I’ve put my fiver in to the Atheist Bus Campaign, and am looking forward to the idea of a ‘bright’ start to my working day, riding one of the few London buses that doesn’t have religious advertising on it. (more…)
Paul at Stronger Unions has a good round-up post on this week’s news from Canada, that Wal-Mart have (again) closed a branch after it unionised. The company claimed that if they had to give the 5 staff working at a Quebec Tire and Lube store a pay raise, they’d need to increase prices by 30%, so it was cheaper to close the whole store. Poor things, those 5 raises could very nearly have been the straw that broke the back of their $378 billion turnover camel.
First things first - It’s simply not the case that Wal-Mart can’t afford to pay better, it’s that they’re *choosing* not to pay better. Wal-Mart work by squashing down earnings (though not those of the $31.6million salaried CEO H Lee Scott), and by using their immense purchasing power to bully suppliers on cost. All of this undercuts local competitors, who were doing fine paying the higher wages before Wal-Mart moved into their area. Tires were being changed and lube being whatever-it-is-you-do-with-lube’d (is it something like motor oil, or are American cars inherently kinkier than ours?) for slightly higher costs quite happily before Wal-Mart, and they hopefully may again now that Wal-Mart have pulled out. (more…)
The guy in the photo is called Ze Preto (or rather that’s his nickname, it means Joe Black, which is something along the lines of Joe Blogs), and he lives on a subsistence farmstead a very bumpy half hour drive outside the inland market town of Ouricuri in Pernambuco, in North East Brazil.
I met Ze and his family in 2000, whilst I was working for the development charity Oxfam. They were one of the success stories of a project I was visiting, which was helping landless farmers to live a more secure life in the inhospitable climate of the Sertão - the semi-arid region, where long annual droughts can kill off most crops. The project, called Caatinga after the hardy scrub plants of the region, was helping people to implement sustainable technologies like huge underground water butts, which filled in the rainy season and stored vital irrigation and drinking water the rest of the year. (more…)
Excellent riposte to my suggestion for union demotivators from Paul. Anyone else have an idea? Use Despair.inc’s Demotivator generator and LabourStart flickr group photos (or anything you have around) to show the side of trade unionism we all know and (sometimes) love.
UPDATE 10/10/08: May Day gets Demotivated by Donnacha
UPDATE 11/10/08: Organising again, this time by Carl
UPDATE 16/10/08: Organising again, by Carl again
UPDATE 21/10/08: Direct Action is tackled by Derek
UPDATE 23/10/08: Unity, another go by Derek
UPDATE 09/12/08: Union Leadership by Nick
I love Despair Inc’s Demotivators - A series of posters that subvert the motivational designs on the walls of offices everywhere. They do a sharp job of pointing out the gap between the lofty aspirations in the posters and the reality of daily working lives.
Paul of Stronger Unions was amused by the ‘Blogging‘ one, and when I got a bit sarky, challenged me to produce one for union organising - given that Despair have an online tool to make your own parodies in seconds. So here is my effort:
Thanks to US organiser and talented Flickr-ite APDonovan for the use of the original pic. There are some really great photos on LabourStart’s Flickr group, so I thought this idea might have legs.
Can you do better? Union-related Demotivators using this online tool, and either this group or your own pics. To kick a union-meme off (and prove the point of Paul’s own choice), Derek, John and Donnacha can consider themselves tagged - but please anyone have a crack at it, and let us know where to find yours.
Today is, depending on where you’re standing, WDDW, WFMA or JMTD. It’s a great new initiative from the ITUC in Brussels, who have decided that to campaign on labour rights in an age of globalisation, you need to take the campaign itself global. This means drawing the links between what makes work work in many different situations, and showing how decent work is the only sure way out of poverty in developing countries, and for justice and equality in the developed world. (more…)
The new MMORPG (Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game) from Mythic Entertainment, Warhammer Age of Reckoning, has been getting some solid praise from the gaming community for getting mediæval on ‘gold farmers’ of late, banning the paid game accounts of people who try to sell the in-game virtual currency for real money. (more…)
