"Yes unions are great if you can't take care of yourself" w/Sam Sacks
This week Sam Sacks from means.tv joins us to address the newest propaganda term in capital's revolt against rising class consciousness and worker agitation: "Quiet Quitting." What does this term mean, how is it being cautioned against by bosses and their media lackeys, and is it effective? Also: UPS Drivers' (as in my) union wages go viral, and we discuss the minor backlash and much greater merits of widespread awareness of union benefits. Join Means TV at http://means.tv and pay what you can for the world's only co-op and worker-owned streaming and distribution service. Watch Means Morning News or listen to it in podcast form wherever you get podcasts Listen to District Sentinal Radio wherever you get podcasts Help us make Minion Death Cult for only $3.11/month at http://patreon.com/miniondeathcult and get a bonus episode every week as well as instant access to hundreds of previous bonus episodes directly in your podcast app or browser. Music: Crisis Actor - Diet of Worms Listen to Crisis Actor on Bandcamp or Spotify Jim Ward - Polygraph (Attack)
The liberals are destroying California, and conservative humor gone awry... Conservative humor gone awry is going to fascistphonia today, so stay tuned.
We're going to take a few pictures of the desert and how their policies are actually messing it up.
It's not beautiful when you go across that border.
Stay tuned guys, we'll show you exactly what it looks like when the stormed deserts fall there in Barbados.
Stay tuned.
Okay, I'm Alexander Edward.
And I'm Tony Boswell.
And we are Minion Death Cult.
The world is ending.
Only doing 100% of the work required of you is responsible.
We're documenting it.
Hey, what's up everybody?
It is probably Labor Day when you're hearing this.
It's not Labor Day when we're recording this because that's our day.
We're working on the Lord's Day because that's his day.
None of our business, really.
Labor Day is our day, so that's the day we're not working.
Yeah, we would never work on Labor Day.
Uh, Sam, Sam, what about you?
Is there a Means Morning news tomorrow on Labor Day?
Do you have to work?
The issue about Monday holidays when I'm working at Means is we don't do shows on Monday, but we do shows on Tuesday that I generally have to put work into on Monday.
Nope.
So it's like...
You know, it's hard to justify taking Tuesday's show off because that's Tuesday.
No, it should be like the garbage schedule.
Everything should get bumped up by a day.
And then like the consumer, the customer, the viewer has to figure it out.
Their lives have to adjust.
Yeah, I agree with that.
There's never a Tuesday holiday, so I never get to fully take advantage of not having to wake up early and do a show.
So I'm always doing shows.
They start on Tuesday and I'll probably end up doing a little bit of work on Monday, but I hope you two are having a glorious Labor Day.
You all have earned it.
We will.
It's unfortunate you don't do shows on Monday because it'd be nice to do those, like, spite shows, where it's like, I know it's a holiday, but fuck this holiday.
I hate this three-day weekend.
And then you do the show in spite of it, but since you're off anyways, sometimes you're gonna, like, accidentally look a little, you know, patriotic.
Yeah.
It's like the Sporps balls of holidays.
Like, oh, we're doing holidays again?
Oh, okay, I see.
I see people are taking another holiday over here.
Yeah, Tony actually made me work last Juneteenth, but I deserved it.
Part of the deal.
It's true.
Pete, you were gonna work anyways, but you put in time and a half and you just got paid the opposite of that.
You got half paid.
Uh, so I know, I know Labor Day is not like the real Labor Day or the real, you know, workers holiday.
Um, but I think, you know, any holiday is a workers holiday.
Any holiday where we don't have to work is already a win.
Uh, and then one that makes us like think about labor probably.
A net positive, I would say.
Of course, not everybody gets Labor Day off, and probably a lot of people listening to this episode are working.
So, shout out to you.
This episode goes out to everybody who does have to work on Labor Day.
That sucks.
Sorry.
Yeah.
Yeah, that is unfortunate.
But you know what?
Good on ya, too.
Also good on ya.
Those of us who have fake jobs like, and I know that you guys don't, but like me that hosts like a news show on a leftist streaming network and a podcaster, we actually take both days off.
We take off May Day and Labor Day.
So I know that most bosses in the U.S.
barely even recognize Labor Day, don't at all recognize May Day as a day for workers, but I guess it backfired on the U.S.
when they decided to create their own day for those of us with the fake jobs that we can take both of them off.
Hell yeah.
I mean, that's what they get for creating the gig economy, you know?
We didn't want a podcast.
We just had to try to find a way to, you know, make some more ends.
We're our own bosses over here.
Okay, so you might recognize that voice.
That voice is, of course, Sam Sachs from District Sentinel Radio Podcast and the Means Morning News program.
It's so nice to talk to you in person as opposed to hearing you echoing out of the bathroom while my girlfriend is showering.
I have barged in there many a time, knocked out, you know, busted through the door, which is locked for some reason.
Damani, who's in here with you?
And only to find your face, your voice, is just a podcast.
And I'm like, okay.
It still seems funny in there.
Still seems like something else is going on in there.
But haven't caught her red-handed yet.
But nice to have you here, Sam.
Thank you for joining us.
Big fan of Means Morning News.
Big fan of Means TV in general.
Love you folks.
Absolutely.
Well, thank you.
It's good to be here, truly.
Thanks for having me.
I love wearing my Means TV shirt with the dog pissing on the tombstone of capitalism.
And it's got, like, the little chess logo of the Mr. Moneybags, like, crying.
I love wearing that, you know, in public to, you know, shows and stuff like that.
And I was at the grocery store one time, and I think I heard somebody mutter, be careful what you wish for.
Oh god.
That's the only response I've gotten from it.
That rules.
It's like, no, trust me, this is exactly what I want.
It's as bad as it gets right now.
I'll take my chances with whatever the dog peeing on capitalism entails.
Yeah, you're like, I'm not a fucking poser.
I wouldn't just wear a random shirt.
I don't just buy random shirts.
I know what the shirt means, so I can name a couple songs.
Yeah, I did my research.
Yeah, I listened to anti-capitalism on the way over here.
It is awesome though, like, going from, you know, hearing rumors of this new network and being like, oh, this sounds really cool, and now seeing it, like, every day on my Instagram stories from somebody else who I don't see, I don't expect to see sharing something so awesome.
So yeah, great job.
Thanks, I mean, it's always good to hear about people listening and watching, because I don't really have access, because we're not really on YouTube, we're just on the site, on the means.tv platform, so I'm sure that there are statistics, and occasionally Nick and Naomi, who kind of started the whole thing, will fill me in.
For all I know, I'm sometimes broadcasting to, like, a few dozen people, so it's nice to hear of, like, more than that who say they're listening to it.
Yeah, totally.
If you don't already, I highly recommend you go into, yeah, means.tv and supporting the first ever worker-owned co-op media streaming and distribution service.
There's TV shows over there.
There are movies, great movies, including movies that are done by friends of ours that are available on that platform.
And it's just, it's a great thing to support.
Yeah, it absolutely rules.
Yeah, and you can choose your own subscription that you pay.
We've got a sliding scale there, so... Money should not be a barrier to check out our content.
We want everybody to be able to see it.
Yeah, hell yeah.
Do you find that people don't understand that you mean it when you say that?
Because I do food stuff, and the thing about my dinners I do and stuff like that is you can always come for free if you need to.
I don't care.
You can do a two-for-one because other people are buying other people plates.
And people just kind of don't believe you.
And I'm like, no, no, you can do this.
It's cool.
You're allowed to do this.
You can just do it yourself.
And they're like, I don't know.
Yeah.
I mean, well, there are the people who are going to hate on us anyways, who are the same people you encounter at the grocery store.
Like, be careful what you wish for about, oh, this is some anti-capitalist platform, but they're seeking money.
They're seeking subscription fees.
It's like, well, you know, first off, being compensated for your labor is not, like, anti-socialist or something.
And second off, like, I mean, yeah, but at the end of the day, we just want as many people to be able to see it as possible.
So.
Oh, yeah.
Well, I think it's just it's the American spirit.
It's it's the American ethos to like that nothing is free, that everybody is out to like trick you in some way, shape or form.
That America is a grift, right?
America is like a Ponzi scheme is like a collective delusion that we're all Like, subscribing to Lest We Realize That The Emperor Has No Clothes.
You know, that's a lot of, like, what we're going to be talking about in just a second here with the first segment.
So it is hard to, like, break, you know, I can't just show up and get something for free.
I can't, like, you know, they're gonna, like, sell my email address to somebody.
Or Tony's gonna lock me in the basement if I try to come to get a free dinner from him or something.
I'm really trying to do a Black Snake moan through the Everybody Needs a Campaign.
I'm just trying to lock Alex up to a radiator.
I mean, if it's Christina Ricci, I don't think... what jury would convict you?
No, it's the same thing with like... True, true.
If she locks you up, you mean?
No, she was the one who was locked up.
I'm saying... Yeah, yeah.
Yeah, I'm saying it's okay as long as the person is attractive, is what I'm saying.
Oh, okay.
Yeah, that's been shown.
No, but yeah, I think that's a pretty good segue into our first segment here today, which is Quiet Quitting.
Have you heard?
Sounds bad, sounds scary.
Yeah, this just incredible new attempt at Capitalistic propaganda that just dropped, apparently.
Quiet quitting is essentially, it's what bad employees do.
It's what employees who do not see a future in any workforce, it's what they do.
And you're listening, you're like, okay, well, quiet quitting, that's when you quit, you be quiet about your quitting, you just leave.
And you do the, what is it, the Irish goodbye, right?
You just walk out the door.
I think it's whatever, Whatever, whoever you consider to be rude, whatever you say that.
Yeah, but actually, in actuality, quiet quitting is something quite different and allow this guy, I forgot what his name is, what's this guy's name?
The bald guy on Shark Tank?
I'm a Dragon's Den guy, I don't really know.
Kevin O'Leary.
Speaking of Irish goodbyes here, let's listen to Kevin O'Leary describe the term quiet quitting and what it means for you as a likely worker.
Quiet quitting is a really bad idea.
Creativity is very much honored in the work environment.
People that go beyond to try to solve problems for the organization, their teams, their managers, their bosses.
Those are the ones that succeed in life.
Okay, so he hasn't really described what quiet quitting is.
He's telling you it's bad, and this is what you need to do to be good, which is... If you know... Sorry.
No, no, go ahead.
My mom loves Shark Tank, so I've seen quite a few episodes of Shark Tank.
And I know that he's the bad guy on that show.
It's a show of straight-up capitalists who are sharks.
That's their thing.
They're going to go in there and give you a shitty deal because they're sharks.
That's what they do and they can get away with it.
And he's the bad guy on that show.
So if he's saying something is a bad idea, you definitely want to be on the opposite side of it.
He's like a real hard-ass, right?
He's like, no, that's stupid.
Or if it seems like stupid but good, he'll give you a ridiculous offer, right?
That's his whole schtick.
Yeah, his whole thing is he gives deals that would greatly benefit him at your expense.
That's what I'm talking about.
That's my shit.
So I can't remember in this video if he actually describes what quiet quitting is.
He probably avoids doing that because of how absurd the rest of this video would sound if you actually knew what quiet quitting meant.
So rather than like dance around it, I'll just tell you quiet quitting means not working overtime.
Quiet quitting means fulfilling the obligations of your contract as to not be fired.
That's quiet quitting is the new term for doing your job.
They're trying to shame people for doing their job now, essentially.
And by the reaction across the internet, it's not really working.
It's almost like they're doing left propaganda while doing right propaganda because it's so bad.
Yeah.
It's kind of, I don't know, maybe just my personal experience.
Um, because I've done what they're calling quiet quitting like fucking hard to the point where quiet is definitely not the word I would use.
Right.
Like, uh, uh, like what, what is it like, um, I don't know, maybe, uh, public speaking, public speaking, quitting, whatever that would be where I'm like projecting the fact that I'm like, Throwing the talent and saying, fuck off.
I'm only going to do my job and that's it.
Like, don't ask me anything extra.
There is actually trying to get fired, right?
There is like actually, which is separate.
This is not what they're talking about here.
It's like, you're just going to work.
You're showing up to work on time.
You're leaving on time.
You're doing like the tasks that are assigned to you.
And then your boss comes over and is like, are you trying to quit?
It sounds like you're, I mean, it's kind of quiet, but it sounds like you're trying to quit.
I do quiet quitting at work as well, but it's just loud, yeah.
It's also loud because I'm part of a union, so I say things like, uh, no, I'm not gonna do that.
Or I do things like file a grievance for asking me to do this in the first place.
That's how I perform quiet quitting.
I'll say every time I've been fired, I wouldn't have been fired if I was in a union.
Yeah.
That's for sure.
I can't even debate that.
That's a fact.
Yeah, but the one union job you did have, you did quit.
So they got you fair and square.
That's true.
That's true.
And I quit it for something I thought was more open trajectory.
And they fired me for the most petty reason on the planet.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Oh, well, no, you must not have worked hard enough, Tony.
That was it.
See, if you had stayed as a union member, you would have been sure you would have been lazy and you wouldn't have been productive and you would have been, uh, you would have been just a waste of space, but you would have been eventually promoted based on seniority.
For those who don't know, what happened was I actually got fired for working too hard.
I was working from home, like, extra hours and, like, crushing the numbers.
But I was not working off of the computer that they were going to give me that I ordered, like, four months prior that I never received.
I was working off my personal computer.
And that's the reason that they fired me after interviewing, like, several other staff members about whether I'm asking them about if they're taking their breaks or not.
Like, to, like, make sure they're taking their breaks and, like, getting paid for them.
And like talking about that they like interviewed people and I fucking know who snitched But yeah, imagine your fucking boss being like hey listen So I really appreciate you and like you're really doing your thing and like I'm glad you're here But I think we need to spice it up I think we need spice.
Remember when you first got, you would tell me I was beautiful all the time.
You would surprise me.
You were spontaneous.
Like, can we, can we do that again?
Maybe we need to like bring more roles in for you, like for the same pay.
But like, can we spice it up a little bit?
Yeah.
Have you thought, have you considered bringing a third shift into our relationship?
We really are living in like a golden age of anti-worker propaganda and yeah I mean it's always existed obviously and there's been different terms throughout history for quiet quitting and stuff but like just the very fact that workers During the pandemic and then and it's it's the Fed is trying to quickly change it right now.
But like that there is a slightly tighter labor market to where workers have a have a bit of an option if they did want to actually quit and find a different job.
The way capital has reacted to this slight improvement in conditions is they've absolutely shit their pants and are throwing everything at it from actual policy that you're seeing at the Fed.
But just these these like These propaganda terms.
And as you said, Alexandria, it's not working, right?
Like quiet quitting has been embraced by a lot of people.
Like, hell yeah, that's just, that's the way you're supposed to do your job.
What are y'all talking about?
And in any, you know, we'll get to the comment sections later, but like any of these comment sections where it's like a, you know, a mainstream outlet like NPR or like NBC or CNBC or whatever that mentions quiet quitting on Facebook, The reactions are overwhelmingly like, fuck yeah, I'm a quiet quitter.
Like, this is more in my personal life.
My humanity is more important to me than going above and beyond for a raise I probably will never see anyway.
And the comment sections are just filled with like...
Positive, like self-fulfilling sentiments in these comments.
And then the only angry ones are the people who are mad at everybody else for just doing the bare minimum.
The only angry ones are the people who are like, no, that's not how you succeed.
This is what you have to do to get ahead.
This is what I had to do.
And it's like, you sound fucking miserable.
You sound just like the angriest person in the world.
You're not a good representation for your political or economic philosophy.
And it doesn't look it doesn't comport at all with reality too because if you look at all the strikes that are happening whether it's teachers or nurses and this upcoming railroad strike which freight rail strike which might go down in mid-september with like 115,000 Workers, every one of these, a common thread is there's not enough.
The boss is not hiring enough people to do more work.
So what's happening is you have workers who are working longer hours, doing more tasks for not the same amount of pay.
And it's under those conditions that they're trying to spin this quiet quitting bullshit.
It's like workers have never been more productive for you on an individual level than right now.
I mean, we've all seen that chart that goes back to the 70s where at some point wages diverge from worker productivity and wages stay flat.
It's like we are at the peak of that right now.
You know, you're hearing these terms like, oh, well, you're not going above and beyond.
It's like, well, ask the teachers and the nurses that are on strike right now.
Yeah, it's just demonstrably false to anybody who actually works for a living.
Anybody who is on this side of the capital-labor dynamic who works for a living.
It's demonstrably false.
And the rejoinder you see or you read or you hear to the productivity argument, that productivity has been going up while wages have stagnated, The response to that is, oh, well, technology.
Technology has rendered working more efficient.
It's replaced workers because it's made the job more efficient.
And it's like, okay, you've made the job more efficient, which means now I do more work.
That's like what you mean by efficiency.
Oh, UPS made the job more efficient by giving me a scanner instead of a pad and paper.
Cool.
Now I deliver 400 packages a day instead of 80 packages a day.
How?
That's not computers who did that.
That's still me doing it.
And in the case of like, maybe you're inside of a warehouse and, and other elements have been streamlined.
It's like, From my experience from working in warehouses for for 10 years, when they say efficiency, you know, the work has been streamlined.
Things are more efficient.
It means exactly what you said, Sam, is that less employees are fulfilling more roles thanks to technology.
And it's like maybe you have less employees doing work, but now those employees are doing more work.
Yeah, your surplus value has gone up for your boss.
At the end of the day, that's what this is all about is when your productivity is going up, but your pay is not going up, someone's pocketing a lot more profits.
And it just so happens that corporations are seeing the highest profits they've seen since like the 1950s.
At the exact same time, they're trying to claim, oh, well, workers just don't want to come work for us.
Like those both can't exist.
Maybe your profits are linked to the fact that you won't hire more workers.
Yeah.
Because it'll cut into your profits and you're just making the workers you currently have be extra, extra productive by working longer, taking on more shifts at the same pay.
And then if you're not in a right to work state, you have to come up with some excuse to fire people.
And if you can't do that, then you try to shame them into doing more work again by creating a phrase like quiet quitting.
The whole thing is, remember, y'all remember the Christmas party?
Remember the Christmas party where they told us, like, we need to do more for the family, which is like the work, you need to do more for the family, because like, you know, I got you guys all gift cards, and so you needed more for us, so that when you can 3D print your deliveries, you've shown that you work hard enough to get that break to have the 3D printed deliveries.
Yeah, exactly.
So, like, you gotta put the work in and, like, you gotta take that L so we can develop the Boston Dynamics 3D printing dog that you have to walk, but it still 3D prints all the deliveries.
Yeah, that's... I'm not really worried about, like, autonomous vehicles taking my job as a UPS delivery guy.
I'm worried about, like, 3D printers.
That's, like, that's, I think, more... a more, like, likely way of Rendering my job redone because there's no like you're gonna have a robot come out of a vehicle like you're gonna have an arm that autonomously delivers a package into What a box a uniform receptacle that every single person in the world has at the like same height You know like it's
All of that seems outlandish, but yeah, people are going to be 3D printing their Amazon bullshit at home.
They're going to pay Amazon $5 for the code and then just 3D print it at home, and that might be a problem.
But hopefully I'll be retired with a pension by then.
I wouldn't worry about that.
You know what a 3D printer can't have?
A mustache.
Short shorts.
Short shorts.
A 3D printer can't have short shorts and a mustache.
So I wouldn't worry about that.
That's a good point.
Let's listen to more of this video.
I have more stuff on Quiet Quitting that I want to get to, so I don't want to spend necessarily too much time on this video, but this guy is just, it's funny how bad he is at his propaganda.
Is this more Kevin?
It's more Kevin.
If all of a sudden you try and define your work ethos by some kind of definition of your job, then you're going to fail.
If your job has clear parameters and goals and expectations, then you have failed as a worker.
Accept the ambiguity.
Accept not knowing whether you will live or die today.
I just don't know why you would restrict yourself that way.
Why would you put yourself in those confines?
Like, what is freedom if not the option to do what you want?
- To make the business work.
You're supporting your team, customers, the people above and below you.
That's the whole idea. - See, again, like the whole point of you being at this job is to support the company and make the company work and serve the customers.
No, that's not why I'm there.
I'm there because I like living indoors.
Like, that's why I'm at my job.
It's because I like having internet at my house.
I like being able to maybe buy a kayak and go kayaking.
Like, that's why I'm at my job.
I know you've got your shark tank brain or whatever, so you're viewing all of these through the lens of Michael Keaton's The Founder or whatever bullshit.
But that's not how we think.
That's not how we examine the worker-workplace relationship.
Well, I just, I mean, is Kevin going to explain what you get out of the end of it if you, like, do fulfill this?
Like, this part of the team, if you're out there to improve the team, help the company, do the task at hand.
Okay, let's carry this forward.
Let's say I do that.
What do I get out of this?
And it's like, oh, no, there's nothing.
Like, you get to keep your job, same wages and stuff.
Literally, you get to be employed by Kevin O'Leary, is what he says at the end of the video.
So, I mean, hey, you know.
- You're tired to solve problems, and your management should know-- - Oh, they're also showing in this video a video of a girl boss in a headscarf who's going above and beyond and showing you how to be a good, a good multi-racial, multi-background worker bee serving the company.
So that's good.
She doesn't even complain about the food not being hellel anymore.
Yeah, sometimes part of going above and beyond means being damned for all eternity.
Yeah, yeah.
You can't put your rug all the way down.
That's too much foot room in the warehouse.
You're told to do, and then even more.
You have to go beyond not because you're forced to, not because you have to, you have to go beyond because you want to.
That's how you achieve success.
Oh shit, well, that's I guess my first mistake.
I don't want to.
You blew it, you blew it.
What's wild about that video is if you're just listening to it, it sounds like it was produced in the 80s, but it must have been made in like the last week or so.
Yeah, yeah.
Those individuals are not doing it for the greed of money, they're doing it because it's part of their ethos, it's part of their DNA, it's part of who they are.
Those are the people I seek.
I seek them out, I hire them.
People that shut down their laptop at 5, want that balance in life, want to go to the soccer game, 9 to 5 only, they don't work for me, I can tell you that.
I hope they work for my competitors.
Okay, so that's the end of the video.
Kevin O'Leary, folks.
I don't know, he's probably got a home address.
Is he Canadian?
Oh, I don't know.
Wouldn't surprise me.
So I have some comments from the NPR article, and then I have a few longer takes on what quiet quitting actually is.
Somebody... I don't know.
These are all funny, but I don't want to spend too much time on this.
Like somebody says, um, good luck to you quitters.
You would never work for me.
Definitely an American trend and major reason most companies go out of the country for labor.
Be careful what you wish for dot dot dot.
Either work or stay home and spare us your excuses for being lazy!
So yeah, that's contrary to popular belief.
Globalization is because of lazy American workers.
I thought it was NAFTA.
I thought it was, you know, capital being freed across borders.
No, it's because Americans didn't work enough.
That's what I think Americans are most known for is having shorter hours and less robust work ethic.
Having nap time at work.
How are you supposed to lift up your quality of life if you don't got backbone?
You know, how are you supposed to raise that up?
That's the problem, all these soft workers.
Well, I like the commenter who was like, have fun quitting.
We don't want any quitting.
Again, no one's quitting here.
We're just going to work at the time we're supposed to go to work, leaving at the time we're supposed to leave.
You know, this person definitely has thoughts about Orwellian doublespeak.
But that like only whereas it concerns pronouns, or only whereas it concerns like the word tolerance or something.
Not quitting, just an outright lie of a word.
And then in that vein, Dave Giorgio in the NPR comment section says, it's also known for being the quote, that's not my job person.
Which that's, yeah, that should be every person.
It's not my job, none of my business.
I like how it never touches on, like, hey, maybe see how they're doing.
Like, oh man, Alexander's been, like, fucking blowing it, like, all the time.
Yeah, I don't know if you know this, but he ran through a whole pack of kittens on accident.
Like, a whole pack of kittens.
He's not doing well.
Driving's not his thing right now.
Like, maybe check on him.
The way I work, nobody should be able to tell whether or not I hit a pack of kittens that morning.
That's what I'm talking about.
I'm trying to keep that bar steady across the board, you know?
To the extent that there is any legitimacy to this, there probably is a lot of trauma involved with people having long COVID who are at work.
There's millions of people who are estimated to still have symptoms of COVID that leave them out of the workplace and then like a lot millions of more people who are still have to go to work despite having these symptoms and lots of people who've lost their family members lost their spouse lost their kids and everything and and it's still like it's not over so they're constantly reminded of this when they see oh another 3,000 people died of COVID this week
By the way you have to go to work and your mind has to be completely in the game at work or else you're quiet quitting.
Or maybe they're having to work two jobs and sorry they can't afford to do one and a half jobs for free for for one of these because they're already doing a second job.
You know?
This comment though keeps going and this is the part that I liked was Dave says these quote pro-individual anti-work ideas that are floating around dot dot dot no one absolutely no one has ever gotten ahead with that attitude.
And I thought this was a great, another little bit of great propaganda, perhaps unintentional, but like framing this worker, you know, if not an outright revolt, like a change, a shift in, you know, framing device or a shift in like the way with the worker is viewing the, the work experience as individualist.
That's really interesting.
And what he's tapping into, of course, is the more, like, self-centered, oh, this is the me generation who, you know, they want, they're obsessed with things like going to the park after work or seeing their son's soccer game or something and calling that, like, individualism.
Which is a very fun spin on the normal, like, oh, work, you know, class, class war is collectivism versus, you know, the, the individualism that we all like, you know, where, where you are, you are the most important thing, uh, unless you're a worker and then you're not.
I'm sure this person's favorite books are like Atlas Shrugged, The Fountainhead.
He's out here complaining about individualism.
I'm quiet quitting because I care about the rest of my team and I don't consider it a rat race to get promoted with them, so I'm just hanging out here.
It's funny cuz like this is happening at the same time where this other thing is happening where these like there's these like YouTube bros who are like Listen, I don't lift a goddamn finger.
All I do is chill in an infinity pool and I get a job I go on Fiverr.
I run that shit.
I do some drop shipping.
I don't do shit I've never done anything creative in my life, but I all I do is sell t-shirts, baby like that's also happening at the same time as this and it's the same thing and Which is funny because like you know they're they're figuring out and they would just call that oh that's smarter not harder where we're just like my smart thing is doing my job description.
I would say that a lot of those people are what they're like They own their own business or they're self-employed or something.
And so that is like the American dream to like have, they call it passive income.
You know, when you're, when you're wealthy, you can have passive income.
When, when you're poor or working class, you're just lazy no matter what you do.
Um, yeah, that's, that's the dream.
But my weed gets intercepted.
That's a dream is to have your money make more money, but the only reason you have that money in the first place is because you worked really hard for it.
And then you get to be the industrious, lazy person.
Yeah, it's like that hustle culture type thing.
It's really linked to a lot of the crypto bros that you see too and their whole philosophy of like, if you're poor, it's your fault.
You're not working hard enough.
You're not getting in on this.
You're not hustling like we are.
And then you read more into how they've acquired their money and they got like a half million dollar loan from their parents or something.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Or their company is subsidized by the federal government.
Yeah.
So here, are we familiar with Six Sigma?
Are you familiar with this, Sam?
I don't think so.
Okay, Tony, are you?
Yeah.
Okay, I thought you might be.
Okay, Six Sigma is like a business philosophy.
It's mostly just a way to like Sell tickets to an empty hotel conference room where you teach like the leaders of tomorrow, you know, the best ways to reduce, reduce overhead.
And it's, it's just like, uh, it's, it's like a team building, team building seminar type situation.
Like if you work in the corporate world, you might've had to attend one of these because of where, where you work.
So, uh, I found this post, personality tests and stuff.
Yeah, I don't know if they're getting rid of Thetans in the Six Sigma conferences.
I think it's mostly like, yeah, just figuring out how to create that family bond between you and your underpaid workforce.
Yeah, try to get them to imprint on you.
Yeah, be the first thing your labor force sees when they open their eyes.
Yeah, yeah.
Okay, but this is a post from a Six Sigma in Philippines.
This is a Filipino branch of Six Sigma.
But it does a good job of laying out the corporate propaganda a little better, I think.
It's still not effective, but it's at least more sensitive to the workers' point of view.
So, This is from Six Sigma PH on Facebook, Philippines, on Facebook.
The new term quiet quitting became popular these past few weeks on social media.
A news article from inquire.net defines quiet quitting as not quitting your job at all.
It's just doing what's required of you on paper.
Nothing more, nothing less.
You don't actually resign.
You stop going the extra mile for the sake of your mental health so that you avoid stress.
Okay, that I think is like the first kind of misnomer that you see and you see that like a lot.
Even on pro quiet quitting spaces, you'll see that this is, oh, this is necessary for mental health.
This is like, people have to recover, like you were talking about, which is about, you know, COVID, which is real.
And you know, people are overworked in general.
And if quiet quitting became a trend, like it would have a positive effect on, for those people.
But I feel just like, as a principle, you shouldn't do unpaid work.
Like that, that's, I feel like the mindset that we on the left or the working class or, you know, just workers in general, um, need to embrace.
Like, like me, when I'm talking to my coworkers, you know, they're talking about like, you know, my load is so fucked up today because guess what?
The preload, the people who load our trucks are severely understaffed.
So they're being asked to do far more than they're, than they are able to.
And they're, they're actually quitting in droves and we can't keep them, uh, we can't keep them employed.
So my co-workers, my fellow drivers would be like, yeah, I have to like straighten up my load before I start, you know, before I start the day.
And I'm like, do not do that.
Do not work off the clock whatsoever.
Like, I mean, the union will tell you that, but I'm telling you that right now as a friend, as a co-worker, do not work off the clock because like, what happens if you get injured?
What happens if you turn an ankle?
That was on your own time.
You're not covered by the employee health plan.
Like luckily you do have your own health insurance, but You might not be able to get workers comp for it, you know, and it's just it's beside the point like you are teaching the company that you require less time to do that amount of work.
And so none of that is ever going to change because of it.
So I just I feel like the the mental health thing it in another way is like Maybe reinforces the idea that people who are mentally strong enough, well, they can, you know, go above and beyond.
Because I don't have any mental illness, or I don't have any stress-related work issues, so I don't need any of that quiet quitting bullshit.
Sorry, I interrupted you, Tony.
Go ahead.
Oh, no, no.
I said, one thing that I find frustrating about this mentality that we all, like, as a, you know, mass, have, is that, like, I think there is, like, a time and a place for, like, unpaid labor.
And what I mean by that is, like, If you're gonna do that for your fucking boss, like, then make some sandwiches, you know?
Like, if you're gonna do, like, unpaid labor and, like, work off the clock, like, make it contribute to something that you actually believe in instead.
What do you mean by make some sandwiches?
Instead of, like, your fucking... like, feed some people.
Oh, okay.
Like, like, like, dude, like, put that... if you're gonna put effort into your stupid job, like, We have a finite amount of energy.
Yeah, there's better stuff to put that energy into, for sure.
It doesn't even have to be something like that.
Go home and fucking do your hobby more.
If you're going to use the energy, use it for something you believe in.
Yeah.
Cause you clearly have it.
Yeah.
Alexander.
Yeah.
I mean, I think Alexander nailed it too when he's just like linking it to mental health makes it seem like if you're not going above and beyond, then there's something wrong with you.
I mean, it's a basic fact, though, that, yes, the less time you spend at work, the better your mental health will be in general, because the vast majority of us would rather not be at work.
I don't care, like, how many beanbag chairs your office has, like, how sweet it is, how many snacks you can get from the snack bar there or something like that.
Like, much rather be chilling at home, right?
Yeah, yeah.
Or, like, out somewhere on vacation or somewhere.
Yeah, so this post goes on, when you spend day in and day out at a job you hate, you better believe you will be stressed out.
Over the years, that stress adds up, and you could have health problems.
Also, you bring that stress home, affecting everyone around you.
You need to work longer hours at work for the sake of the people at home, so you're not around them, because guess what?
You're a miserable son of a bitch, and they don't like you there.
Right, those are the other people who would rather be at work, the people who hate their families and hate their lives.
Let me just finish this.
Try to ask yourself, do I hate my job because of my boss, colleague, customer, company, policy, or the work I do?
And so this is the second like very insidious critique of quiet quitting, which is that, oh, well, if you feel the need to quiet quit in the first place, that means you're unsatisfied with your job.
That means you need to like find a way to make your situation at work better, or you need to pursue a different career or whatever.
And it's like, no, it's a job.
There's a reason you don't like being there.
It's because you're working for somebody else.
You're, you're laboring for somebody else.
And that's, you know, currently a requirement of the society in which we live.
If you have a job that you do enjoy, magnificent.
That rocks.
I'm so happy for you.
Most of us don't share that.
And most of us will never like be able to share it.
And sure.
You don't like spend your time wallowing in misery and maybe you look on the bright side of things, but.
Posing it as, oh, you're just, you haven't found the right, like, work situation, and that's why you don't want to spend two hours of overtime every single day unpaid after work.
That's a very, like, and you see that comment a lot in these, you know, oh, you're just a miserable person because you don't like your job.
It's like, well, I would be much happier away from the job, period.
Well, see, that's why we here at MDC Logistics, that's why we let our employees know that we have a very firm, no mother-in-law policy.
While you're on the clock, you're guaranteed not to see or hear about your mother-in-law.
Oh, yeah.
We actually have a network where it will filter any texts from your pain in the ass wife about your mother-in-law.
Those are not getting through the firewall.
So as long as you're clocked in, you know you're a mother-in-law free.
Also, football Sundays, baby.
You don't get to watch, but you get to come and wear your jersey.
You get to wear your jersey at the warehouse.
Yeah, we don't think of it as a workplace.
We think of it more as a man cave.
Yeah.
I mean, there are situations where people would feel like they want to go above and beyond, but that only exists in a dynamic in which they will benefit from that, right?
And right now, it's just an ownership class that is going to reap any benefit from you going above and beyond your job.
Now, like I will probably, I will put in more hours than I get paid for simply at Means TV because like we all share in a project that we're trying to build that as it grows like we'll be able to do more stuff and we want to get to a point where we can do even more stuff so there is like a certain So if if what I'm saying is if bosses like are so upset about this then they have to change the the fundamental labor dynamic I play here.
I mean maybe if maybe if like you owned all the trucks and and the delivery mechanisms and stuff you'd put in a little bit of extra work at the end of the day if you were answerable just to like your own workers like at all.
Absolutely yeah well it's like If you share in the ownership of the company, I mean that in a literal way, not in a metaphorical, this is our goal as a company.
Yeah, if you actually share in the ownership of the company, then your role is fundamentally different than that of just a laborer.
You might still be doing labor as a worker-owned co-op or whatever, But you actually are doing it for a reason, because you have agreed that this is the best way to move forward.
It's just a totally fundamental relationship in the workplace itself, like you said, Sam.
And none of these stories will cross that line.
They'll never go to that point.
They'll stay within that territory where, oh, well, you've got a fun job, or your boss is cool.
You can get a year-end bonus if you do what you're supposed to do.
We have a real badass Christmas party or something.
I've seen a lot of those WeWork documentaries.
I don't know if you all saw the WeWork show.
Did you all see that?
You might win a TV or a DVD player.
Which WeWork shit should I watch?
Because I'm very curious about it.
It's either on Hulu or Apple TV.
I can't remember.
Is it the scripted one or the documentary?
So I think the documentary is on Hulu.
I've seen them both.
Are they good?
Are they worth watching?
The scripted show is a good watch.
You got Jared Leto playing Adam Neumann.
Oh, sweat.
But it's all about like, oh, it's such a cool place to work, but even then you realize it's just a terrible place to work.
No matter how cool it seems, like, oh, you can get drunk at work all the time.
It actually gets bad real fast.
The WeWork offices across from my practice space in Seattle just kept getting tagged up, kept getting their windows smashed.
It rolled.
I don't know if they're still there.
I wouldn't count on it.
Is the whole company still around?
Yeah, the company's still around.
It's just crossed in valuation.
Adam Newman's no longer involved in it, but he's got some other company he's trying to push, which is basically WeWork, but for apartments.
Oh, wow.
I expected big things.
That's pretty good moonshot for him.
My most cringe ex used to wear merch from The Wing.
Are you familiar with the wing?
No.
I don't think so.
Oh, the wing was, the wing was, um, it should have been cool.
It should have been cool.
I want to place it there.
It should have been cool, but it was a WeWork, but it was a WeWork just for women and fems.
But they ended up being a little turfy, a little weird, and they totally, like, shot themselves in the foot.
Well, it's still, you're just like a landlord, right?
She used to wear the wing merch.
Like, WeWork is just being a landlord, right?
Like, but with less strict lease terms, I guess.
I think they're doing your practice space, but like for, you know, for freelancers.
Yeah, they're a real estate company that tried to invent themselves as a tech company, even though fundamentally they're just selling office space that you could get drunk at.
It's for people who missed college or whatever.
So the last point in this Six Sigma post goes, according to Jared Easley, co-author of Stop Chasing Influencer, if you stay at a job you hate for years, you could be training yourself to accept mediocrity.
That may sound a little extreme, but think about it.
You're learning how to settle for a quote, good enough situation, which will affect how you feel about other problems in your life.
When you start to settle for multiple quote, good enough, you will be wasting time, a precious resource that you will never get back.
How dare you invoke the precious resource in time of time when criticizing quiet quitting?
That's the whole point.
It's so weird.
Everything he's saying is correct, just the wrong direction.
Yeah.
You also miss opportunities by not doing what you genuinely like to do, which you will regret later.
If you accept mediocrity in your current role, it will become a habit.
If it becomes a habit, you will bring it with you even if you move to other companies or start your own business.
I love this so much which is oh if you're not happy with your job and you accept mediocrity in your job well that obviously that's going to transfer to other areas of your life like you know like oh if you have a terminal diagnosis of cancer And you just accept that.
You just accept, you know, we're going to have to like do treatment that will just like lessen your pain or whatever.
Well, guess what?
You know, your little football team or your whatever hobbies you have on the side.
Oh, you think they're going to stand up any better?
No.
No.
You're going to quietly quit your marriage next.
Like, it's just, accepting mediocrity, like, it's a bad situation.
Having to work for a living is a bad situation.
I don't, like, I'll, I will accept mediocrity in my, whatever job I have to do to live, you know?
Well, this tickles that, that uniquely American belief that we're all just millionaires and waiting, that we can all become millionaires if we just work hard and go above and beyond.
We'll move up and soon enough we'll get, we'll be an executive.
And a lot of people don't want to be like an executive at whatever company they work for Because that often involves longer like you do have to be on the call and work a lot Or you're not actually doing like much work, but you do have to like devote your life to doing shit.
Yeah, but Yeah, like you're not nothing's gonna happen like you can again once again Show us where, in the equation, where if we do go above and beyond, what benefit we're going to get out of that.
And it's not going to happen.
We're going to continue to make the same sort of wages until there's economic forces that allow us to, or we can join a union that allows us to bargain for higher wages.
That's the only way it's actually going to happen.
It's so funny when you're talking about time as a precious finite resource to be like, oh, well, if you don't spend enough time at work, that means you're also not going to spend enough time at home.
What are you talking about?
Yeah.
As one goes down, the other goes up.
That's how it works.
There's still a 24 hour day, my guy.
Like, come on.
But see, the thing is, that's what that's.
That's why quiet quitting sucks, because what you should be doing is you should be using the time that you're making sales on the phone while secretly watching restoration videos on mute with the subcaptions on, and using the company van to go to estate sales.
And that's how you're going to make it, baby.
We're going to flip those motherfuckers.
Because you know what?
I think this modern stuff's never going away, and I think there's always going to be money in it.
So we're going to start restoring stuff.
And that's what you should do instead of quiet quitting.
The last thing I wanted to touch on because I don't want to beat this topic into the fucking dirt, but so quiet quitting as a positive, you know, as like a positive balance between work and life and your mental health and productivity and all of these more like capital friendly reasons to support quiet quitting.
That's been tied to the World Economic Forum.
So I didn't know this.
I didn't know this until I saw in the comment section from Jan who says, something else that the WEF has its dirty little paws in.
And she linked an article to the weforum.org.
So worldeconomicforum.org.
And the article is, working less could benefit the entire workplace.
But how?
And it does go on to like the touchy feely liberalism about how a happy worker is a more productive worker and that sort of like neoliberal like softer progressive neoliberal propaganda.
Yeah, but Starbucks partner mentality.
Yeah, so it's like, it's not necessarily bad.
It's still, you know, it's good that you're not working off the clock or whatever, even if it does serve capital in some ways.
But because it's the World Economic Forum, which is like the boogeyman for the right wing right now, and it's, you know, they're not great people.
They are, you know, the progenitors of the Great Reset and essentially, like, Gigafying every aspect of the economy, trying to shift everything from an ownership economy to like a lease or a subscription service economy so that they can, you know, intake revenue every single month.
They're like, they're the people who made Photoshop.
You have to pay a monthly fee now to have Photoshop.
It's like that idea, essentially.
My number one pro tip for anyone trying to make it right now is if you're going to invest, invest in iCloud space so you can download more apps for more gigs.
Yeah.
So you can have all the possible gigs.
Just have those motherfuckers running all the time because there's always a job open for you.
Yeah, or you could invest in an external hard drive where you put pirated software.
You could also do that.
So it's just funny, like the conclusion they have to come to, to be against quiet quitting because quiet quitting is corporate communist propaganda.
Um, so this is Rebecca Blocker doing a huge expose on the, uh, World Economic Forum and a, uh, the quiet quitting phenomenon.
Um, Why would China, the WEF and the, by China, she means TikTok, which were, you know, pro, which was like, you know, a bunch of 20 year olds who were pro quiet quitting, which is China.
Why would China, the World Economic Forum and the Wall Street Journal be pushing a concept like quiet quitting?
Again, just like the reading comprehension on these people is not great because the Wall Street Journal article she posted was definitely not in favor of quiet quitting.
They were definitely, I imagine, Reading it from a very critical lens, but they had an article about it.
So, that's enough for Rebecca here.
Why would China, the WEF, and the Wall Street Journal be pushing a concept like quiet quitting, which encourages people not to take their jobs too seriously, to do the bare minimum, to work less, and to disconnect their identity from their job?
To me, it seems to be paving the way for communism's universal basic income.
These articles say people should stop focusing on working their way up a career ladder and instead focus on their personal time where, quote, true meaning and purpose can come from.
In a communist society, you can't work your way up the ladder.
And why would you find meaning in a job that was assigned to you by the government?
The World Economic Forum has a Futures Council on the Future of Work.
They talk about the disruption that's coming when everything switches to automation and the re-skilling that will need to take place.
They also discuss how people will be able to work to a much older age and retire later.
Oh, great.
Why?
Because most of the jobs they have in mind for us are remote button-pushing jobs controlling robots and IoT devices.
And I would just stop right here and say, why do you consider a later retirement to be a bad thing if you are criticizing quiet quitting, which is just also not working as much, right?
It's a very weird, like, contortion to do.
It keeps going.
But at the same time they are telling people the jobs they have for them help save the planet with their new technology or help make society more equitable by giving jobs to women and minorities more evenly and with truly equal pay.
This short video by the WEF proposes that robots will set us free to be more human.
They'll do the manual labor we humans used to do so we will have more time to do human things like paint or play guitar.
How could you possibly like paint this as a bad thing?
That's definitely not what's going to happen if the World Economic Forum has their way, if capital has their way in automating our jobs out of existence.
It's definitely not going to give us a UBI.
Maybe after like mass riots, like bread riots and shit, they might give us a UBI or something like that.
But the idea that Having time to play guitar or paint instead of doing your job is communist propaganda?
Again, this seems like left propaganda that I'm reading, actually.
I've seen guitars advocate for the murder.
I've seen actual guitars that were advocating for murder.
The murder of fascists, yeah.
It was written right on there.
It was saying, murdering fascists, which is what... I get called that all the time.
When a guitar wants that, they want me to be... that guitar's gonna murder me.
There was an article, I was just trying to find it, that was written in Time Magazine in February 1966.
And it was like some series about futurists, and they were like, looking toward AD 2000.
And it says, by 2000, machines will be producing so much that everyone in the US will, in effect, be independently wealthy.
With government benefits, even non-working families will have, by one estimate, an annual income of $30,000 to $40,000.
And this is in 1966 dollars.
So this is like bringing home bank that they were estimating.
And this is what time concludes will be the major problem in this society.
How to use leisure meaningfully will be a major problem, and Herman Kahn, I'm not sure who that is, foresees a pleasure-oriented society full of, quote, wholesome degeneracy.
So, these people have been freaking out about the idea that, like, workers might have a slight bit more extra time on their hands to do anything, to where they won't be so Desperate to have to go to their job and feel the need to do the extra bit because they like to live indoors.
I mean, that's the worst thing to them, that we have that sort of thing.
So now they have to stretch.
Oh, well, they have free time.
They have too much free time.
Then who the hell knows what they'll get up to.
That'll be the downfall of our society, the rise of degeneracy.
They're not working.
They're just going to spend that time coming up with new pronouns.
They're going to come up with even more genders.
We thought we got them all, but there are even more of them.
They're going to be making music, which, as we know, is just degenerate.
Guitar, sure, it seems wholesome, but it's just another avenue towards music.
No, I mean, this is totally true.
I'm sorry.
I'm going to go ahead and hit my humble brag about my day real quick.
Like this silly podcast allows me to like pay my rent so I can be a little more creative with the ways I make money outside of my just things I need to survive.
Right.
So like literally that allowed me today to go cater a brunch that was a charity brunch that was like a new charity brunch that raised money to buy someone boobs.
Like, and like, that's like a real thing I was able to do because my job allowed me to do that.
Like they're not wrong.
Everything they said is like, that's the most wholesome degeneracy.
Like that is exactly what that is.
That's like what those words were made for was for like my day catering.
It's so true.
Charity for top surgery.
We all do that every day, Tony.
You're not special.
We could be doing that every day.
We could be doing that every day, but they won't let us.
The last paragraph here is...
Their ideal is to build an army of worker bees, a well-oiled machine that's satisfied with their gu- This is already, like, stretching so hard.
It's so incomprehensible.
The idea is that we won't have to work.
That is, like, the idea that you're proposing the World Economic Forum is working towards, which is absolutely not the case.
But yeah, their ideal is to build an army of worker bees, a well-oiled machine that's satisfied with their government allowance from their government jobs because the media and TikTok have convinced them their jobs play a role in helping the planet, but their main purpose is found in their lives outside of work.
Again, how is that bad?
And eventually that government allowance won't be cash, but a digital points system.
We're already there.
I get electronically deposited checks.
It allows them to rent the things they need.
Um, yeah, uh, I would argue that somebody who has internalized the idea of working for an unpaid wage, working without compensation, probably as good of a worker bee as you could get.
I don't know if you can get a better well-oiled worker bee than somebody who does the internal shaming, does the manager's job for them by internally shaming themselves into working extra hours for free.
Yeah.
I feel like this person is arguing a completely different concept than what we are all under.
They seem to have inverted the meaning of what it actually is.
Well, they've just started from the place that the World Economic Forum is this global communist source of evil in the world.
It's not great.
World Economic Forum.
I have to keep saying this because I'm not defending the World Economic Forum.
You're wearing a t-shirt right now that says World Economic Forum rocks.
I need to explain, okay?
No, it's but like the few like the propaganda that the World Economic Forum is trying to do to convince workers that they have their best interests at heart
Is espousing theoretically good things and so you have to like as this person who is just a knee-jerk anti-WEF work you know trying to do like the whole post-left thing or the like we're the real working class thing and the world economic forum or the elites Um, when you're working from that framework, you have to like act like not doing work and finding spiritually enriching activities.
Like watching your children grow up or something is somehow bad.
And so that's, that's what you wind up with is a post like this.
That's why I found it pretty fascinating.
We'll somehow turn you into an automaton or something.
Yeah.
Okay.
Moving on.
Um, I wanted to get a little close to home here as if we haven't talked about my job enough today.
One of my buddies, John Ryan Elward, a friend of mine, fellow Teamster, fellow UPS driver, I believe he also runs the Swagged Out Unionists account.
Union Drip account.
Union Drip, yeah, Union Drip on Twitter.
He had a post go viral and his post says, he tweeted out, yes, UPS drivers can make as much as $42 an hour.
Rather than being upset about it, ask yourself why other delivery companies are not paying the same.
And I think this stems to there were like some guys on TikTok, some UPS drivers, I think on TikTok, who were talking about their wage.
I don't know if they were talking about their own wage in a bad way.
I don't understand.
I don't really.
I think maybe John Ryan Elwood is talking about some sort of backlash to the driver's wage.
I think the TikTok, if I'm correct, I think the TikTok was basically like the working class version of that awful landlord TikTok with the white guys in Cancun.
But they were just talking about like, they were like, you know, like driver, eight years, topped out, this much, boom.
And like, they were like, breaks, vacation, blah, blah, blah, handled, boom.
And like, it was cool.
It was like, hey, this is what unions get you.
Yeah, hell yeah.
I hope they name drop the Teamsters or the Union in that because that's the only reason we have that shit.
That was the only critique I saw of it.
I didn't realize I was on such a PMC podcast here.
With all the money you guys are making, you can't be working class, clearly.
There's so many different criticisms I could imagine this coming from.
Like, I could see this sort of post-life critique of like, oh, now UPS drivers aren't actual working class.
Or like a far-right critique, which is just like, oh, they're making too much money here.
You all need to, we need to lower their wages.
I think the best critique would be I deliver a lot of Amazon packages.
So I am actually like working for Jeff Bezos or something.
I'm enriching Jeff Bezos.
I think is how you could frame that or also because I deliver in Seattle.
I'm just not working class in general because I live in Seattle or because I specifically deliver to like Uh, you know, a tech company on my route.
Or I'll deliver to, you know, some other, uh...
some other liberal elite bugaboo uh for these people and therefore i am serving capital like that's the argument for what are you talking about you delivered vaccines bro oh right yeah i was actually you're doing the work of the devil like the final link in the in the biden biden china wuhan virus uh vaccine scam that was me
Hey, are labor supporters who are not union members allowed to wear Teamster merch?
Because I've been seeing it recently, and I want that fucking marijuana union shirt.
Yeah, it's a good shirt.
You buy it.
You're still supporting union.
You're supporting union labor.
So you're allowed to buy it even if you're not a member?
Yeah, you get a pass.
You can?
Cool.
There's no sort of stealing valor there?
It's not like a Sons of Anarchy sweater?
Yeah, hey, Tony, you're invited to the PCM.
Fuck yeah, fuck yeah.
Yeah, or no, the reason it gets like, oh, Starbucks aren't working class because they give Wall Street guys their lattes.
That's my favorite.
The argument that because you serve a Wall Street guy, you are literally serving the interests of capital.
I like that one a lot.
Look at you facilitating the bourgeoisie, you piece of shit.
Yeah, would they be able to do all those micro-trading if they didn't have their caffeine?
You need to sabotage them.
Put some benzos in their frappe lattes, or else you're a class traitor.
Look, you actually giving them extra caramel is your fucking choice, okay?
I know you had to have a job, but you actually doing the drizzle?
That's on you.
They didn't even ask for toffee nut, and you did that shit.
Look at you.
Okay, so back to this post, right?
This post, I guess addressing some sort of backlash against the wage that Teamster drivers make went viral.
He makes a great point here.
It's like, we make this wage.
If you're a top-rate driver, which after four years of driving full-time, you become a top-rate driver, you make $42 an hour.
Um, guess what?
The company is still profiting in the billions.
The company is still bringing in four billion.
So we are not paid.
It literally not paid enough.
We're not paid what we're worth.
Right.
Um, it might be like petty to make that argument in the face of other people making far less, but it's like we can, we can control what we get paid through the union.
Like that is the mechanism, like talking online about like what this person deserves or what this person deserves.
Um, that's all fantasy football shit.
That's all like in the realm of discourse or whatever, like.
There's nothing I can do about what you're getting paid at your job.
Like, the only power that's there is for the workers themselves to organize and demand it.
And that's the only way you can make these companies pay you what you're worth.
Yeah, and it's total propaganda to focus on, and that's what companies want you to focus on, is like how much the workers are making in, whether it's kind of in the middle of the spectrum, like with UPS drivers, or even at the top of the spectrum with professional athletes.
You saw it during the baseball labor dispute, where it'd be like, oh, Max Scherzer showing up in a Porsche, and it's like, okay, how did the owner arrive at these negotiations?
Probably a fucking helicopter or something.
Hey, Max Scherzer would never quite quit.
He's done quite the opposite.
Bleeding from the face.
I didn't feel a thing the entire ending.
Don't worry about it.
Maybe the company wants people to know about the wage or whatever.
I also want people to know about the wage.
I love bragging about my union wage.
It's the only reason I was able to buy a house.
It's the only reason I'm able to live relatively stress-free and not have to worry about what's in my bank account every second of the day.
And that's something that I wish for everybody.
I worked part-time for UPS for nine years, and it is a drastically different situation.
Part-time employees make close to minimum wage in whatever state they're in.
And that's definitely something that we need to fix in this next contract.
The contract fights are coming up in 2023, as you may be aware, Sam.
So, that's what a lot of this is ramping towards, is that fight, that next contract fight, because we have a far more militant leadership in place right now.
I'm eager to see what happens with that.
And I hope to be a part of it.
With these responses, though, to this stuff, like one of them.
In one of my Facebook groups for for drivers and for Teamsters, this guy, this guy, Mike, said, I wish everyone would shut up about the pay rate, especially on social media and Nothing worse than customers bringing up your pay rate because they read about it online on a viral post.
And no, I don't feel that way at all.
Like I feel like...
it's it's one of those things where it's like it's like a hustle culture like being pro-union is like a hustle culture that like works that's like actually real it's like i i do hustle culture for unions because it's a real mechanic that gets results it's like an actual like physical relationship between like scientific relationship between you and your boss where you can
Push this button and their knee jerks up, you know, you can hit him on the hammer with this knee and the knee goes up because that's the way the relationship works.
It's none of this nebulous.
Oh you work 14 hour days and somehow like you're going to get noticed, you know, like an executive is going to.
See you working really hard and and pluck you off the out of obscurity to be there to be their what a protege or whatever that you know that unionism is a thing that actually works and I will 100% like defend it and sing its praises because that's like You can't rely on Biden getting you a better wage.
You can't rely on your elected representatives.
Maybe they'll get you $15 an hour.
That's not great.
Well, they've proven themselves unable to even do that.
Yeah.
More responses to this that I just kind of thought were interesting and wanted to talk about.
Bree here replies.
This is on the other 98% Facebook page.
So this is like a progressive Democrat Facebook page that reposted John's tweet and it got, you know, really positive response from everybody.
This has like over 100,000 likes and loves, you know, everybody was Pretty positive and everybody was like name-dropping Teamsters in these comments like this is the reason UPS pays this is because of the Teamster and it felt like some of them were well actually being John as if John's not an active Teamster and doesn't know that the Teamsters are the reason UPS paid it but that's fine like other people read that and maybe learn something but um
Right here, what I thought was an interesting exchange was Bree says UPS is terrible.
The workers in the hubs make non-livable wages and work in extreme conditions.
Now this is true.
Like I said, part-time employees are not paid well at UPS.
And almost everybody inside the building is part-time.
Like the people who load the trucks are part-time.
The people who unload the trucks are part-time.
The people who pull overweights and irregular packages around are part-time.
So this is a real issue that Bree brings up.
But because of the way the post is framed, People see her as talking crap on a good company that pays its drivers well.
So you get responses like Adam who says, I find that extremely difficult to believe seeing as they're not only unionized, but their union is considered among the best in the industry.
And then James also says, starting 15 and guaranteed raise every year.
Tough work?
Sure, not for everyone, but at least we have a union, pension, medical benefits.
There were a lot of people that were like, You know, reacting negatively to Bree's comment because I think they still haven't accepted the fact that being union means talking shit about the company.
Yeah.
Like that's what I mean when I say there's a relationship between me and my company, which is we are on the opposite side.
We are enemies.
Adversarial.
It's fundamentally an adversarial relationship, and a union doesn't change that.
It just gives you more of a stronger footing in those battles, right?
It doesn't suddenly make you a family within the company.
No.
It focuses that anger that everybody feels.
It focuses it into a fucking laser beam that you can use to etch out your terms and like the side of the CEO's car.
It's like you're right.
You're absolutely right.
Like, yeah, the people, the people in building do need to be paid better.
And the union is the only way that that's going to get addressed.
And that will probably be part of the bargaining.
And there is this thing I'm seeing now in this movement towards labor, where even the people who have been on top of it for a while are getting even better where they're talking about like, cool, I know that when you get there, it rules, but we got to make getting there easier too.
And that's, you know, going back to the Serger joke, that's why it's so cool to see this push for unionizing the minor league.
Like that's something that it is about.
We got to do more than just make people get paid what they're worth, but we also got to throw that ladder down.
Like, for real, for real.
And like, not, not, you know, not make it hard.
And that, it's cool seeing that.
Yeah.
Yeah, and then finally Wayne Pye says, uh, yes, unions are great if you can't look after yourself.
Lone wolf.
Lone wolf.
Yeah.
I love it so much.
I love this.
I see this argument a lot.
It's like, oh, I guess you're too much of a baby to negotiate all by yourself, huh?
Too scared?
You need a nightlight when you go in to apply for a job?
Amazing.
Oh, I guess.
Wow.
Hmm.
Oh, I guess.
Wow.
Somebody, somebody needs a hospital to fix that broken leg for them.
Hmm.
Okay.
I just soaked it.
I just Epsom salt that for, for two weeks.
We've gone through all these reactions to quiet quitting and not a single boss has, uh, highlighted the best tactic, the best form of quote unquote quiet quitting, which is taking the hour long shit in the middle of the day.
Oh yeah.
They're not freaked out enough yet to start going after people's bathroom time.
Well not publicly at least.
Because when it's me it's not quite quitting.
I guess on Amazon you have like limits and shit on that.
Well I'm sure like a lot of workplaces they'll accuse you of stealing time.
I mean even at a unionized workplace you'll get accused of stealing time for taking a shit and then you tell them fuck you and that's about the end of it.
But yeah, at a regular workplace, sure.
If you go to the bathroom and you're not feeling well or whatever, I'm pretty sure they got eyes on you for that shit.
Pro tip, have an awesome resume, but make sure that your HR and everyone knows when you get in there that you do have IBS.
And say, like, it's just embarrassing.
It's just really bad.
But you gotta take those shits and keep them numbers up at the same time.
Yeah, but I love, I love, just real quick, I love how Wayne has, like, wrapped up, you know, like, the idea of masculinity, like, like, uh, individualism wrapped up with masculinity, wrapped up with being, like, a servant of your boss somehow.
Like, that's, it's, it's so funny to see these people somehow, like, tie losing in the workplace towards being based, being in alpha.
Like, yeah, I'm actually, like, a based Alpha Chad because I do whatever my boss tells me and I don't ever win against him.
I handle all negotiations on my own.
Sure, I make $20 less than you an hour, but that's base.
This is like a cop saying, oh, somebody needs their lawyer to speak for them, I guess.
Like, I guess, wow, you don't even know what to say, huh, if your lawyer's not here.
Wow, okay.
Wow, somebody's whipped by their lawyer.
Look at you leaning on the Constitution.
Fucking do it on your own.
Yeah.
All right.
Well, that's the episode.
Hey, thank you so much, Sam, for joining us.
It was a pleasure having you here.
Hey, Alexander, Tony, it was fun to be on.
Thanks for having me.
Yeah, absolutely.
Please subscribe to MeansTV at means.tv, I believe is the link.
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Support this worker-owned co-op streaming service.
Distribution service.
It's a great model.
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You want to give the details for that stuff?
Sure, yeah.
It's every Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday morning over at means.tv.
You can, as you said, pick your own subscription and also you can listen to District Sentinel A radio podcast on all your podcasting platforms.
Probably same places you can find Minion Death Cult and stuff.
Yeah, same places.
And also a browser.
I think you probably listen to your show on a browser too.
Yeah.
Not Safari though.
You can tow a safari.
All those links will be in the episode description.
Thanks so much to Sam Sachs for being on the show again.
If you want to support Minion Death Cult, you can do so at patreon.com slash MinionDeathCult, P-A-T-R-E-O-N dot com slash MinionDeathCult.
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That's a hard number.
You can't pick any, you can pick a higher number if you want, but that's the number, that's the minimum.
$3.11 a month gives you four bonus episodes a month, one every week, and we have the season finale of The Anarchists coming this week with some bonus supplemental materials.
I haven't watched this show.
Is this show worth watching?
Yeah, it's a fascinating look at anarcho-capitalists pretending to be anarchists in Mexico and also making some severe, severe mistakes along the way.
Basically all the people who are commenting that we read earlier to Quiet Quitting.
Highly recommended show.
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