Thoughts on workplace + revolutionary organisation - MWR interview

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We did an interview with a guy who was in McDonalds Workers Resistance which is now in our library.

It's interesting, has some funny bits and even revol68 gets a mention, so I'd recommend checking it out. Any comments/questions post 'em up here!

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Brilliant stuff.
Is that someone online here BTW?

Quote:
Why did you not just join a trade union?
That was never an option for us. You might as well ask why we didn’t just fly to Olympus and demand Zeus punished the corporation with a terrible deluge.

cracked me up for some reason.

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that guy wrote:
if you and all the other admins dropped out of Libcom, how long would it last for? You’d have Revol and Gangster running it, it would be like Lord of the Flies.

eek

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Quote:
Is that someone online here BTW?

they might look at the boards from time to time...

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decent interview, pity the guy is a knob end, a complete prick like, so he is.

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revol68 wrote:
decent interview, pity the guy is a knob end, a complete prick like, so he is.

Yeah but you don't have to be not-a-cunt to be a good communist wink

BB
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Tacks wrote:
Brilliant stuff.

I can only reiterate. Funny and spot on.

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I would be horrified to think that a preoccupation with paedophile jokes persisted in libertarian circles...

grin

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newyawka wrote:
that guy wrote:
if you and all the other admins dropped out of Libcom, how long would it last for? You’d have Revol and Gangster running it, it would be like Lord of the Flies.

eek

If we get really skint one time let's try that for fundraising!

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hold revol and gangster hostage like?

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No, get revol and gangster to hold the site hostage until people pay up wink

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ssh! not out loud, catch!

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This is really great. Anyone know of other good stuff on fast food worker organizing? Outside the stuff that comes up on the "retail and food" tag on libcom (lots of great stuff there) I found these, which aren't as good as the MWR piece. Ones from the bosses' press, one from a trot group, and one from a pizza workers union

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/14955278/
http://socialistalternative.org/publications/fastfood/contents.html
http://www.aupdd.org/Home.asp

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Steven.'s picture
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Nate wrote:
This is really great. Anyone know of other good stuff on fast food worker organizing?

There's more specific stuff in here:
http://libcom.org/tags/food-service

also lots on www.mwr.org.uk

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There was a union organised at a Quebec McDonalds a while ago but I believe the company just shut it down and opened up somewhere else. I think there may have been a couple in BC too.

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I thought the piece was good. Got some good laughs, particularly about the Furbies.

Coming from a less precarious working background, sort makes ya think a bit about the not so new economy and the difficulties on so many levels.

I'd make this part of any "read" on anarchists in the workplace.

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that guy wrote:

if you and all the other admins dropped out of Libcom, how long would it last for? You’d have Revol and Gangster running it, it would be like Lord of the Flies.

whos gonna be piggy?

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Hey,
Just saw this post now, as I don't visit these forums as much as I should.

Quote:
This is really great. Anyone know of other good stuff on fast food worker organizing?

Yeah, I do. I'm working as a recruiter at the moment for a union in Aotearoa/New Zealand that mainly unionises fastfood workers. So I unionise in McDonalds, KFC, Starbucks, Burger King and Pizza Huts, as well as hotels and casinos.

If you are interested have a look at the website of the union I am working for: www.unite.org.nz

Also check out this article by a friend of mine who was working for Unite last year during the SuperSizeMyPay.Com campaign. http://www.anarkismo.net/newswire.php?story_id=1648

Plus if you want see these two articles I wrote last year, when I was involved in an anti-capitalist youth group called Radical Youth that was heavily involved in the SuperSizeMyPay.Com campaign.

http://www.greenleft.org.au/2006/662/7054
http://www.justfocus.org.nz/articles/2006/02/15/taking-back-their-rights/
Or check out this tag:
http://libcom.org/tags/new-zealand

My personal feeling to do with worker self-organisation and resistance in any of the places i unionise would be that it will be most likely to arise in times that aren't officially sanctioned as negotiating periods and would arise over issues other than wage rates. In these periods when workers are left to themselves to sort out issues like dictatorial managers, lack of air conditoning, no uniforms etc, that they would most likely organise together and engage in direct action on their own terms.

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This has just been translated into German by the lovely folks at the FAU:
http://www.fau.org/artikel/art_070130-104804/

It also appeared in abridged format in their paper:
http://www.fau.org/fau_medien/da/DA_179/

Not sure why they'd want other germans to know what that tosser has to say but there you go...

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Quote:
Not sure why they'd want other germans to know what that tosser has to say but there you go...

I'm not sure I get the joke. I take it Revol and funnywump are pals?

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Dundee_United wrote:
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Not sure why they'd want other germans to know what that tosser has to say but there you go...

I'm not sure I get the joke. I take it Revol and funnywump are pals?

I should've put a smilie in there. Revol either wants to be funnywump, or be with funnywump, it's hard to tell.

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John. wrote:
Dundee_United wrote:
Quote:
Not sure why they'd want other germans to know what that tosser has to say but there you go...

I'm not sure I get the joke. I take it Revol and funnywump are pals?

I should've put a smilie in there. Revol either wants to be funnywump, or be with funnywump, it's hard to tell.

if i was trying to seduce him he'd have stood no chance, as it is his constant begging for "just a suckie mon, like it dinnae make us hemasxuals" doesn't get my juices flowing.

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Quote:
Revol either wants to be funnywump, or be with funnywump, it's hard to tell.

So that's why the bitch never calls anymore. I'm thinking of developing a dodgy nationalist streak just to get a bit of attention. Slut.