The simple fact is that it is not enough to “punish Labor” in the coming elections. The real challenge is to build a political alternative to Labor that will act for the majority, not slavishly serve the billionaire class.

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[–] zero_gravitas 13 points 1 month ago (1 children)

However, simply voting socialist and Greens is not enough.

The type of working-class political alternative we need must be able to help build the movements in our communities, campuses and workplaces. It has to be campaigning every day for progressive change, not just at elections.

This is the key, we've got to build the grass-roots power of unions and activist groups. It's extremely hard, though, to convince people to do anything other than vote.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 1 month ago

Before I burned out of the industry I tried to start a union at my old software company. It was highly specialised work and non trivial to replace people so we had a good shot. Just putting out feelers early on to find allies and one guy knew what was up, the rest (including many PhDs!) didn't even fucking know that unions won sick leave.

They literally thought companies just started doing it because it was the decent thing to do. Alike for weekends, breaks etc.

It's an uphill battle in aus to get even directly self serving organising going.