Sometimes, you need a little poetry » « How did I end up with such cute grandkids?

It’s May Day, and you know what that means…

STRIKE!

I support the idea, and I won’t cross any of those picket lines, but this sure is the easiest time ever to participate in a general strike, since I’m not going anywhere anyway.

Sometimes, you need a little poetry » « How did I end up with such cute grandkids?

Comments

  1. says

    God Damn it. Mayday is something I’ve been observing for 20 years. Today the Covidiots are protesting in Salem, OR today. They are potentially going to screw up our state reopening metrics by causing a spike by complete ignorance and incompetence. We all want things back to the way they were, but these idiots are on schedule to fuck up the thing they want. If we get a spike two weeks from now the lockdown continues for another two weeks. We’re down around 100 cases state wide now and that kind of shithead behavior could give us another 50-100 easy. That will actually make the thing they want harder to achieve.

  2. Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls says

    Very easy not to cross a picket line if you are staying in place. I will be out of the house to check on and fix any damage from the 2-day storm that dumped 3.4″ of rain in my area.

  3. blf says

    Amusingly enough, I’d overlooked that today was a holiday here in France, and so when I went out to get a few essentials I’m running low on, was a bit confused at first why some shops allowed to open during the lockdown were closed. Ah, yes… worked it out rather quickly… no picket lines but the lines at the open shops were perhaps a tad longer than usual.

    Here in France, the authorites have not been too tolerant recently of amazon’s antics during the pandemic, Amazon closes French warehouses after court ruling on coronavirus (16-April-2020):

    Court said firm not doing enough to protect staff and told it to stop selling non-essentials

    […]

    On Tuesday a court in Nanterre, Paris, issued an emergency ruling requiring the company to stop selling non-essential goods for a month while it works out new safety measures.

    Sales of food, medicine and hygiene supplies are still allowed under the ruling. However, Amazon France said that given the “inherent complexity” of its activities, and the potential €1m (£870,000) fine for each violation of the ruling, the risk [of losing money from keeping its six French distribution centres open] was too high.

    Amazon France’s chief executive, Frédéric Duval, denounced the court’s order on Thursday, saying the company had spent colossal amounts on health precautions including sanitary gels and face masks. He said the firm would appeal. [they did, and were told to go feck themselves –blf]

    Duval said that rather than limiting its activities, Amazon had temporarily suspended trade through the warehouses because the court order was too vague.

    There is a huge ambiguity, he told RTL radio. Is a nail clipper a hygiene product? Is a condom a medical item? I’m not able to define that.

    […]

    The six warehouses in France employ 10,000 permanent and temporary employees. Amazon will tap a state partial unemployment scheme to pay its employees, according to an internal document seen by Reuters. [our highly profitable business cannot pay our workers, oh no, no no no… let the taxpayer do it!]

    The shutdown plays into a public war of words between Amazon and the French unions that represent its warehouse workers. In a statement, the company squarely laid the blame for the shutdown on the union complaint that led to the ruling. [we do nothing wrong, it’s all the union’s fault!]

    The Solidaires union, which brought the complaint, said it was merely asking Amazon to enforce a ban on non-essential items that the company “has been claiming for weeks”, and said a similar judgment had been levied against La Poste, the French state postal service, the week before.

    Amazon insisted it was providing adequate security measures for staff, noting the implementation of temperature checks and mask distribution.

    [… B]ut the court found Amazon had not done enough to enforce physical distancing, to ensure that turnstiles and locker rooms were virus-free, or to increase cleaning of its warehouses. Unions said one worker infected with the virus was in intensive care.

    […]

    Amazon is no stranger to using shutdowns as a political weapon. In 2018 the company blocked shipments to Australia from its overseas stores after a sales tax was imposed on imported goods. But that standoff came to an end when Amazon backed down six months later, reopening overseas shipments in time for the Black Friday sales.

    […]

  4. whheydt says

    Re: Ray @ #1…
    I think governors should announce that there will be no re-opening until at least 6 weeks after the last gathering that violates limits on number of people, social distancing, or mask rules.

    So…go ahead and protest. All you’re going to do is delay what you’re asking for.

  6. says

    @#3, blf:

    Amazon is being absolutely heedless of coronavirus, so you’re probably lucky to have them shut stuff down. I keep seeing posts from people who work for them or who were seeking jobs from them about how they refuse to give even the slightest nod to social distancing, which is something they don’t even have to actively pay for.