The American #neoliberal malaise - celebrated in by "centrists" who insisted that everything was fine and nothing could be changed - didn't just lead to a sense of helplessness, but also *hopelessness*. #Denialism and #nihilism are Siamese twins, and the YOLO approach to the #ClimateEmergency, #covid mitigation, the housing crisis and other pressing issues can't be disentangled from the Thatcherite maxim that #ThereIsNoAlternative.

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If there's no alternative, then we're doomed. Dig a hole, climb inside, pull the dirt down on top of yourself.

But anything that can't go on forever will eventually stop. For decades, leftists have taken a back seat to liberals in the progressive coalition, allowing "unionize!" to be drowned out by "learn to code!" The liberal-led coalition ceded the mantle of radical change to fake populist demagogues on the right.

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This opened a space for a mirror-world politics that insisted that "conservatives" were the true defenders of women (because they were transphobes), of bodily autonomy (because they were vaccine deniers), of the environment (because they opposed wind-farms) and of workers (because they opposed immigration):

https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/05/not-that-naomi/#if-the-naomi-be-klein-youre-doing-just-fine

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Anything that can't go on forever will eventually stop. A new coalition dedicated to fighting corporate power has emerged, tackling capitalism's #monopoly power, and the #corruption and abuse of workers it enables. That coalition is global, it's growing, and it's kicking ass.

Case in point: California just passed a law that will give every fast-food worker in the state a 30% raise.

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This law represents a profound improvement to the lives of the state's poorest workers - workers who spend long hours feeding their neighbors, but often can't afford to feed *themselves* at the end of a shift.

But just as remarkable as the *substance* of this new law is the *path* it took - a path that runs through a new sensibility, a new *vibe*, that is more powerful than mere political or legal procedure.

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The story is masterfully told in #TheAmericanProspect by veteran labor writer #HaroldMeyerson:

https://prospect.org/labor/2023-09-13-half-million-california-workers-get-raise/

The story starts with Governor Newsom signing a bill to create a new statewide labor-business board to mediate between workers and bosses, with the goal of elevating the working conditions of the state's large, minimum-wage workforce.

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The passage of this law triggered howls of outrage from the state's fast-food industry, who pledged to spend $200m to put forward a ballot initiative to permanently kill the labor-business board.

This is a familiar story. In 2019, California's state legislature passed #AB5, a bill designed to end the gig-work fiction that people whose boss is an algorithm are actually "independent businesses," rather than employees.

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AB5 wasn't perfect - it swept up all kinds of genuine freelancers, like writers who contributed articles to many publications - but the response wasn't aimed at fixing the bad parts. It was designed to destroy the good parts.

After #AB5, #Uber and #Lyft poured more than $200m into #Prop22, a ballot initiative designed to permanently bar the California legislature from passing any law to protect "gig workers."

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Prop 22's corporate backers flooded the state with disinformation, and procured a victory in 2020. The aftermath was swift and vicious, with Prop 22 used as cover in mass-firings of unionized workers across the state's workforce:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/01/05/manorialism-feudalism-cycle/#prop22

Workers and the politicians who defend them were supposed to be crushed by Prop 22. Its message was "there is no alternative." "Abandon hope all ye who enter here." "Resistance is futile."

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Prop 22 was worth spending $200m on because it wouldn't just win this fight - it would win *all* fights, forever.

But that didn't happen. When fast-food barons announced they were going to pump another $200m into a ballot initiative to kill fair wages for food service workers, they got a hell of a surprise. #SEIU - a union that has long struggled to organize fast-food workers - collaborated with progressive legislators to introduce a pair of new, even further-reaching bills.

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One bill would have made the corporate overseers of franchise businesses jointly liable for lawbreaking by franchisees - so if a McDonald's restaurant owner stole their employees' wages, McDonalds corporate would also be on the hook for the offense. The second bill would restore funding and power to the state #IndustrialWelfareCommission, which once routinely intervened to set wages and working standards in many state industries:

https://www.gtlaw-laborandemployment.com/2023/08/the-california-iwc-whats-old-is-new-again/

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Fast-food bosses fucked around, and *boy* did they find out. Funding for the #IWC passed the state budget, and the franchisee joint liability is set to pass the legislature this week. The fast-food bosses cried uncle and begged Newsom's office for a deal. In exchange for defunding the IWC and canceling the vote on the liability bill, the industry has agreed to an hourly wage increase for the state's 550,000 fast-food workers, from $15.50 to $20, taking effect in April.

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The deal also includes annual raises of either 3.5% or the real rise in cost of living. It keeps the labor-management council that the original bill created (the referendum on killing that council has been cancelled). The council will include two franchisees, two fast food corporate reps, two union reps, two front-line fast-food workers and a member of the public.

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It will have the power to direct the state Department of Labor to directly regulate working conditions in fast-food restaurants, from health and safety to workplace violence.

It's been nearly a century since business/government/labor boards like this were commonplace.

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The revival is a step on the way to bringing back the practice of #SectoralBargaining, where workers set contracts for *all* employers in an industry. Sectoral bargaining was largely abolished through the dismantling of the #NewDeal, though elements of it remain. Entertainment industry unions are called "guilds" because they bargain with all the employers in their sector - which is why *all* of the Hollywood studios are being struck by #SAGAFRTRA and the #WGA.

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So what changed between 2020 - when rideshare bosses destroyed protections for workers by flooding the zone with #Prop22 disinformation - and 2023, when the fast food bosses folded like a cheap suit? It wasn't changes to the laws governing ballot initiatives, nor was it a lack of ready capital for demolishing worker rights. Fast food executives weren't visited by three ghosts in the night who convinced them to care for their workers. Their hearts didn't grow by three sizes.

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What changed was the *vibe*. The #HotLaborSummer was a *rager*, and it's not showing any signs of slowing. Obviously that's true in California, where nurses and hotel workers are also striking, and where strikebreaking companies like #Instawork ("Uber for #scabs") attract swift regulatory sanction, rather than demoralized capitulation:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/07/30/computer-says-scab/#instawork

The hot labor summer wasn't a season - it was a turning point.
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Everyone's forming unions. Think of #EquityStripNoHo, the first strippers' union in a generation, which won recognition from their scumbag bosses at #NorthHollywood's #StarGardenClub, who used every dirty trick to kill workplace democracy.

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The story of the Equity Strippers is *amazing*. Two organizers, Charlie and Lilith, appeared on @adamconover's #Factually podcast to describe the incredible creativity and solidarity they used to win recognition, and the continuing struggle to get a contract out of their bosses, who are still fucking around and assuming they will not find out:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_fgXihmHIZk

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Like the fast-food bosses, the Star Garden's owners are in for a surprise. One of the most powerful elements of the Equity Strippers' story is the solidarity of their *customers*. Star Garden's owners assumed that their clientele were indiscriminate, horny assholes who didn't care about the wellbeing of the workers they patronized, and would therefore cross a picket-line because parts is parts.

Instead, the bar's clientele sided with the workers.

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People *everywhere* are siding with workers. A decade ago, when #VideoGame actors voted on a strike, the tech workers who coded the games were incredibly hostile to them. "Why should *you* get residuals for *your* contribution to this game when we don't?"

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But SAG-AFTRA members who provide voice acting for games just overwhelmingly voted to authorize a strike, and this time the story is very different. This time, #TechWorkers are ride-or-die for their comrades in the sound booths:

https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/business/story/2023-09-13/video-game-voice-actor-sag-strike-interactive-agreement-actors-strike

What explains the change in tech workers' animal sentiments? Well, on the one hand, labor rights are in the air. The decades of cartoonish, lazy dismissals of labor struggles have ended.

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And on the other hand, tech workers have been #proletarianized, with 260,000 layoffs in the sector, including 12,000 layoffs at Google that came immediately after a #StockBuyback *that would have paid those 12,000 salaries for the next 27 years*:

https://doctorow.medium.com/the-proletarianization-of-tech-workers-ad0a6b09f7e6

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Larry @lessig once laid out a theory of change that holds that our society is governed by four forces: #law (what's legal), #norms (what's socially acceptable), #markets (what's profitable) and #code (what's technologically possible):

https://cs.stanford.edu/people/eroberts/cs181/projects/2010-11/CodeAndRegulation/about.html

These four forces interact. When queer relationships were normalized, it made it easier to legalize them, too - and then the businesses that #MarriageEquality became both a force for more normalization and legal defense.
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When Lessig formulated this argument, much of the focus was on technology - how file-sharing changed norms, which changed law. But as the decades passed, I've come to appreciate what the argument says about *norms*, the conversations we have with one another.

Neoliberalism wants you to think that you're an individual, not a member of a polity. Neoliberalism wants you to bargain with your boss as a "free agent," not a union member.

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It wants you to address the climate emergency by recycling more carefully - not by demanding laws banning single-use plastics. It wants you to fight monopolies by shopping harder - not by busting trusts.

But that's not what we're doing - not anymore. We're forming unions. We're demanding a #GreenNewDeal. And we're busting some trusts.

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The #DoJ #AntitrustDivision case against #Google is the (first) trial of the century, reviving the ancient and noble practice of fighting monopolies with courts, not empty platitudes.

The trial is *incredible*, and #YosefWeitzman's reporting on #BigTechOnTrial is required reading. I'm following it closely (thankfully, there's a fulltext #RSS feed):

https://www.bigtechontrial.com/p/what-makes-google-great

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The neoliberal project of instilling learned helplessness about corporate power has hit the wall, and it's wrecked. The same norms that made us furious enough to put Google on trial are the norms that made us angry - not cynical - about #ClarenceThomas's bribery scandals:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/06/clarence-thomas/#harlan-crow

And they're the same norms that made us support our striking comrades, from hotel housekeepers to Hollywood actors, from strippers to Starbucks baristas:

https://thetyee.ca/News/2023/09/13/Starbucks-Workers-Back-At-Strike/

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Yes, Starbucks baristas. The Starbucks unions that won hard-fought recognition drives are now fighting the next phase of corporate fuckery: Starbucks corporate's refusal to bargain for a contract. Starbucks is betting that if they just stall long enough, the workers who support the union will move on and they'll be able to go back to abusing their workers without worrying about a union.

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They're fucking around, and they're finding out. Starbucks workers at two shops in #BritishColumbia - #ClaytonCrossing in #Surrey and #ValleyCentre in #Langley - have authorized strikes with a *91% majority*:

https://thetyee.ca/News/2023/09/13/Starbucks-Workers-Back-At-Strike/

Where did the guts to do this come from? Not from labor law, which remains disgustingly hostile to workers (though that's changing, as we'll see below).

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It came from norms. It came from *getting pissed off* and talking about it. Shouting about it. Arguing about it.

Laws, markets and code matter, but they're nothing without norms. That's why Uber and Lyft were willing to spend $200m to fight fair labor practices. They didn't just want to keep their costs low - they wanted to snuff out the *vibe*, the *idea* that workers deserve a fair deal.

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They failed. The idea didn't die. *It thrived*. It merged with the idea that corporations and the wealthy corrupt our society. It was joined by the idea that monopolies harm us all. They're losing. We're winning.

The BC Starbucks workers secured *91% majorities* in their strike votes. This is what worker power looks like. As Jane McAlevey writes in her *Collective Bargain*, these supermajorities - *ultramajorities* - are how we win.

https://doctorow.medium.com/a-collective-bargain-a48925f944fe

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The neoliberal wing of the Democratic party hires high-priced consultants who advise them to seek 50.1% margins of victory - and then insist that nothing can be done because we live in the Manchin-Synematic Universe, where razor-thin majorities mean that there is no alternative. Labor organizers fight for 91% majorities - in the face of bosses' gerrymandering, disinformation and voter suppression - and *get shit done*.

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Shifting the norms - having the conversations - is the tactic, but *getting shit done* is the *goal*. The Biden administration - a decidedly mixed bag - has some incredible, technically skilled, principled fighters who know how to get shit done. Take #LinaKhan, who revived the long-dormant #Section5 of the #FederalTradeAct, which gives her broad powers to ban "unfair and deceptive" practices:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/01/10/the-courage-to-govern/#whos-in-charge

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Khan's wielding this broad power in all kinds of exciting ways. For example, she's seeking a ban on #noncompetes, a form of bondage that shackles workers to shitty bosses by making it illegal to work for anyone else in the same industry:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/02/02/its-the-economy-stupid/#neofeudal

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Noncompete apologists argue these protect employers' investment in training and willingness to share sensitive trade secrets with employees. But the majority of noncompetes are applied to fast food workers - yes, the same workers who just won a 30%, across-the-board raise - in order to prevent Burger King cashiers from seeking $0.25/hour more at a local Wendy's.

Meanwhile, the most trade-secret intensive, high-training industry in the world - tech - has *no* noncompetes.

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