There's a great WTYP on this, detailing how the inability/refusal to strike has resulted in an exodus/early retirement of train engineers sufficient to knee-cap the industry already. Increased incidence of train derailments, higher rates of rail jams and mechanical failures, and generally slower delivery times are all the result of the decline in experienced and knowledgeable industry workers.

None of this matters to the train management, which has reaped an enormous windfall in profits at the steady marginal decline in network efficiency. Monopoly means you either pay the cartel for degraded service or you ship using a more expensive method.

Solidarity will be hard to achieve because those threats will be too much for people on the ropes in their day to day life to endure.

Its important to recognize modern capitalist control as a form of hostage taking. "Pay us the ransom or your critical infrastructure get its", even as we're receiving fingers and earlobes in the mail with every passing year.

Solidarity is about liberating these critical components of infrastructure and operating them for the benefit of the public. The goal isn't to shut down these institutions, but to run them without profiteers leeching the excess revenue. That's why some of the most effective popular economic protests don't involve suspending services, but operating them while refusing to collect fees for service.

[–] DogWater@lemmy.world 2 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Its important to recognize modern capitalist control as a form of hostage taking. "Pay us the ransom or your critical infrastructure get its", even as we're receiving fingers and earlobes in the mail with every passing year.

This is so fuckin true.

Solidarity is about liberating these critical components of infrastructure and operating them for the benefit of the public.

BINGO if we have the power to protest effectively then we can actually make them hurt. Right now I feel like we don't have that power at all. Just citing my example of the railroads, they stepped in quick and made sure the goods kept moving.

The goal isn't to shut down these institutions, but to run them without profiteers leeching the excess revenue.

Absolutely.

That's why some of the most effective popular economic protests don't involve suspending services, but operating them while refusing to collect fees for service.

This is interesting to me I always understood keeping services running for the sake of not harming innocent citizens But I didn't really think it was effective. I could see a public transport rail system doing that and it working, but how do workers in other industries prevent the corporation they work for from taking in the revenue

[–] UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world 1 points 1 week ago

how do workers in other industries prevent the corporation they work for from taking in the revenue

Keep doing what you're doing without operating the cash register, whether that's serving meals or fixing cars or whatever.

For some stuff this won't work (entertainment, for instance, needs a full work stoppage to compel capital concessions). But if you're working to rule at a point of critical infrastructure, the only thing that really needs to stop is the financial side of the business.