A t midnight on Sept. 14, the United Auto Workers’ contract with the Big Three automakers—Stellantis, Ford, and General Motors—expired. As promised by UAW President Shawn Fain, stand-up strikes began promptly at midnight. The first three plants called to strike were the General Motors Assembly Center in Wentzville, Missouri, the Stellantis Assembly Complex in Toledo, Ohio, and the final assembly and paint departments at the Ford Michigan Assembly Plant in Wayne, Michigan. Videos and photos of autoworkers pouring out of the plants and joining their union siblings on the picket line hit social media like labor’s version of the Super Bowl. On Sept. 22, stand-up strikes expanded to an additional 38 GM and Stellantis assembly plants across 20 states.
Throughout the highly publicized contract negotiations between UAW’s 146,000 autoworker members and their employers at the Big Three automakers, newly elected Fain has been calling for a 32-hour work week—a goal stated by UAW as far back as the 1930s.
“Right now, Stellantis has put its plants on critical status, forcing our members to work seven days a week, 12 hours a day in many cases, week after week, for 90 straight days. That’s not a life,” Fain said on a livestream on Aug. 25. “Critical status, it’s named right because working that much can put anyone in critical condition. It’s terrible for our bodies, it’s terrible for our mental health, and it’s terrible for our family life.”
Full time work being thirty two hours each week would be a compromise.
The defining principle of the systems under which we live is work or die.
No conditions under such a system would be ideal, and any would be a compromise.
Considering all the years that have passed since the Haymarket massacre, and all that has been sacrificed, fighting for thirty two hours is hardly radical or outrageous.
That’s inherently not a compromise. That’s simply giving the union what they’re asking for, which we know is not how it’s going to happen, regardless of what may be ideal.
The defining principle of human history has been work or die, and I don’t see that changing ever. The best we can reasonably hope for is better conditions in which to deal with that truth.
Work or die is a consequences of social systems. It is not a universal condition within human history.
A more dominant feature throughout history has been mutual protection and mutual aid, everyone in a group supporting the survival of everyone in the group.
The union already is seeking a compromise. Seeking compromise is what unions have always done.
Thirty two hours, forty hours, one wage or another wage, are all inventions, arbitrary choices, set by capital and at best also influenced by the power of labor to force some compromise.
If workers got from bosses what we really want, then bosses would not exist. They serve no function for workers. They are parasites, who deprive workers from realizing the full value of our labor.
Do you have an example of any historical society where work or die wasn’t an imperative? My understanding of history is that life has always fallen under that rule, regardless of economical/government system. Mutual aid and charity are, in my opinion, not only are not evidence against the concept, but are the exception that proves the rule, as they say. Because those individuals are unable to work to provide for themselves, for whatever reason, it requires others to care for them so they don’t die.
I don’t believe we disagree on what the ideal of life should be for the working class. I think our differences lie in what is realistic to expect out of life, whether short or long term.
Charity as a concept is only meaningful against systems that produce an original condition of deprivation.
Everyone has always cared for others, and been cared for by others, whether the name given to such practices is mutual aid, or any other.
Under late modernity, abstract systems deeply permeate and constrain every facet of our lives, our action and our agency, and in large part even our capacities for thinking. Those who are not compatible, as atomized individuals, with such systems, are labeled as problematic, and considered as the ones specifically needing care.
No society has ever comprised "individuals" who "provide for themselves".
Production, distribution, and consumption of resources and assets are social processes occurring within social systems.
I suggest you learn about a broader variety of historical societies, in order to help overcome the limitations of relying so directly on experience that is immediate and personal.
This has been a great read you two.
Do you favor continuing to live under systems through which most of society is subject to the coercive conditions of labor, enforced by the capitalist class?