Long live the memeification of unionized labor
Worker solidarity has become a meme, and honestly? THAT’S GREAT. I am 100% for the mimetic dissemination of radical labor organization. I love that Chuck Tingle wrote a Tingler about unionizing (in the butt). I love to see him and Jorts the Cat talking on Twitter about worker solidarity.
It feels like this spring has been full of relentlessly garbage news and despair, but Amazon warehouse workers in NYC won their union vote. Food delivery drivers in NYC have gotten huge protections through collective action. Today—JUST today—workers at four more Starbucks have voted to unionize, three in Ithaca, NY and another in Overland Park, KS.
I first started organizing in 2014, at my job at Divvy Bikes, Chicago’s citywide bikeshare. I’d been working at Divvy for just over a year, and it was, in short, terrible, in ways that will probably be familiar to most people who’ve held a job: I worked outdoors in all weather, including when it was over a hundred degrees, well below freezing, and when there was a foot of snow. There was no pay scale, so people hired at the same time and doing the same work might be making $12 an hour or $15; raises were given out based on “merit” which is another way of saying favoritism. Nearly everyone was kept at 29 hours a week, so the company didn’t have to give us benefits. Safety was a joke. I got harassed regularly, as did all the other trans workers, as did all the women who worked there.
None of this is particularly unique to that workplace. Nothing has changed in the past 8 years about the conditions under which working people labor. But there’s been a massive sea change in the popularity of unionized labor, and that’s been more astonishing to me than anything else.
Among the coworkers that were my age, there was a pervasive attitude of “this shitty job doesn’t really matter, I can deal with it until I find something better.” Which is…so deeply Millennial, in ways both good and bad. It’s not an attitude that ended up serving us well, because the problem isn’t with individual jobs, but with capitalism as a whole. Most of us ended up going from bad job to college to bad job to grad school to massive debt to more bad jobs.
At some point, you have to realize that there isn’t a magic job that will be everything you need. Moreover, the job you have should not be harmful to its workers. In fact, no job should be. Damn right nobody wants to work anymore; why suffer for garbage pay just so someone who doesn’t care about you can buy a third home? (Or go to space, as Christian Smalls pointed out.)
Fun further reading:
Marian Vibbert has written “Jobs and Class of Main Characters in Science Fiction” a survey that tracks what economic classes are represented (and over-represented) in science fiction.
The Unofficial Hugo Book Club Blog maintains a list of labor unions in science fiction, which has now been updated to include Chuck Tingle’s newest: Unionized In The Butt And Now Everyone Is Safer, Happier And Better Paid.
This is the best reporting I saw on the historic win by the Amazon Labor Union, which 1) actually talks to the workers and 2) gets into the organizing strategies that they employed.
Where I’ll be:
I’m speaking on two panels and hosting a “Chill n Chat” about early writing career planning at Flights of Foundry this weekend. This con is 100% virtual AND free to attend, AND it's full of amazing panels. Do check it out!
In May, I will be attending Wiscon in person, and am planning to attend Chicon 8 in September. No word on my schedules for either con at this point, but if all goes well, I’ll be in person at both cons.
New books I’m hype for:
You’ve Lost a Lot of Blood by Eric LaRocca || March || Horror, novella || “Each precious thing I show you in this book is a holy relic from the night we both perished-the night when I combed you from my hair and watered the moon with your blood.”
The Nectar of Nightmares by Craig Laurance Gidney || June || Dark Fantasy, weird, horror, short story collection. “The stories in The Nectar of Nightmares weave and remix myths, legends, and identities. Ranging from retold folktales to diverse settings like the Harlem Renaissance and the contemporary drag ball scene to phantasmagoric secondary worlds, this is a horror collection for those who have descended so far into the deep, there's nothing left to fear.”
Wrath Goddess Sing by Maya Deane || June || Fantasy || “A compelling, pitilessly beautiful vision of Achilles’ vanished world, perfect for fans of Song of Achilles and the Inheritance trilogy.”