MadhuGururajan

when tech folk get milked by every other merchant and pay extra, while getting ripped off.. we do feel like daily wage workers.

then you're oddly commenting on a thread about striking.. which is secondary to the important step of building organizations and support structures. Its hard to near impossible for people to strike who depend on that pay check to clear debt, pay rent, etc. Participating in regular organizing events is the right advice, and you got off on the wrong foot asking first for people to strike and only when asked questions you revealed people need to organize. without the proper support structures and alternative means of income in place, it is near impossible to convince people to strike. They need the strike because they don't have financial security to stop obeying their boss. You're ignoring the initial situation. That's creating a perception of you being about only what you think needs to happen without considering others.

Edit: I did not mean YOU specifically asked people to strike first but you get the point. I am reacting to "we need to strike" as a sentence on its own.

maybe try to win over people instead of assuming we don't know how tough it is out there as a blue collar worker? I didn't say your life was a walk in the park. I said we as tech workers are still breaking our health for capitalist profits which we don't see much of. Why do you think I chose an office job? My father was an assembly line worker making automotive starter motors. He came home and slept is all i remember from his working days. You think you should feel proud of someone going away from backbreaking work or do you think less of them because they decided to make their lives a little bit easier?

If you still get paid for a job not well done.. it's still hurts the company. Believe me, there has been an attack on tech workers by the industry. Firing people during record profits, using LLMs to upset the negotiating power of artists and software people alike, not giving inflation adjusted pay hikes, etc. You can even see the billionaire owned media grind their gears trying to come up with words to discredit workers doing their bare-minimum such as "quiet quitting".

It shouldn't be a conspiracy theory to claim that a few people control the reins of a lot of workers... in reality it's a community of few thousand billionaires cooperating to oppress workers.

Edit:

Just because we don't physically picket in front of our offices, does not mean we are not protesting. It's just not visible in an outward manner.

And just because we all seem to be doing our own thing, doesn't mean we aren't organizing. We just consider organizing as just quietly aligning our wallets and behaviours without being overt about it. I am sure there are a lot of organization for software developers for people who do want to be loud about it too.

Labour is physical work but working your eyes and brain is also taxing. It's just a different set of muscles/organs. Sitting at the desk all day is also taxing. it's just not evident enough to people who see an AC and think that's comfortable. It's not healthy long term. Leads to all sorts of health issues.

Many of us tech workers joke that we will make our bag of money, retire, and go do farming. But you must understand why we joke like that.

For a lack of physical activity, desk workers suffer numerous health issues due to sitting all day/lack of movement. We are deprived of natural sunlight and wind in our badly lit offices staring at bright screens.

My point is that I said i felt isolated by blue collar workers not considering tech workers as the same class. You just went ahead and proved my point.

this is one of the reasons you don't see class solidarity from tech workers. The blue collar bunch think we are somehow same as the capitalist class.

Edit:

I also think the definition of labourer is not as myopic as you make it out to be. If one sells their time/works for money then they are labourers. Only those who make their money/capital/resources work for them cannot be considered labourer. Even a manager is a labourer. I would exclude CEOs because they invest and are also board members in their buddies' companies. Their employ is just a facade to maintain control and keep the power "within the family" so to speak.

you should try to get off of your imaginary high horse or you might hurt yourself.

A strike is a refusal to commit labour to the company. Same as not doing a good job. In japan the ticket checkers had a strike where they did their job as usual but did not collect the payment for issuing tickets. THAT was considered a strike.

why must quiet quitting not be considered too? We don't participate in whatever greedy venture by doing the bare minimum.

I didn't blame blue collar workers. I said I was isolated because even though both white collar and blue collar workers sell their labour for a living, somehow we are never accepted as real labour just because the elite among us make $500k a year for instance.

Eh.. having unions sounds good to me.. a white collar worker. I am just not considered part of the labour class by blue collar workers. So it makes me feel isolated. Don't be mistaken, we keyboard thumpers already fight corporate bullshit daily. Th e disdain is from blue collar workers.

we all ARE striking daily. We're fighting bullshit RTO mandates and quiet quitting everyday

Sure Mr. Dessalines. Communists are infallible and we should all defer to the geniuses who have to hide on the internet like vampires from the sun. there's no point in history where a communist was not infalible! You think my praise of those specific people and my detestation of the same people can't co-exist? A revolution is not without bloodshed. But it's folly to think you're perfect just because you're a communist. Remember you're human first.

How is it only slightly worse?

I am a westerner. No other comment. You've already made up your mind.

So are the policy makers of the so called "developed" nations who immediately scoff and label anything good done for society as "communist". Seems like the people who made up their minds are the ones actively screwing over the U.S and U.K (I am sure there are other countries where the brain rot is expanding to).

And of course the rest of the world have made up their mind. Who wouldn't after seeing for-profit healthcare and industrial prison complex, the war-mongering in the name of democracy of the capitalist class.

Anything good done for the common citizen and the planet s considered "socialist" and within a fraction of a second labelled as "evil"? Isn't that hypocrisy? Capitalism's treatment of "Just Stop Oil" activists is enough to convince a lot of people who are not brainwashed by propaganda.