[Plura-list] "Efficiency" left the Big Three vulnerable to smart UAW tactics

[Cory Doctorow]

Read today's issue online at: https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/21/eight-and-skate/

_,.-'~'-.,__,.-'~'-.,__,.-'~'-.,__,.-'~'-.,__,.-'~'-.,_

Tomorrow (September 22), I'm (virtually) presenting at the DIG Festival in Modena, Italy

https://dig-awards.org/en/dig-festival-2023-first-speakers-announced/

Tomorrow night, I'll be in person at LA's Book Soup for the launch of Justin C Key's "The World Wasn’t Ready for You"

https://www.booksoup.com/event/justin-c-key

On September 27, I'll be at Chevalier's Books in Los Angeles with Brian Merchant for a joint launch for my new book *The Internet Con* and his new book, *Blood in the Machine*:

https://www.eventbrite.com/e/the-internet-con-by-cory-doctorow-blood-in-the-machine-by-brian-merchant-tickets-696349940417

_,.-'~'-.,__,.-'~'-.,__,.-'~'-.,__,.-'~'-.,__,.-'~'-.,_

Today's links

* "Efficiency" left the Big Three vulnerable to smart UAW tactics: A system without slack is easily disrupted.

* Hey look at this: Delights to delectate.

* This day in history: 2003, 2008, 2013, 2018

* Colophon: Recent publications, upcoming/recent appearances, current writing projects, current reading

_,.-'~'-.,__,.-'~'-.,__,.-'~'-.,__,.-'~'-.,__,.-'~'-.,_

🔲 "Efficiency" left the Big Three vulnerable to smart UAW tactics

It's been 143 days since the WGA went on strike against the Hollywood studios. While early tactical leaks from the studios had studio execs chortling and twirling their mustaches about writers caving once they started losing their homes, the strikers aren't wavering - they're still out there, pounding the picket lines, every weekday:

https://www.cnbc.com/2023/08/09/how-hollywood-writers-make-ends-meet-100-days-into-the-writers-guild-strike.html

The studios obviously need writers. That gleeful, anonymous studio exec who got such an obvious erotic charge at the thought of workers being rendered homeless as punishment for challenging his corporate power completely misread the room, and his comments didn't demoralize the writers. Instead, they inspired the *actors* to go on strike, too.

But how *have* the writers stayed out since May Day? How have the actors stayed out for 69 days since their strike started on Bastille Day? We can thank the studios for that! As it turns out, the studios have devoted so much energy to rendering creative workers as precarious as possible, hiring as little as they can getting away with and using punishing overtime as a substitute for adequate staffing that they've eliminated all the workers who *can't* survive on side-hustles and savings for six or seven months at a time.

But even for those layoff-hardened workers, long strikes are *brutal*, and of course, all the affiliated trades, from costumers to grips, are feeling the pain. The strike fund only goes so far, and non-striking, affected workers don't even get that. That's why I've been donating regularly to the Entertainment Community Fund, which helps all affected workers out with cash transfers (I just gave them another $500):

https://secure2.convio.net/afa/site/Donation2?df_id=8117&8117.donation=form1&mfc_pref=T

As hot labor summer is revealed as a turning point - not just a season - long strikes will become the norm. Bosses still don't believe in worker power, and until they get their minds right, they're going to keep on trying to starve their workforces back inside. To get a sense of how long workers will have to hold out, just consider the Warrior Met strike, where Alabama coal-miners stayed out for *23 months*:

https://www.thenation.com/article/activism/warrior-met-strike-union/

As Kin Kelly explained to Adam Conover in the latest Factually podcast, the Alabama coal strikers didn't get anywhere near the attention that the Hollywood strikers have enjoyed:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UvyMHf7Yg0Q

(To learn more about the untold story of worker organizing, from prison unions to the key role that people of color and women played in labor history, check out Kelly's book, "Fight Like Hell," now in paperback:)

https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Fight-Like-Hell/Kim-Kelly/9781982171063

Which brings me to the UAW strike. This is an historic strike, the first time that the UAW has struck *all* of the Big Three automakers at once. Past autoworkers' strikes have marked turning points for *all* American workers. The 1945/46 GM strike established employers' duty to cover worker pensions, health care, and cost of living allowances. The GM strike created the American middle-class:

https://prospect.org/labor/2023-09-18-uaw-strikes-built-american-middle-class/

The Big Three are fighting for all the marbles here. They are refusing to allow unions to organize EV factories. Given that no more internal combustion cars will be in production in just a few short years, that's tantamount to eliminating auto unions altogether. The automakers are flush with cash, including billions in public subsidies from multiple bailouts, along with billions more from greedflation price-gouging. A long siege is inevitable, as the decimillionaires running these companies earn their pay by starving out their workers:

https://www.businessinsider.com/general-motors-ceo-mary-barra-salary-auto-workers-strike-uaw-2023-9

The UAW knows this, of course, and their new leadership - helmed by the union's radical president Shawn Fain - has a plan. UAW workers are engaged in tactical striking, shutting down key parts of the supply chain on a rolling basis, making the 90-day strike fund stretch *much* farther:

https://prospect.org/blogs-and-newsletters/tap/2023-09-18-labors-militant-creativity/

In this project, they are greatly aided by Big Car's own relentless pursuit of profit. The automakers - like every monopolized, financialized sector - have stripped all the buffers and slack out of their operations. Inventory on hand is kept to a bare minimum. Inputs are sourced from the cheapest bidder, and they're brought to the factory by the lowest-cost option. Resiliency - spare parts, backup machinery - is forever at war with profits, and profits have won and won and won, leaving auto production in a brittle, and easily shattered state.

This is especially true for staffing. Automakers are violently allergic to hiring workers, because new workers get benefits and workplace protection. Instead, the car companies routinely offer "voluntary" overtime to their existing workforce. By refusing this overtime, workers can kneecap production, without striking.

Enter "Eight and Skate," a campaign among UAW workers to clock out after their eight hour shift. As Keith Brower Brown writes for *Labor Notes*, the UAW organizers are telling workers that "It’s crossing an unofficial picket line to work overtime. It’s helping out the company":

https://labornotes.org/2023/09/work-extra-during-strike-auto-workers-say-eight-and-skate

Eight and Skate has already started to work; the Buffalo Ford plant can no longer run its normal weekend shifts because workers are refusing to put in voluntary overtime. Of course, bosses will strike back: the next step will be forced overtime, which will lead to the unsafe conditions that unionized workers are contractually obliged to call paid work-stoppages over, shutting down operations without touching the strike fund.

What's more, car bosses can't just halt safety stoppages or change the rules on overtime; per the UAW's last contract, bosses are required to bargain on changes to overtime rules:

https://uaw.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/Working-Without-Contract-FAQ-FINAL-2.pdf

Car bosses have become lazily dependent on overtime. At GM's "highly profitable" SUV factory in Arlington, TX, normal production runs a six-days, 24 hours per day. Workers typically work five eight-hour days and *nine* hours on Saturdays. That's been the status quo for 11 years, but when bosses circulated the usual overtime signup sheet last week, every worker wrote "a big fat NO" next to their names.

Writing for *The American Prospect*, David Dayen points out that this overtime addiction puts a new complexion on the much-hyped workerpocalypse that EVs will supposedly bring about. EVs are much simpler to build than conventional cars, the argument goes, so a US transition to EVs will throw many autoworkers out of work:

https://prospect.org/labor/2023-09-20-big-threes-labor-shortages-uaw/

But the reality is that most autoworkers are doing one and a half jobs already. Reducing the "workforce" by a third *could* leave all these workers with their existing jobs, and the 40-hour workweek that their forebears fought for at GM inn 1945/46. Add to that the additional workers needed to make batteries, build and maintain charging infrastructure, and so on, and there's no reason to think that EVs will weaken autoworker power.

And as Dayen points out, this overtime addiction isn't limited to cars. It's also endemic to the entertainment industry, where writers' "mini rooms" and other forms of chronic understaffing are used to keep workforces at a skeleton crew, even when the overtime costs more than hiring new workers.

Bosses call themselves job creators, but they have a relentless drive to *destroy* jobs. If there's one thing bosses hate, it's paying workers - hence all the hype about AI and automation. The stories about looming AI-driven mass unemployment are fairy tales, but they're tailor made for financiers who get alarming, life-threatening priapism at the though of firing us all and replacing us with shell-scripts:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/03/09/autocomplete-worshippers/#the-real-ai-was-the-corporations-that-we-fought-along-the-way

This is why Republican "workerism" rings so hollow. Trump's GOP talks a big game about protecting "workers" (by which they mean anglo men) from immigrants and "woke captialism," but they have *nothing* to say about protecting workers from bosses and bankers who see every dime a worker gets as misappropriated from their dividend.

Unsurprisingly, conservative message-discipline sucks. As Luke Savage writes in *Jacobin*, for every mealymouthed Josh Hawley mouthing talking points that "support workers" by blaming China and Joe Biden for the Big Three's greed, there's a Tim Scott, saying the quiet part aloud:

https://jacobin.com/2023/09/republicans-uaw-strike-hawley-trump-scott/

Quoth Senator Scott: "I think Ronald Reagan gave us a great example when federal employees decided they were going to strike. He said, you strike, you’re fired. Simple concept to me. To the extent that we can use that once again, absolutely":

https://twitter.com/American_Bridge/status/1704136706574741988

The GOP's workerism is a tissue-thin fake. They can never and will never support real worker power. That creates an opportunity for Biden and Democrats to seize:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/18/co-determination/#now-make-me-do-it

Reversing two generations of anti-worker politics is a marathon, not a sprint. The strikes are going to run for months, even years. Every worker will be called upon to support their striking siblings, every day. We can do it. Solidarity now. Solidarity forever.

_,.-'~'-.,__,.-'~'-.,__,.-'~'-.,__,.-'~'-.,__,.-'~'-.,_

🔲 Hey look at this

* How One Robber Baron's Gamble on Railroads Brought Down His Bank and Plunged the U.S. Into the First Great Depression https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/robber-baron-gamble-railroads-brought-down-bank-plunged-us-into-first-great-depression-panic-1873-180982877/ (h/t Nancy Proctor)

* Crypto scam social science thoughts: The role of the elite news media and academia https://statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/2023/09/13/crypto-scam-social-science-thoughts-the-role-of-the-elite-news-media-and-academia/

* Turning Pages: The Adventures and Misadventures of a Publisher https://www.skyhorsepublishing.com/9781956763850/turning-pages/

_,.-'~'-.,__,.-'~'-.,__,.-'~'-.,__,.-'~'-.,__,.-'~'-.,_

🔲 This day in history

#20yrsago Dewey Decimal bullies go after theme hotel https://web.archive.org/web/20030901000000*/http://www.newsday.com/news/local/wire/ny-bc-ny--deweydecimaldefen0920sep20,0,3455241.story?coll=ny-ap-regional-wirehttps://nymag.com/news/media/50279/

#10yrsago DragonCon cosplayers who dressed up as Marriott carpet get a cease-and-desist for their fabric offering https://www.dailydot.com/parsec/fandom/marriott-hotel-carpet-cosplay-legal-action/

#5yrsago Search the databases of Trump political appointees’ resumes and discover their undisclosed conflicts of interest https://projects.propublica.org/trump-town/staffers/category/resumes

#5yrsago Research shows that patent examiners are more likely to grant patents to companies they later work for https://www.nber.org/papers/w24638

#5yrsago Backyard Blockbusters: a documentary about the amazing genre of fanfilms https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3JRxw-Ww4rA

#5yrsago Puerto Rico didn’t suffer a “natural disaster”: it was looted and starved long before the hurricanes https://theintercept.com/2018/09/21/puerto-rico-hurricane-maria-disaster-capitalism/

#5yrsago Apple’s fine-print reveals a secret program to spy on Iphone users and generate “trust scores” https://www.independent.co.uk/tech/apple-trust-score-iphone-data-black-mirror-email-phone-fraud-a8546051.html

#5yrsago Ticketmaster stung by undercover journalists, who reveal that the company deliberately enables ticket touts and rips off artists https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/ticketmaster-resellers-las-vegas-1.4828535

_,.-'~'-.,__,.-'~'-.,__,.-'~'-.,__,.-'~'-.,__,.-'~'-.,_

🔲 Colophon

Today's top sources:

Currently writing:

* A Little Brother short story about DIY insulin PLANNING

* Picks and Shovels, a Martin Hench noir thriller about the heroic era of the PC. FORTHCOMING TOR BOOKS JAN 2025

* The Bezzle, a Martin Hench noir thriller novel about the prison-tech industry. FORTHCOMING TOR BOOKS FEB 2024

* Vigilant, Little Brother short story about remote invigilation. FORTHCOMING ON TOR.COM

* Moral Hazard, a short story for MIT Tech Review's 12 Tomorrows. FIRST DRAFT COMPLETE, ACCEPTED FOR PUBLICATION

* Spill, a Little Brother short story about pipeline protests. FORTHCOMING ON TOR.COM

Latest podcast: Plausible Sentence Generators https://craphound.com/news/2023/09/17/plausible-sentence-generators/

Upcoming appearances:

* DIG Festival (Modena, Italy), Sept 22
https://dig-awards.org/en/dig-festival-2023-first-speakers-announced/

* Launch for Justin C Key's "The World Wasn’t Ready for You," Book Soup (LA), Sept 22
https://www.booksoup.com/event/justin-c-key

* Launch for "The Internet Con" and Brian Merchant's "Blood in the Machine," Chevalier's Books (LA), Sept 27
https://www.eventbrite.com/e/the-internet-con-by-cory-doctorow-blood-in-the-machine-by-brian-merchant-tickets-696349940417

* An Evening with VE Schwab (Boise), Oct 2
https://www.thecabinidaho.org/all-events/ve-schwab

* Wired Nextfest (Milano), Oct 7-8
https://eventi.wired.it/nextfest23-milano

* The Internet Con at Moon Palace Books (Minneapolis), Oct 15
https://moonpalacebooks.com/events/30127

* 26th ACM Conference On Computer-Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing keynote (Minneapolis), Oct 16
https://cscw.acm.org/2023/index.php/keynotes/

* 41st annual McCreight Lecture in the Humanities (Charleston, WV), Oct 19
https://festivallcharleston.com/venue/university-of-charleston/

* Seizing the Means of Computation (Edinburgh Futures Institute), Oct 25
https://efi.ed.ac.uk/event/seizing-the-means-of-computation-with-cory-doctorow/

Recent appearances:

* The Jim Rutt Show
https://www.jimruttshow.com/cory-doctorow-2/

* How to Take Back the Internet (Wired Have a Nice Future)
https://www.wired.com/story/have-a-nice-future-podcast-21/

*   Sci-fi and Amazon's empire (The Workers' Speculative Society)
https://soundcloud.com/reimaginevalue/doctorow

Latest books:

* The Internet Con: A nonfiction book about interoperability and Big Tech (Verso) September 2023 (http://seizethemeansofcomputation.org). Signed copies at Book Soup (https://www.booksoup.com/book/9781804291245).

* "Red Team Blues": "A grabby, compulsive thriller that will leave you knowing more about how the world works than you did before." Tor Books http://redteamblues.com. Signed copies at Dark Delicacies (US): and Forbidden Planet (UK): https://forbiddenplanet.com/385004-red-team-blues-signed-edition-hardcover/.

* "Chokepoint Capitalism: How to Beat Big Tech, Tame Big Content, and Get Artists Paid, with Rebecca Giblin", on how to unrig the markets for creative labor, Beacon Press/Scribe 2022 https://chokepointcapitalism.com

* "Attack Surface": The third Little Brother novel, a standalone technothriller for adults. The *Washington Post* called it "a political cyberthriller, vigorous, bold and savvy about the limits of revolution and resistance." Order signed, personalized copies from Dark Delicacies https://www.darkdel.com/store/p1840/Available_Now%3A_Attack_Surface.html

* "How to Destroy Surveillance Capitalism": an anti-monopoly pamphlet analyzing the true harms of surveillance capitalism and proposing a solution. https://onezero.medium.com/how-to-destroy-surveillance-capitalism-8135e6744d59 (print edition: https://bookshop.org/books/how-to-destroy-surveillance-capitalism/9781736205907) (signed copies: https://www.darkdel.com/store/p2024/Available_Now%3A__How_to_Destroy_Surveillance_Capitalism.html)

* "Little Brother/Homeland": A reissue omnibus edition with a new introduction by Edward Snowden: https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250774583; personalized/signed copies here: https://www.darkdel.com/store/p1750/July%3A__Little_Brother_%26_Homeland.html

* "Poesy the Monster Slayer" a picture book about monsters, bedtime, gender, and kicking ass. Order here: https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781626723627. Get a personalized, signed copy here: https://www.darkdel.com/store/p2682/Corey_Doctorow%3A_Poesy_the_Monster_Slayer_HB.html#/.

Upcoming books:

* The Lost Cause: a post-Green New Deal eco-topian novel about truth and reconciliation with white nationalist militias, Tor Books, November 2023

* The Bezzle: a sequel to "Red Team Blues," about prison-tech and other grifts, Tor Books, February 2024

* Picks and Shovels: a sequel to "Red Team Blues," about the heroic era of the PC, Tor Books, February 2025

* Unauthorized Bread: a graphic novel adapted from my novella about refugees, toasters and DRM, FirstSecond, 2025

This work - excluding any serialized fiction - is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license. That means you can use it any way you like, including commercially, provided that you attribute it to me, Cory Doctorow, and include a link to pluralistic.net.

https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Quotations and images are not included in this license; they are included either under a limitation or exception to copyright, or on the basis of a separate license. Please exercise caution.

How to get Pluralistic:

Blog (no ads, tracking, or data-collection):

Pluralistic.net

Newsletter (no ads, tracking, or data-collection):

https://pluralistic.net/plura-list

Mastodon (no ads, tracking, or data-collection):

https://mamot.fr/@pluralistic

Medium (no ads, paywalled):

https://doctorow.medium.com/

(Latest Medium column: "How To Think About Scraping: In privacy and labor fights, copyright is a clumsy tool at best https://doctorow.medium.com/how-to-think-about-scraping-2db6f69a7e3d)

Twitter (mass-scale, unrestricted, third-party surveillance and advertising):

https://twitter.com/doctorow

Tumblr (mass-scale, unrestricted, third-party surveillance and advertising):

https://mostlysignssomeportents.tumblr.com/tagged/pluralistic

"When life gives you SARS, you make sarsaparilla" -Joey "Accordion Guy" DeVilla
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: OpenPGP_0xBF3D9110957E5F4C.asc
Type: application/pgp-keys
Size: 4820 bytes
Desc: OpenPGP public key
URL: <http://mail.flarn.com/pipermail/plura-list/attachments/20230921/3a3405f2/attachment.bin>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: OpenPGP_signature
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 840 bytes
Desc: OpenPGP digital signature
URL: <http://mail.flarn.com/pipermail/plura-list/attachments/20230921/3a3405f2/attachment.sig>