austinkelmore
@austinkelmore

When I first got into workers rights and started learning about unions, I started learning about the ways contemporary unions operate. A lot of workers in unions these days have clauses in their contracts with employers that says they can't strike without going through lengthy processes first.

It's not until I started reading history books of the late 1800s and early 1900s that I understood how much power workers are giving up by doing that because workers in that time period went on strike all the time. Workers who give it up are literally telling the employer "You can be as horrible to us as you want and we won't do anything about it unless we go through this lengthy process which you can drag out first."

Fire with Fire is one of my favorite blogs/resources/whatever you want to call it for organizing skills and how to work together with other workers in unions. This post on never giving up the right to strike is well worth the read.

The best analogy I can come up with that other games industry people might understand is this - immediate strikes in response to issues are like continuous integration and build failures. Strikes are a way to get management's attention and tell them you have to fix this now and the feedback loop can be quick.

Solving issues through discussions with management or arbitration is like enabling pop up warnings with a click through button - they're easily ignored, ineffective, and most people don't even know those issues are being experienced. They're a way to hide problems or sweep them under the rug.

The strike is one of the most important things we have as workers, so why would we ever want to give that up?


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