lepetitegamble:

rowdyhooliganism:

pom-seedss:

queeranarchism:

livingwithinmyskin:

anarcha-dogunism:

queeranarchism:

Another thing that really bothers me about the conversations around ‘riots’ is the amount of people who have a binary image of ‘big capitalist store’ versus the romantized ‘honest local store’ and think they can tell the difference from a photo. 

A lot of local stores feel the need to compete with the big stores and treat their employees like shit. There are so many ‘local’ stores out there exploiting teenagers and undocumented people, paying them less than minimum wage, pushing them to work without breaks and to unpaid overtime. And local activists often know exactly who the worst bastards in town are. 

When I was young I worked at a cute little local bakery that exploited a hand full of underage workers, denying us basic workers rights and minimum wage and exposing us to constant emotional abuse. We worked long shifts on ovens placed much to close together without proper protective gear and we burned ourselves almost every day. We were given minimal time and no proper supplies to treat burns. I once burned myself very badly and dropped the bread I was holding and the boss made me sit through a ten minute shouting before I could treat my burn. I still have clear scars from that work after many years. 

So if the riot ever comes to that town, you can bet I’ll be right in front leading the charge to burn that cute little local bakery. 

a handful of years ago there was a pretty intense effort to establish a downtown workers union in my town with folks that worked along the central tourist hub and while it didn’t form for a lot of different complicated reasons one of them was that the local small business owners fought tooth and nail every step of the way

All of this.  Capitalism was a problem long before the world was taken over by McDonaldization and MNCs.  My small-business bosses were some of the worst:  At least the sheer size of the corporate retail stores I worked at meant more accountability (and granted, I worked at one of the more humane options).  In the small businesses, dirty management was rampant and the owners and managers had each others’ backs.

So many of the tags on this post are like this.  

I’ve heard people protesting min wage increases with “but the small businesses won’t hire then!”

And I am sitting here like… “They don’t hire NOW.”

The majority of small businesses I have encountered and worked for have been some of the most exploitative folks I have ever seen. Denying employees breaks, paying in cash under the table to kids too young to legally work, hiring lots of students instead of adult staff to cut down on costs, only hiring family or some close friends, never wanting to pay for anything, denying they have to keep up with accessibility standards because they are a small business…

They deny that paying their workers a living wage is the cost of business.  They think that it is an area where they can cut costs because traditionally they’ve been able to. You can’t easily cheat the hydro company to keep your lights on if you can’t pay, but there is so much you can do to exploit employees to pay them less. They fight SO HARD against worker rights movements and they blame workers for wanting more because “then we’d all be working at Walmart!”

They are the first people to push “buying local” because it “helps the community”, but they are exploiting their workers sometimes worse than your Walmarts because they have little to no oversight and workers have little to no recourse.

I’ve never met a group more passionate about campaigning against worker rights as small business owners. I’ve never seen a push for deregulation harder than I’ve seen from small business owners. I’ve never met people who are as quick to deny even existing worker rights like small business owners. 

Mom and pops aren’t necessarily any more ethical than big box stores, they aren’t necessarily any better for the communities they exist in, but they sure love to make it seem like workers are terrible for wanting to be able to live off their labours. So much for “helping the community”.

Something similar happened to my roommate when she worked at a local bakery/ ice cream parlor. The owners constantly threatened to dock her wages over EVERYTHING, she was blamed for shortages in the til even though there was no way to prove she was responsible, they expected her to work 6-8 hours shifts without so much as a 10 minute break, and the woman who owned the place was so controlling that she constantly monitored the security cameras, which had a live feed to her computer. Just because a place is locally owned doesn’t mean the people running it are any better than big corporations.

As the daughter of a business owner, I feel like I need to jump in here. I am *not* denying in any way that there are small business that just this side of fucking evil. But my dad busts his ass for his guys. He pays them out of his savings when he doesn’t have enough jobs for them so that they don’t have to worry about making enough money. He never asks them to do a single job that he wouldn’t be willing to do, and he will get down on his hands and knees and help them whenever they need it. He is almost sixty years old and he will work twelve hour days in the hot sun with his guys when they need his help. He makes sure they have time off for their kids and for family events; he’ll personally work their shift if their family needs them that day. There are awful small business owners in the world, but my dad is a Grade A, top of the line, class act and I am proud of him and his business. 

As a worker: no one wants to hear about your dad. Coming into a group of people who are talking above being exploited and dehumanized, who are forced to work for shitty bosses again and again because they need to live and going “well my dad jadajada” is a shitty thing to do. It helpes no one and does not contribute any valuable point. All it does is invalidate, hurt and irritate.