“We’re All Sad About Tom.”

(A Brief Explanation of Why Things Are F ’ed Up and What We Can Do About It)

“We’re All Sad About Tom.”

(A Brief Explanation of Why Things Are F’ ed Up and What We Can Do About It)

by C.A. Matthews

“We’re All Sad About Tom,” the announcement posted on the Burger King kitchen wall begins solemnly, “But going to his funeral won’t bring him back. No time-off will be given. Thx.”

This short, emotionally tone-deaf message neatly sums up all that is wrong, all that is heinous, all that is cruel and totally f’ ed up in Western society, particularly the United States of America. And in its cruel depths lie the seeds of our redemption.

Who is “Tom”? Obviously Tom was a Burger King employee. Tom was a low-paid service worker in one of a million fast food restaurants that litter the planet. Tom has since passed away, but whether his demise was job related or not we don’t know. All we know for certain is that Tom will no longer be reporting to work.

This means one very important thing: the Burger King restaurant where Tom worked is now short an employee.

This means that the remaining employees will be forced to pick up the slack. Whether or not this means it will be a permanent or temporary shortage of employees for the restaurant is unclear, but the late Tom’s position at the time the announcement was written doesn’t appear to have been filled yet.

The next line clinches the employee shortage situation: “But going to his funeral won’t bring him back. No time-off will be given. Thx.”

If you’re confused about the meaning of that line, here’s a different translation: “No employee will be given permission to take time off to attend their fellow employee—and quite possibly good friend—Tom’s funeral because of a critical employee shortage. No further discussion about the matter will be entertained. Get back to work.”

If you think it sounds rather cold and unfeeling, you’re right. It is.

Put yourself in the shoes of Tom’s fellow employees. Tom could have been a beloved crew member of that particular Burger King and an all-round nice guy. If you had worked beside Tom for many years or even a few months, you probably had gotten to know him and liked him as a person. You might be feeling depressed and broken up and need a little time to come to terms with his death before you can even think about working in the same kitchen without him being there alongside you, sharing jokes and helpful work tips.

How long is your average funeral? An hour or two? Surely the boss could give anyone who wished to give their condolences to Tom’s family (possibly he even had a partner or children) a half-day off to show their respects and to deal with their grief and shock at his death. It seems a compassionate and even a wise move on management’s part, as unresolved grief can cause future physical and mental illness. Giving employees who request time-off to attend Tom’s funeral now acts a form of insurance against future unplanned absences due to employee sickness.

Plus, it’s just a plain nice thing to do. It shows that you care about your employees’ health and emotional well-being. What sort of employer doesn’t care about his employees’ health and well-being?

Answer: Your typical American employer doesn’t.

Allowing employees to take time off whenever they have a legitimate need to take time off cuts into your profit margin. The Burger King Corporation doesn’t believe they make enough profits to be this flexible with their workers. Workers work when they’re scheduled. That’s it. No exceptions.

A Burger King head manager might put it like this: “If you don’t like your schedule, you can quit now. There are dozens of potential workers out there who will gladly take your job and paycheck and not talk back. We’re not a family—we’re a for-profit enterprise. You work for us. We don’t have to do jacksh*t for you if we don’t want to. Bye!”

Are you starting to wonder if an AI program wrote that announcement on the kitchen wall? Are you starting to wonder that we’ve created actual flesh and blood creatures who are as heartless as an AI program?

Are you beginning to see why the billionaires want to replace us all with AIs and robots and drones? We’re nothing to them. We’re just cogs in the capitalist machine that generates profits for them. They can use us, abuse us and then lose us, and there ain’t nothin’ we can do to stop them.

Or is there?

I subtitled this piece, “A Brief Explanation of Why Things Are F’ed Up and What We Can Do About It,” so here’s the second part, the doing part. How do we fix things?

I don’t think we can fix things by bringing more AIs into the picture. Creating more chaos by copying the CEOs’ style of dealing with others by treating them like livestock isn’t going to make the workers’ lives better. In order to shut down a f’ ed system, you have to know where to hurt the mutherf’ers who have f’ ed it up in the first place. You have to know their weak spot where you can hit and bring them to their knees. In a capitalist system it’s pretty easy to figure out their weak spots: It’s their bank accounts.

Boycotting and divesting from businesses such as Burger King, Starbucks, McDonald’s and the like really hurts. The BDS Movement has been very successful at “changing the minds” of those with the purse strings by denying them the profits they crave and giving them the bad publicity they hate. For instance, Puma no longer sponsors the Israeli national football team because the BDS Movement repeatedly called them out.

Non-military-industrial complex corporations known for their support of those committing genocide in Gaza have suffered significant monetary losses because of the connection between them and the Israeli genociders. Supporting a genocide directly or indirectly is an ugly look that doesn’t fade away quickly, if ever. Why should a corporation risk it if they want to retain or attract customers?

But what about the workers who work for those companies? If we’re boycotting their places of work, causing them to shut down, how do they make a living? Good question. The workers need to have more control over their working environment so that corporate cooperation with horrendous causes such as supporting a genocide in Gaza doesn’t happen in the first place.

There are no easy fixes for workers, but there are possible ones. Workers can organize and unionize all employees and transform them into a united and powerful voice the CEOs can’t ignore. Time off for funerals and guaranteed paid vacations and sick leave might be things they’ll want included in their contracts. If their demands aren’t met, they halt working and shut down the business. That’s the power of the strike.

Another way to fix things is for the workers to start their on workers’ co-operative.

The workers could work for themselves—even Burger King employees. There are such things as restaurant workers’ co-ops. Wouldn’t you, as a person of conscience, rather spend your money at a restaurant where all the workers are in effect the owners? Wouldn’t you rather patronize a business were all employees profit fully from their labor than to spend your money at a corporate store where what you spends trickles up to profit only a handful of millionaire/billionaire CEOs?

Workers co-ops and unions aren’t entirely unknown entities, but if you speak to most low-paid workers in the US, you’ll find that they’ve never heard of a co-op or seriously considered joining or forming a union. They’ve been kept in the dark or fed some bad propaganda by capitalists. Even in this hostile environment in the US, Starbucks and Amazon warehouse employees are unionizing and striking for changes. New unions and co-ops are popping up all over. The time to consider them seriously is now.

BDS means boycott, divest and sanction. We can all boycott and divest from businesses that don’t treat their workers right, but that last part sounds like something that only a government could do to another government. For instance, the US could sanction Israel to get it to stop committing their genocide in Gaza. But how do We the people get our government to sanction war criminals like Israel? How can we get them to spend our tax dollars at home on necessary programs such as FEMA that could help out natural disaster victims in North Carolina and California? After all, we’re just the people—we’re not the politicians, right?

There is a way to get the US Congress to sanction Israel by exposing the crimes of our politicians. Lawfare is a newish term that describes the savvy use of laws already on the books to affect positive change. Taxpayers Against Genocide NorCal, folks from northern California, are practicing lawfare in order to shut down the flow of US arms and funding to Israel. From “We Have to Act”: Taxpayers Suing Congressmembers for Funding Genocide Speak Out:

Article I, Section 8 of the U.S. Constitution establishes Congress’s power to lay and collect taxes only for the common defense and general welfare of the United States. When taxes are collected and allocated for unlawful purposes, the general welfare is not served.

The complaint — the charging document in the lawsuit — notes that the $26.38 billion for which the defendants voted includes $3.5 billion for the procurement of advanced weapons systems, defense articles (items or technical data designed for a missile, satellite or other military use) and defense services; $1 billion for the production and development of artillery and critical munitions; and $4.4 billion to replenish defense articles and defense services provided to Israel. (...)

In Donnelly v. Thompson, the taxpayers cite violations of the Genocide Convention, which the U.S. has ratified, and the Genocide Convention Implementation Act, which establishes the crime of “complicity in genocide.” Customary international law, which is part of federal common and statutory law, also prohibits complicity in genocide.

The complaint alleges violation of the Leahy Law, which prohibits aid to foreign security forces that have committed a gross violation of human rights. In addition, it charges that the congressmembers violated the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961 and the Arms Export Control Act, which prohibit U.S. assistance to countries whose governments engage in a consistent pattern of gross violations of internationally recognized human rights. Lastly, the complaint alleges violation of the Conventional Arms Transfer policy, which prohibits U.S. weapons transfers if they risk facilitating human rights violations.

Suing our recalcitrant congressmembers into doing the people’s will—and polls show that the vast majority of Americans want the government to stop arming Israel—is probably the only way to gain their attention and cooperation.

In a capitalist system you always have to go for the politicos’ bank accounts. We the people will have to reveal and destroy our Congress members’ reputations as Israeli sycophants in order to get them to stop being baby-killing genocide-enablers, impoverishing them along the way with lawsuits. We can threaten to withhold voting for them (if we still vote) if they stupidly choose to run again as well. Personally, I think suing to get our tax dollars returned to us will hurt them a whole lot more than not voting for them.

It’s not a quick or easy fix, but I believe it could be worthwhile. Anyone want to start a class action lawsuit with me in Ohio Congressional District 9?

Together We the People can make sure Tom’s death and the deaths of thousands of innocents in Gaza and elsewhere weren’t in vain. The only necessary death in this world is the death of capitalism. It’s time for its funeral.

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The Biden Administration Declares That A Genocide Is Happening… In Sudan https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/the-biden-administration-declares

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