zlacker

The general public is only going to support strikes to the extent that they look like protests against unacceptable treatment. If the strikers start "flexing their labor muscle" - if it looks like they're exploiting rather than responding to the crisis - the millions of unemployed Americans are going to sour on it very quickly.

>>SpicyL+(OP)
We can re-evaluate in a few weeks when the healthcare system and supply chains are failing under extreme load (hundreds of thousands of deaths, millions infected). Why work a terrible job when the federal government will compensate you to remain home in safety? Meet their demands or experience pain. It's not emotional, it's economic cause and effect.

I will admit I'm enjoying the schadenfreude of workers finally having some power due to a Congressional response to a pandemic, much to the chagrin of "but that's how the free market works" apologists.

>>toomuc+o
Right, that's the framing that will make people lose sympathy. "Give us what we want or you'll be in a world of pain" is an obviously sociopathic response to a pandemic; if the organizers took such a stance I honestly think strike-breakers might be resurrected to deal with it.

>>SpicyL+Q1
> if the organizers took such a stance I honestly think strike-breakers might be resurrected to deal with it.

That'll sell well in an election year with states and the federal government overextending themselves already due to a woefully inadequate initial response. We can't even get masks and ventilators manufactured at the necessary rate, and we're going to send force to assist Amazon Fulfillment? We're not even sending in force to assist first responders and medical practitioners.

Amazon workers have options during this, including just going home. That's Amazon's problem, not the country's. No one is entitled to cheap delivered ecommerce services. If Amazon can't make the economics work without coerced labor, good riddance.

>>toomuc+s2
We're absolutely sending in force to assist first responders and medical practitioners. The National Guard has been building overflow facilities across the country, and the Navy's landed in LA and New York with hospital ships.

>>toomuc+o
For better or worse, your schadenfreude will only last as long as the aid package. When the money runs out, the power dynamic reverses, and the economic aftermath may well leave poorer Americans in a worse bargaining position than they were before (as economic downturns often do).

>>throwa+s5
Let's see what the electorate looks like, and its appetite for change is, after 10 months of a raging global pandemic.

We're only a few weeks in, and we've already drastically expanded benefits to those in need (the stimulus bill I mentioned upthread) much more than we would've under normal circumstances. Quite a bit of change can occur in a year, no?

>>toomuc+E5
There is that possibility, and while I can understand the desire for a change of administration after all of this, I can't understand why socialists are so positively gleeful. The federal government (not just the administration, but the CDC and the FDA as well) have failed in every conceivable regard in this pandemic response (somehow after 3 global outbreaks including 2 respiratory diseases in recent years, the CDC couldn't be bothered to secure a supply of masks and ventilators, never mind the testing debacle) while private industry and state/local governments are picking up the slack (scaling up testing capacity, innovating on treatments and interventions, lobbying for aid, scaling up supply chains, etc). Maybe the media will take care to spin this as a "failure of capitalism" somehow, but as far as the truth is concerned, it doesn't strike me as favoring more government.

>>throwa+u7
> Maybe the media will take care to spin this as a "failure of capitalism" somehow, but as far as the truth is concerned, it doesn't strike me as favoring more government.

The Fed is predicting 47 million unemployed [1], at a 32% unemployment rate. That's a lot of folks without health insurance. 68k people in the US die every year because of lack of access to healthcare, and 50% of bankruptcies are due to medical debt, under "normal" circumstances. That is a "failure of capitalism" not replicated in other developed countries.

Sometimes, to fix a system, you must break it. This is the "break it" part. [2]

[1] https://www.cnbc.com/2020/03/30/coronavirus-job-losses-could...

[2] https://reason.com/2020/03/27/pandemic-related-unemployment-...

>>toomuc+Q8
EDIT: The parent has significantly revised their comment since I replied such that my comment doesn't make sense in the new context.