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Film | Class Dismissed: How TV Frames the Working Class

The American TV series help to forge the image that the working class itself. Here is a great documentary to view and share in understanding the role of these media in the disappearance of a class consciousness USA and North America.

Sitcoms, reality shows, police dramas are actively constructing America’s working class self-representation or in other words the image the workers have of themselves. Here’s an excellent documentary to watch, and share, in the mean of raising awareness about how corporate media drives us workers away from the consciousness of being who we are as a social economic and political class today.

[http youtube://www.youtube.com/watch?v = m6ZS91cqpa8&w=420&h=315]

Class Dismissed dares to open our eyes to television’s role in disappearing class from the American consciousness. The carefully crafted interviews set against humorous clips show how stereotypes of working-class buffoons distance us from the reality of corporate greed. Class Dismissed drives home the connections between class, gender and race to ongoing systems of inequality and reminds viewers of the importance of raising class consciousness if we are to succeed in forging meaningful models of citizenship in the future.

– Elizabeth L. Krause | Assistant Professor of Anthropology | University of Massachusetts Amherst
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London IWW Cleaners: Workplace Occupation Stoped by Police Threats

[http youtube://www.youtube.com/watch?v = vtjsJSBeZ7c&w=560&h=315]

Cleaners at the Guildhall have been holding a sit in and stopping work since the 22nd of December because of mistreatment and intimidation. Early this morning [4th of January] management called the police, who came and intimidated and threatened the cleaners. The cleaners protested that they were holding a completely peaceful sit-in. They finally left due to police threats to drag them out physically.
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CHINA: strike 7000 Nike factory workers in a, Adidas, New Balance


The blog The Black Cat rioter highlights the story from a Belgian newspaper

(Belgian) More than 7 000 employees of a factory Adidas shoes, Nike and New China Southern Balance went on strike against layoffs and wage cuts and clashes with the police several injured, announced an advocacy group Human Rights.

Dozens of workers were injured on Thursday when police tried to dismantle a roadblock set up by the strikers on the main street of the town near Dongguan, in Guangdong Province, said Friday in a statement the China Labor Watch (CNW), organization specializing in the defense of human rights.

Employees of the factory Yucheng, near Huangjiang, went on strike after the dismissal last month of 18 their managers, interpreted by workers as a sign of upcoming relocation, added CNW headquartered in New York. One of the dismissed executives told China Business News that his departure was part of a proposed relocation of production in Jiangxi province to reduce costs that are higher in the vast manufacturing hub of Dongguan. The strike is the latest in a series of incidents and social movements that erupted in Guangdong, region known as the great workshop of the world which attract tens of millions of migrant workers.

bourgeois press - Le Vif (with Belga), 19/11/2011 at 11 o'clock

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DYNAMITE! A class violence Century America

Le polar est l’histoire de la criminalité et du gangstérisme, c’est-à-dire histoire de la violence obligée des pauvres après la victoire du capital. Vous croyez que j’exagère ? Lisez donc Dynamite, de Louis Adamic. On y voit lumineusement comment le syndicalisme américain s’est transformé en syndicalisme criminel quand la possibilité de la révolution a disparu et quand, Therefore, la question n’a plus été que celle des fameusesparts du gâteau’. On y voit comment des militants ouvriers radicaux ont pu devenir racketters et bootleggers puisqu’il n’y avait plus d’autre moyen de jouir.
Jean-Patrick Manchette, October 1979
Citation tiré du site des éditions Sao Maï qui ont publié la traduction française du livre

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Revue du livre par l’UCLJournal Cause Commune

« Monsieur le Président, il nous est désormais impossible de différer plus longtemps. Nous avons essayé de trouver une porte de sortie, en vain. Cette grève ne vient pas des dirigeants. Elle vient de la base syndicale. »
American Federation of Labour (AFL), 1919.

Les récents évènements – que ce soit la crise économique, le printemps arabe, les explosions sociales en Europe, les attaques contre le droit à la syndicalisation au Wisconsin ou les lockouts à répétitions – annoncent, pour la prochaine décennie, une période de luttes sociales et de violences de classes qui sera une lutte à la mort entre le capital et les travailleurs et travailleuses. Cette période de troubles à venir n’est pas sans rappeler le début du 20e siècle et son cycle de crise. Chaque variation quantitative du prolétariat amenait des attaques frontales du capitalisme auxquelles succédait inévitablement une radicalisation des syndicats, dont le membership était en explosion. Un superbe bouquin de Louis Adamic, relatant cette période, vient d’ailleurs d’être traduit en français.

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The states-uniens lava-cars, sweatshops in the corner.

[youtube = http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YTCiYI84Snw&feature=player_embedded%3C]

Les lave-autos états-uniens sont de vrais ateliers de misère à chaque coin de rue.

Majoritairement immigrant-e-s latinos, les ouvriers-ouvrières sont victimes d’abus sexuels, de violence physique et verbales, sont dangereusement exposé-e-s à des produits chimiques toxiques. Ils sont aussi parfois payés seulement le pourboire qu’ils et elles reçoivent des clients, ce qui revient à moins que le salaire minimum.

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Migrant Workers’ Conditions in Middle East is Modern Slavery – and the answer from employing class to radicalised Arab working class of the ’60s

The idea that Dubai is an oasis of freedom on the Arabian peninsular is one of the great lies of our time. Yes, it has Starbucks and Dunkin’ Donuts and the Gucci styles, but beneath these accoutrements, there is a dictatorship built by slaves.

If you go there with your eyes open – as I did earlier this year – the truth is hidden in plain view. The tour books and the bragging Emiratis will tell you the city was built by Sheikh Mohammed, the country’s hereditary ruler. It is untrue.

The people who really built the city can be seen in long chain-gangs by the side of the road, or toiling all day at the top of the tallest buildings in the world, in heat that Westerners are told not to stay in for more than 10 minutes. They were conned into coming, and trapped into staying.

In their home country – Bangladesh or the Philippines or India – these workers are told they can earn a fortune in Dubai if they pay a large upfront fee. When they arrive, their passports are taken from them, and they are told their wages are a tenth of the rate they were promised. Read more

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Hersey reduced immigrant workers to slavery

C’est l’histoire de 300 étudiants étrangers venus aux États-Unis dans le cadre d’un programme de travail-études et qui se voient engagés dans ce qu’ils décrivent comme du travail forcé à l’usine d’emballage Hersey de Palmyra, en Pennsylvanie. Les étudiants, originaires de l’Europe de l’est et de l’Asie, ont fait grève il y a deux semaines, après s’être fait ordonné de lever de lourdes boîtes, de travailler des quarts de huit heures de nuit, et avoir été forcés à rester debout de longues heures à emballer des friandises dans des chaînes de production extrêmement rapides. Des agences fédérales américaines ont ouvertes quatre enquêtes à ce sujet.

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IWW-Londres|Story and video of the victory of cleaner-honest-s Guildhall

[youtube = http://www.youtube.com/watch?= the jYXnz_zX6VM&feature=youtu.be]
Unionized cleaners with IWW emerge from labor dispute against Guildhall, in London.

Published on 25 July in English on http://iww.org.uk/node/590

London company cleaners Guildhall won a major victory in their dispute with the subcontractor Ocean Contract Cleaning London Ltd (Ocean). This represents a major achievement for these unionized workers with the “ Cleaners and allies branch - Syndicat Industriel 640 »Of Industrial Workers of the World(IWW).

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Hungary implements compulsory labor camps

Le gouvernement hongrois veut remettre les allocataires de prestations sociales au travail. Des policiers pourraient surveiller ces salariés regroupés dans des camps et affectés à de gros projets d’infrastructure. Principale cible de ce programme : les Roms dont le taux de chômage avoisine les 50 %. Ce projet de travail obligatoire qui figurait dans le programme du parti Jobbik (extrème droite) a été repris par la droite nationaliste.

Si certains sites d’extrême gauche ne se privent pas de comparer ce plan avec les méthodes fascistes – les camps de travail obligatoires gardés par des policiers ramènent aux pires heures de l’Histoire européenne – le Tageszeitung souligne, on the other hand, what “ce n’est pas un hasard si l’annonce de ces mesures intervient après la visite du Premier ministre chinois, Web Jiabao, à Budapest. La grande puissance asiatique veut racheter la dette hongroise mais aussi investir dans l’industrie et les projets d’infrastructures du pays“.

Article tiré de myeurope.info

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26 domestic workers accused of trafficking a recruitment agency

Evelyn Calugay, PINAY militant

PINAY, activist organization of Filipino domestic workers in Montreal denounces human rights abuses and violations perpetrated by a placement agency and the ineffectiveness of authorities and government agencies in protecting the rights of cheated domestic workers.

Super Nanny, a placement agency headed by John Aurora(who was the subject of a Radio-Canada report on “Immigration scammers” in 2003) , load of women from the Phillipines to 4500$ US so they can immigrate to Canada under the domestic help program, but when these women arrive in Canada, they are left with no employer and no choice but to pay rent to the placement agency for a shared bed in a squalid unit rented by the agency.

Sylvia Cordova, one of the 26 workers to complain to human rights commission against John Aurora testifies: “When I got here, I was taken to John Aurora's house and we all slept in the same bed. I didn't know women, but many of us had to live in the same room. They had no choice but to live there. They asked me to sign a lease. They told me not to read it, to only sign it. I paid 4500$ with the promise of an employer and a better life in Canada. But when I got there, they told me they didn't have an employer for me.»

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