retail and food
News and articles about work, policy and workers' struggles in retail and the food industry around the world.
Employee sabotage in a copy shop
Alan, a shop clerk's account of unofficial wage enhancement in a Minneapolis photocopy outfit.
I've never dealt with so many fucked-up managers as when I started working at a busy, downtown Minneapolis copy shop. We had to do a lot of work, took a lot of shit from customers and got paid beans. Actually, it was one of the best jobs I've had because everybody that I worked with was really fun.
Flash mobs as a form of struggle
The obedient shopper subverts their role to disrupt the circulation of commodities... flash mobs enter the terrain of class conflict.
"A flash mob ... is a large group of people who assemble suddenly in a public place, perform an unusual action for a brief time, then quickly disperse." (Wikipedia.)
Racist comments spark walkout, sit-in at chicken proccessing plant
Racist comments by security guards have led to wildcat action at Two Sisters Foods in Smethwick, UK.
Workers at a Black Country food processing firm are hailed the success of an unofficial walkout, after management sacked a security guard accused of making racist comments and agreed to come to the negotiating table.
More than 100 staff at Smethwick-based Two Sisters Foods staged a wildcat strike and police were called as their protest threatened to get out of hand.
Home Depot and the Farce of the "Manager" Title
A group of former Home Depot employees filed a class-action lawsuit against the company to win overtime pay.
It is common practice for companies to misclassify employees in order to be exempt from paying overtime. Employers are required to pay time-and-a-half to employees who work over 40 hours per week. However, those employees classified as "managers" are exempt from the overtime pay.
Protests in south-east China force repeal of new tax law
The Chinese state news service, Xinhua, reported on the 16th of June that violent protests in the south-east province of Jiangxi had forced authorities to repeal a new tax law.
The government of Nankang city had planned to increase the tax on furniture sales from 15th of June. Though a major industry in Nankang, furniture sales has a low profit margin, and the new tax law would have increased the tax burden, forcing many stores to close.
Wildcat strike in Stockholm
Workers in the warehouse for the Swedish state’s alcohol monopoly have started a wildcat strike in response to management attempts to replace the workforce with short term workers.
Management has been trying for a long time to replace the workers with casualised workers on short term contracts, but now they are using the recession as an excuse for laying off workers, while they continue to hire agency staff.
1980: Poland mass strikes - Henri Simon
Henri Simon's account of the successful strike wave which swept Poland in the summer of 1980 when the government raised the price of meat.
A NEW WORLD: FROM MEAT PRICES TO DIRECT DEMOCRACY
July 1980: Spontaneous Strikes Run Rampant Everywhere 1
- 1. This article is an extract from Henri Simon's excellent book, Poland 1980-82
One dead in Guadeloupe strike
As Guadeloupe's general strike against rising prices spreads across the Caribbean, a union official is shot dead.
Local officials states that union representative Jacques Bino, aged in his 50s, was shot dead in a crossfire while driving his car near a roadblock manned by armed youths, who opened fire at police in the capital Pointe-a-Pitre.
Workers in Guadeloupe launched a general strike on 20 January in protest at the rising cost of living.
Sweeping down on the supermarkets
As supermarkets continue to hike their prices, it seems a response is being planned – and not before time. But will it work?
A new initiative from a few people in London, including Ian Bone and raw (one of the leading lights of the ex-Wombles and more recently of the London Anarchists network) which has both interesting and controversial elements to it is the Price Reduction campaign, which they intend to discuss in November and possibly l
General strike over prices brings Belgium to a halt
A nationwide strike against rising prices disrupted transport, retailing and manufacturing across Belgium on Monday.
High-speed international rail services in and out of the country to France, the UK, Germany and the Netherlands were cancelled and picketing disrupted the port of Antwerp.
Workers were protesting in advance of the government's 2009 budget to demand action on inflation and the rising cost of living.
