Reminder: Do not buy from Amazon or even open the website on 10 July 2018, in solidarity with the transnational strike.
Amazon workers in Spain have called for a transnational strike because Amazon has been avoiding accountability for its labour rights violations by merely shifting the work (and the human rights abuses Amazon inflicts on their workers) to non-striking countries, each time a strike occurs. If there is widespread striking transnationally, Amazon will have no choice but to recognize the strikers’ demands in order to keep their facilities functioning.
Our job as allies is to support the strike by avoiding using the Amazon website or purchasing anything from Amazon for as long as the strike continues. A mass boycott of the site, coinciding with the strike, will strengthen the workers’ bargaining position and could be crucial to Amazon workers gaining back basic rights in a variety of countries.
Please remember this includes subsidiaries like Twitch and Audible.
This is tomorrow!
Please do not shop on Amazon tomorrow.
Please do not stream Amazon music or video tomorrow
Please do not order from sites using Amazon Payments tomorrow.
For one day, please, avoid it.
As a worker-for-rent who’s worked during strikes or demonstrations – PLEASE, if there’s a strike DO NOT DO BUSINESS WITH THAT COMPANY ON THAT DAY IF THERE’S ANY WAY TO AVOID IT. Not only do folks like me get an easy day, it’s also a powerful act of class solidarity.
Also, if you’re a social media type of person, please tweet and comment at the company that you’re choosing not to use their services, in solidarity of the strike. Make sure they know.
But still interested in feeding yourself? What if I told you that there’s a woman with a blog who had to feed both herself and her young son…on 10 British pounds ($15/14 Euro) per week?
Let me tell you a thing.
This woman saved my life last year. Actually saved my life. I had a piggy bank full of change and that’s it. Many people in my fandom might remember that dark time as when I had to hock my writing skills in exchange for donations. I cried a lot then.
This is real talk, people: I marked down exactly what I needed to buy, totaled it, counted out that exact change, and then went to three different stores to buy what I needed so I didn’t have to dump a load of change on just one person. I was already embarrassed, but to feel people staring? Utter shame suffused me. The reasons behind that are another post all together.
AgirlcalledJack.com is run by a British woman who was on benefits for years. Things got desperate. She had to find a way to feed herself and her son using just the basics that could be found at the supermarket. But the recipes she came up with are amazing.
You have to consider the differing costs of things between countries, but if you just have three ingredients in your cupboard, this woman will tell you what to do with it. Check what you already have. Chances are you have the basics of a filling meal already.
Bake your own bread. It’s easier than you think. Here’s a list of many recipes, each using some variation of just plain flour, yeast, some oil, maybe water or lemon juice. And kneading bread is therapeutic.
She has a book, but many recipes can be found on her blog for free. She prices her recipes down to the cent, and every year she participates in a project called “Living Below the Line” where she has to live on 1 BP per day of food for five days.
Things improved for me a little, but her website is my go to. I learned how to bake bread (using my crockpot, but that was my own twist), and I have a little cart full of things that saved me back then, just in case I need them again. She gives you the tools to feed yourself, for very little money, and that’s a fabulous feeling.
Tip: Whenever you have a little extra money, buy a 10 dollar/pound/euro giftcard from your discount grocer. Stash it. That’s your super emergency money. Make sure they don’t charge by the month for lack of use, though.
I don’t care if it sounds like an advertisement–you won’t be buying anything from the site. What I DO care about is your mental, emotional, and physical health–and dammit, food’s right in the center of that.
If you don’t need this now, pass it on to someone who does. Pass it on anyway, because do you REALLY know which of the people in your life is in need? Which follower might be staring at their own piggy bank? Trust me: someone out there needs to see this.
Reblogging for all the impoverished students. Jack is the breadline queen. And if you don’t need this – donate to your nearest food bank, stat.
Reblogging for students, working folks, and everyone who’s ever had to choose between essentials at the store because you can only afford milk OR bread, not both.
He is white. Guaranteed he won’t be terminated from his job like he
should be & the female being groped has dark skin so she will be
seen In the wrong because of her skin color. This is sexual harassment on nation tv
people are disgusting
The fact a female is also justifying it, is horrible
What in the actual fuck? Mel B has been through too much to deal with this non sense
Unionized UPS Teamsters – 260,000 of them – are set to strike in the
biggest American strike since UPS’s unionized drivers walked out in
1997.
Superficially, the issue is about the company moving to seven-day
delivery, but the issue that’s forcing the strike is the sizable cohort
of union members who are unwilling to accept a two-tier workplace where
established workers get the full protection of the union and younger
hires are given a worse deal. This has been a traditional way that
employers have split, weakened and ultimately killed their workers’
unions – by buying off the long-established employees with better deals
that make the workers who’ll replace them feel that unions have nothing
to offer them, which establishes divisions that can be exploited later
to lay off those higher-paid workers, leaving only the lowest-paid
employees and no union they can use to press for better pay.
It seems like some of UPS’s Teamsters have figured out that solidarity pays.
Yo, if they do strike, don’t listen to the media bitching about those workers being uppity or what the fuck ever. Transit and shipping is a increasingly huge industry in the US, and the Teamsters should be cheered on and congratulated for demanding solidarity and support for junior workers–formal union members or not.
If you’re waiting longer on Amazon packages or whatever, of course, that doesn’t mean you can’t complain–but frame your complaints to aim at UPS management for failing to treat its workers well and negotiate, not at the workers themselves. In this Second Gilded Age, that’s the only way we’re ever going to see any kind of improvement from the exploitation of the nation by the uber-wealthy–and UPS certainly qualifies.
Me 