How do we get Trade Union participation up?

I'm in Australia, but this shouldn't be country specific; I'd just like to know how to try and encourage Unionization in general.

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raffwu.org.au
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Get in-touch with the IWW: they are doing great work unionising "gig economy" workers. Unionising retail workers and the precariat is the next step to combating capitalism.

Yo from what I hear, a lot of unions round in aus are in bed with the government. This true at all?

Well the main Left party around here is Labor, who are at least in theory Pro-Union.

I know that the Right parties like to say that the unions are in bed with Labor, but how true it is is up to debate.

And yes, they do spell their name Labor instead of Labour. It's retarded.

Ah there is a good story behind this. When the party was funded, everyone expected Australia to adopt american spelling, so they founded their party to keep up with that: however WWI happened and the Aussies were a lot more british oriented and as such kept the british spelling system. So It was the Labor Party: The party of labour.

Unions are a meme

The ability of memes to get ideas into people's heads (aka Memetics, the original concept we got modern memes from) can be very strong and useful for Lefties as well as Righties.

So embrace the meme and create a better world for workers until we reach Communism and make it the best world for workers!

Okay, so… is cotacting the Wobblies really it?

*contacting

WHEN THE UNION'S INSPIRATION THROUGH THE WORKERS BLOOD SHALL RUN, THERE CAN BE NO POWER GREATER ANYWHERE BENEATH THE SUN
Honestly, just blare unionist songs, they're good af. Do Pete Seeger and woodie guthrie shit

Labor is how you're supposed to spell it?

raffwu.org.au

Retail union set up by socialists to take on the corrupt SDA.

unions give leverage to the workers

the only argument against unions basically boils down to the accelerationism meme

literally how autistic can a human being be?

Bring back radical (communist) unions.

Not sure how much I like all the Tankies but It's good to see some support for this


That's cool but I don't see how it helps me encourage union participation.

This.
From what I see in my country (France), unions became weaker because they were (and still are, for the most) designed for the post-war form of capitalism, that is staying in the same company until retirement.
As precarity grows, unions declines. Now in France, most of the union members are civil servants, or from a few special sectors like printer's.
I am/was (complicated stuff) in a jobless ans precarious worker's union (there are not that much), in touch with "classical" unions. From our experience, I can see a few basic rules :

this
Post-Fordism killed them.

Question. If I wanted to start a co-op eventually, would there be any benefit to working with the IWW on that?

Don't know actually, I would ask if there is a way you could work together: they strat seems to be pretty broad atm and they have been doing a lot of work with housing coops so maybe.

You get involved and try to organise retail workers?

What industry do you work in, does it have a union?

I'm in Uni, currently

Well try visiting your local trades hall, the one near mine has some people there who just promote general union causes and will show solidarity to whatever struggles going on around, at the one near mine some of them are socialists

Sweet

This so much. This summer there have been some strikes in Spain and you can see how most of them have come from the public sector, where they can't fire you unless you do a big fuck up.

Forgot to change the shitposting flair.

So… Unionism needs a redesign or something?

I listened to phillp adams today too.

Trade unionism outside of militancy, or revolution is a waste of time.

The golden age of trade unionism in the postwar years was because the government tolerated it, not because theworkersunitedcanneverbedefeated.

The reason they tolerated it was because communism had become a major threat and was too appealing to people, so they had to show people that capitalism could deliver the goods and actually improve peoples lives. So they allowed unions to continually demand wage and benefit increases. The problem was this put pressure on businesses, who offset this by taking out loans and putting up prices.

This meant inflation, and by the late 60's inflation had gotten up beyond 5% At that point when your businesses rate of profit is that then your business has been rendered unprofitable. So it was unsustainable.

So all the gains they "fought for" were rolled back quickly and unceremoniously, because they were never really winning. Its just another example of why gradualism or socialism by evolution cant work. Capital will always organise against it and roll it back.

You can only win if you hobble capital and leave it withering and dying with nowhere to invest its inflating wealth, and even that might be giving it too much of a chance to counter-revolt.

A militant trade union or IWW might be ok. There no IWW in my town. Im thinking about starting one.

Basically banned in the 50's THough fucking ironic that the DLP senator was actually far more left than any labor member in that senate.

Yes. Nowadays people jump from company to company to get a better salary, thus making negotiations with companies pointless. They should instead negotiate with the government to improve workers rights in general or even use them to protest against corruption or controversial mesures. Instead of making a protest in the street to have your voice heard and latter ingored, organize a general strike to really pressure the government. I see worker's strikes as our true and only weapon against capitalism and government corruption.

Builders Labourers Federation came up in the 70s and was banned in the 80s

Strangle capitalism