Wednesday, September 20: The Ol' Bait & Switch
Sometimes you gotta hit 'em with a lil switcharooski
This article from The Intercept details the cat-and-mouse game recently played between the United Auto Workers and the Big 3 car companies (Ford, General Motors, and Stellantis). In the weeks prior to the ongoing strike that’s unfolded, a deliciously misleading version of guerrilla warfare took place between the parties.
“Through targeted walk-offs, the union aimed to disrupt the companies’ operations with the fewest possible workers, which would allow the union’s strike fund to last longer into the conflict — essentially forcing the companies to pay workers even during the strike period. The companies, meanwhile, sought to anticipate precisely which plants would be struck and reorganize production and distribution to minimize losses. The Big Three guessed badly.“
This is the worker equivalent of painting a tunnel on a mountain and convincing Wile E. Coyote to drive a truck into it headfirst at full speed. Except in this case, Mr. Coyote is earning tens of millions of dollars off the labor you’ve put in. It almost begs the question of whether executives who would fall for this type of ruse are worthy of such inflated salaries.
Side Items
More Palestinian Lives Lost: A raid by the apartheid-defending forces of Israel into the Jenin refugee camp in the northern West Bank resulted in four people dead and over 30 others wounded. Separately, a raid in another refugee camp killed one other Palestinian. A sixth Palestinian was killed by Israeli fire in attacks in the Gaza Strip. The Associated Press has tallied 190 Palestinians killed in the West Bank since the start of the year
Chicago Downtown “Civil Unrest”: Turns out all that worry and stress about the dangerous Mexican Independence Day crowds was all for nothing. For just the second time this year, there was not a single homicide reported in Chicago between 5pm Friday and 5am Monday. The lack of homicides came as thousands of people crowded the downtown to celebrate, with parades and car caravans taking over different areas of the city. But you won’t catch the haters talking about the revelry
Public Transit Campaign: Really solid advertisement for public transportation.