C.M. Lewis

update: after a good night’s sleep I’ve recovered from my fevered delirium in which I thought they actually had something here

but as far as any solid numbers on frequency and duration, really no way to reconstruct that easily

one that comes to mind is SEIU 2015 a number of years ago

my impression is that it’s been unsurprisingly rare since the 1970s and the initial formation of a lot of staff unions. at least for recent ones, I think most of them end up getting at least some press coverage since “union staff strike against union” is always good for a media hit

politically. policy-wise, it absolutely is. but this doesn't feel uniquely stupid in the ranks of dumb shit they've done, and i can be convinced it could be smart (if i trusted them not to fuck it up)

eh i'm marginally open to the possibility it isn't the stupidest idea they've had

there is an option to do a pledge that i turned on because why not, this IS labor after all, but i'm not paywalling anything and i probably won't even turn it on unless there's a ton of people bizarrely interested in financially supporting producing my screeds

anyway, after a long spell of inactivity i'm going to get back to more writing on a platform i have more control over so i can dig more into stuff that i probably can't pitch to most pubs.

if you want to read some of that subscribe.

to be clear i don't think it's good policy, but there's no risk of it actually happening so if it's just a setup to hammer the GOP on gas prices, that isn't the absolute worst idea congressional democrats have floated

open to this being marginally smart provided there’s more to it than “introduced a bill”

phew they’re ahead of the ayatollah

a sign that says California fast food workers union demand health and safety at work in front of a Wienerschnitzel

A Wienerschnitzel with a CAFFWU flag in front of it

A Wienerschnitzel menu board with a labor strike reflected

Workers on strike and allies in front of a Wienerschnitzel

We’ve filed complaints with CalOSHA and the County Health Department.

We demand an end to all retaliation, restore our hours with back pay for the hours that were illegally cut, repair the leaking roof and stop threatening and retaliating against us for working with our union.

in fairness I suppose there’s a secret third option where they know what they’re asking for exists and this is part of setting up the attack, but believing that’s the most likely scenario requires granting the DNC a degree of trust I feel comfortable saying they haven’t earned

and now that they’ve set the expectation that they need receipts it neutralizes their ability to use the attack unless they have ironclad receipts, because the immediate pushback is “you know you’re lying because we already dealt with this in court”

I was open to this being a good idea and so I gave it a bit and read through the article and thought about it, and in gaming it out I don’t see how any outcome except “you got us, here’s the secret plan” does anything but backfire.

here’s a notion:

just run with it as an attack without first demanding receipts that don’t exist, because when the response is “there’s nothing” *you can’t use the attack at all even if it’s true*

FOIA doesn’t require a government agency to produce a document that doesn’t already exist, and so unless they’re keeping it in a “big secret binder to do fascism” there’s nothing to produce and the DNC ends this looking stupid

so basically, the DNC issued a FOIA for “give us the big secret plan to deploy federal troops at polling places,” the Trump administration didn’t produce anything, and now they’re going to court.

a thing i often tell union members in bargaining: don’t ask big questions you don’t know the answer to.

Dear god

well in either case the answer is “someone that isn’t Chuck Schumer”

wait wait wait is the answer Harry Reid

wild take to believe that the only reason the Democratic Party has bad numbers is people banking social capital, as if any regular ass human being’s approach to interpersonal relationships is “who can i get to like me by calling Chuck Schumer a chode”

where’s that gif with principal skinner

i forgot to tag @jeetheer.bsky.social who wrote a very excellent piece for the nation after the media all decided to issue press releases on Trump’s behalf during the UAW stand up strike

Could write a novel on b, featuring my large wrench of yes scientists are workers

remove some of the risk by providing the up front capital and i wonder if more media workers eyeing precarious freelancing/staff jobs will think “maybe we should think about this…”

it’s a profoundly risky move *unless* you just all got laid off and don’t have job lined up and fuck why not give this a shot

i would particularly be interested to talk to someone in that space regarding d.), but it seems like a lot of those pubs come out of the sudden demise of previous ones because there’s a “what do we have to lose” factor and you have an established audience you can try to quickly capture

spinoff pieces i can get from this:
a.) the building trades are more complicated than you think
b.) not all union members are white men with hardhats, you absolute fools
c.) we’re so cooked by social media
d.) unions should start offering startup capital for worker owned media