthy, powerful elites and worker drones, with nothing in between.
No, i'm not a communist, i'm a syndicalist. But i don't mind the comparison with Emma (who wasn't a communist either-- came to abhor what the Bolsheviks were doing in Russia.) Ignorance is bliss, Lurker.
richard