“With one letter [our employer] sent us away, and our dialogue turned into a monologue,” says Anton Gorb, a trade union representative at Ukraine’s largest private postal service, New Post. […]
In March, the Ukrainian parliament passed wartime legislation that severely curtailed the ability of trade unions to represent their members, introduced ‘suspension of employment’ (meaning employees are not fired, but their work and wages are suspended) and gave employers the right to unilaterally suspend collective agreements.
But beyond this temporary measure, a group of Ukrainian MPs and officials are now aiming to further ‘liberalise’ and ‘de-Sovietise’ the country’s labour laws. Under a draft law, people who work in small and medium-sized firms – those which have up to 250 employees – would, in effect, be removed from the country’s existing labour laws and covered by individual contracts negotiated with their employer. More than 70% of the Ukrainian workforce would be affected by this change.
Against a background of concerns that Ukrainian officials are using Russia’s invasion to push through a long-awaited radical deregulation of labour laws, one expert has warned that the introduction of civil law into labour relations risks opening a “Pandora’s box” for workers. […]
But in April, under Ukraine’s wartime suspension of certain labour rights – which was billed as ‘temporary’ – New Post’s management revoked 30 points of the collective agreement with the trade union.
Most of these points relate to coordination of working conditions with trade unions, but also some social guarantees, such as providing workers with uniforms, the availability of a first-aid kit at the workplace, working hours and others. […]
“De facto, this regime assumes that literally anything can be entered into an employee’s employment contract, without reference to Ukrainian labour laws. For example, additional grounds for dismissal, liability, or even a 100-hour week,” explains Sandul.
Ukrainian workers had previously protested against the introduction of this law, but as protests have now been banned by the Ukrainian government (using wartime emergency powers) it’s unlikely they’ll be able to stop it going through.
Honestly being overworked makes people unobservant and passive and it literally kills people every day. People don’t seem to realize that an overworked nurse might not notice your sepsis symptoms and a tired truck driver might not notice your car when he’s merging into the lane. Failing to protect worker’s rights impacts nearly everyone
I think like, the death of Vine and Rabbit, Wikipedia constantly needing to beg for money, Discord depending so heavily on venture capital, Facebook turning towards spying on users to generate a return on all the venture capital that got them started, Adobe creative suite turning into a subscription rather than a single product you buy, the strangulation of streaming entertainment as every company pulls their content and makes it exclusive to their service, are all great examples of how like, it really doesn’t matter if something is legitimately useful, efficient, or beloved, it is next to impossible for a service to exist if it doesn’t make shareholders increasing amounts of money year after year. Which may seem like a “no duh” type of statement, but it’s a very simple window into how the profit motive makes products and services worse, not better. And how that’s not just a matter of certain companies or ceos being bad and greedy on an individual level, but is an inescapable factor of an economy where existence is dependent on generating capital.
absolutely, continued growth is not sustainable, but the only way we measure a company’s success is based on growth. there is no point where these companies go ‘we’re making enough money now, perhaps we can put excess profit back into the product (whatever that product may be)’
instead, it goes down the route of cutting services, cutting workers and strangling the userbase for every little bit of profit they can squeeze out for their shareholders in the name of “growth”
until, inevitably, the product becomes unrecognisable, goes from beloved to hated, and the userbase moves onto a new, rising product that suits their needs better… only for the process to repeat again
anyone else feel slightly insane that this is the tagline of a multimillion dollar company releasing a bunch of cashgrab miniseries in order to milk a dying franchise even more. or have i just not slept well recently
mark fisher were really fucking in it now
if you don’t know the reference, “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised” is a poem and song by Gil Scott-Heron, and it’s literally about how the revolution is fundamentally incompatible with capitalism and a passive consumerist outlook on political and social change
can you guess which job required a signed doctor’s note for an unpaid sick day?
it wasn’t my engineering job
it was when i was a cashier at home depot
meanwhile, my engineering job will be like, ok, you’re sick, get well soon and i won’t lose pay. meanwhile i had to spend half of my sick day when I was working at home depot to go to a clinic to get a note that cost money for a day i wasn’t even going to get paid for.
so fuck corporations that put indignities on minimum wage workers for even their free time when literally in their corporate office they don’t give a shit if head office workers are calling in sick but god forbid the cashier take a day off unpaid without proof. like fuck off
Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) introduced legislation on Tuesday that would strip “woke corporations like Disney” of special protections enabling companies to hold copyright material for decades.
The Copyright Clause Restoration Act would limit copyrighted material to 56 years and apply the new rule retroactively, meaning Disney and other companies could immediately lose some copyright protections if the law were passed.
The measure is the latest Republican attack on Disney, which last month was stripped of its self-governing status at its amusement park in Orlando, Fla., after Gov. Ron DeSantis took issue with the media company for speaking out against the state’s “Don’t Say Gay” law, which prohibits the discussion of sexual orientation and gender identity from kindergarten through third grade.
Hawley’s bill goes after Disney’s long-running list of iconic characters stretching from Mickey Mouse to Marvel superheroes.
Hawley said in a press release that “the age of Republican handouts to Big Business is over.”
I don’t care about convincing every cis person to drop their prejudices against trans people I care about taking away their power and ability to act on those prejudices in ways that harm us
“If a white man wants to lynch me, that’s his problem. If he’s got the power to lynch me, that’s my problem. Racism is not a question of attitude; it’s a question of power. Racism gets its power from capitalism. Thus, if you’re anti-racist, whether you know it or not, you must be anti-capitalist. The power for racism, the power for sexism, comes from capitalism, not an attitude.”
![[the onion headline] heartbreaking: the worst person you know just made a great point](https://64.media.tumblr.com/6347cdc7d194dd1d9533928035bdd924/4c0a390c33e5efd9-c4/s640x960/4b87380f8aa1a9a1faab093e0d95314f7f470d80.jpg)
