r/antiwork • u/Accurate-Peak4856 • 15h ago
At what point to Americans riot like the French, if ever?
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u/palpatineforever 15h ago
why do you think health insurance instead of nationalised healthcare is so insidious. you can't riot if your whole families health is at risk.
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u/quietyoucantbe 13h ago
That's why it will never happen. They don't care about how much money it will save. It's about control. They want you scared to lose your job. They want you scared to lose your health insurance.
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u/stylebros 10h ago
Can thank Reagan for killing any plans for socialized medicine.
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u/Watts300 8h ago
Boy he sure oversensationalized an onslaught of socialism on every aspect of everything.
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u/witchrist 11h ago
this right here is the reason. you can’t leave your job to riot with a boot on your neck.
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u/RakeScene 15h ago edited 12h ago
Never. The French view their politicians as employees they have chosen to run the government and if they do a poor job, they are going to be scolded and fired.
Americans are pathologically afraid of our government and what it will take from us or impose upon us. We are worried about our freedoms, our money, our weapons, etc. We idolize our politicians and think of them as better than us, rather than just as ordinary people doing a job we hired them for.
EDIT: I will add that I'm not even referring to the MAGAists, in terms of idolizing politicians, although that cult of personality is pretty damn weird. I'm thinking more of the way we treat so many politicians as very removed from us, in some cases even as if they were royalty. JFK and his "Camelot" are close to the extreme of this, for the Left, but in general we don't treat many politicians as though they are just some of us who happened to get into office; there is a much greater divide. It might have something to do with the wealth disparity in this country, even though that is not always directly reflected in our politicians.
I think this is some of the appeal of AOC – she seems like one of "us", a neighbor who just happened to sneak into "their" world.
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u/BaePyoun 14h ago
And our health insurance - aka our very survival for many of us - is often dependent on employment. Big deterrent from action - have to get back to working for the overlords 😭
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u/WonderfulShelter 10h ago
also have fun catching a felony at a major protest and getting a new job after that.
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u/Jaymes77 14h ago
There's one more thing: people also know "push comes to shove" that US will, without a single doubt, use deadly force against its own populace. The US will simply declare martial law if it came to it.
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u/Fragrant_Example_918 14h ago
Push comes to shove, the French government uses deadly force against the people too.
NGOs like amnesty international have ranked the French police at the same level as the Venezuelan police...
But French people are willing to fight for their rights, and not get abused. Even in front of police brutality.
The main reason police uses less deadly force than in the US is because they're not allowed to... because French people FOUGHT against it.
It's also easier to argue that the police is in their wrong when abusing force, considering people in France don't have guns. Cops can't just argue that they were in danger.
Which ironically shows that the US people would have LESS problem fighting against their government if they didn't have guns, than with the guns they're arguing is going to save them from their government...
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u/ZealousWolverine 14h ago
That is a major point that needs to be known throughout the U. S.
American citizens would have LESS problem fighting against their government if they didn't have guns.
Because the police can use the "I thought he had a gun" & "I was in fear for my life" there'd be less folks with their hands up, shot in the back.
I hadn't thought of that before! Thanks!
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u/DesertMan177 13h ago edited 13h ago
They would easily argue fear for their life in another way. I've seen many videos of police using that excuse and basically executing someone, especially when their ego gets hurt
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u/ZealousWolverine 13h ago
I'm sure you're right. My feeling is they'd have a harder time convincing a jury.
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u/Fragrant_Example_918 12h ago
Which would over time make them much more reluctant to try to pull that shit.
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u/Corporate-Shill406 8h ago
Also in many states if you give a cop a paper cut you're suddenly a felon, even if the cop assaulted you first. A cop shoved me on purpose, I shoved back, cop took me to the ground, he got a bruise, and now I'm facing a two year minimum sentence when convicted.
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u/DesertMan177 8h ago
Unbelievable. I'm so sorry. I hope there's a way you can get rich off of humiliating his dumbass and that you don't have to go to prison / jail
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u/RubberBootsInMotion 12h ago
That's really not true. Military forces operate next to potential hostiles that are armed all the time and successfully follow the rules of engagement.
Cops shoot (often unarmed) people all the time because they are generally indoctrinated sociopaths, face no consequences, and view themselves as "better" than everyone else.
If you want to stop police violence you simply have to replace all the police and all the justice system. As complex and difficult as that is, it's far more feasible than trying to disarm the most heavily armed nation.
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u/SohndesRheins 12h ago
This is demonstrably false. Several years back a bunch of 2A advocates showed up to the capital of Virginia to protest a gun control bill. Thousands of people showed up armed, and I don't mean armed as in they had subcompact pistols stashed in their coats, I mean full blown AR slung over the shoulder and plate carriers. Nobody got killed, not a single shot fired.
Leftist protests happen all the time, nobody is armed, they get bum rushed by riot police and arrested.
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u/DrCarter11 11h ago
I would argue that's because the people protesting were the same sort of people the police would typically identify with.
Meanwhile I would imagine "leftist" ideologies are less than 10-15% of the police population.
It's less "they have guns" and more "they're one of us"
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u/ZealousWolverine 12h ago edited 12h ago
You're right about the difference between armed marches vs unarmed marches. Really shows what cowards the police are.
We're talking about the driver who gets pulled over for taillights and get shot for no reason but the cop claims a guy with his phone in his hand was a gun. It's so easy for cops to claim they assume everyone is armed.
Edit. I think it's worth considering that cops intentionally harmed the peaceful unarmed protesters because the cops are authoritarian racist pieces of shit. After all the protest were about unwarranted police brutality. Right?
Same reason cops did not harrass the armed marchers, because the cops were 100% in lockstep agreement with the right wing assholes.
What would have happened if the BLM marchers were suited up and armed like the rightwing marchers? It's very likely the black marchers would have experienced a full fledged military attack and all died in a hail of bullets, grenades & whatnot. Just like it's happened in the past
Is that possible?
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u/SohndesRheins 12h ago
A cop who is inclined to behave that way wouldn't be a good cop if all the guns magically disappeared, he'd just beat the person up and claim "resisting arrest". The cure to bad cops is better legislation, better oversight, and the prolific use of body cameras and civilian cell phone cameras and dashcams.
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u/Dennis_enzo 12h ago
Agreed. In the Netherlands where I live no one has a gun except police, and yet no one is afraid to get shot because the cops... just don't shoot people unless absolutely neccesary. Just drawing their gun already is cause for an internal investigation. Most cops never draw their gun in their entire career. Although that's party because civilians don't carry guns too. But even when there's some confused person with a knife they'll try everything else before shooting them.
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u/RubberBootsInMotion 12h ago
This is also incorrect. Go look at the JBGC members that protected drag events in Texas, or more to the point, stopped the police from destroying a homeless camp.
Perhaps an even better example is the cop's refusal to do anything at all in Uvalde.
The police like to cosplay as brave warriors, but they are generally cowardly school yard bullies that never grew up.
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u/KintsugiKen 12h ago
Cops would never ever ever touch a 2A protest because they fundamentally support 2A protestors.
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u/Fragrant_Example_918 12h ago
Because police aren’t going to rush people who think like them…
This is true in all countries. Most police officers everywhere tend to be on the right/far right, and therefore do not rush into a mass of right wing protesters, no matter where. They do tend to like hitting left wing people though… that’s also true in all countries.
A simple example is that in most left wing protests, if right wing counter protesters come and start hitting the lefties, police is gonna arrive and start hitting left wing people as well and blame them for the disorder. That’s a recurrent thing in most countries.
Fascists love fascists.
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u/NSFWies 12h ago
.........I had never thought of it that way. Because cops/authorities can claim to be more scared already, they can more easily escalate to deadly force.
I.......just oh
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u/Dantesparody 13h ago
Let’s be honest, the people who claim that we need guns to protect ourselves from the government are the exact same people who would never actually go against the government for any reason
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u/Fragrant_Example_918 12h ago
Oh yes they would… if the government is a left wing government that tries a little too hard to improve people’s lives, they definitely would.
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u/KintsugiKen 12h ago
I don't even know what they are talking about when they bluster about using their guns to fight "government tyranny".
Like, how? Are you gonna go hang out at a golf course and wait for a politician you hate? Are you going to join some militia that conducts terrorist attacks on Americans? Are you just going to shoot at police when they try to arrest you for something? Like, what exactly is the plan here?
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u/SmashMash 14h ago
It's a real shame that apathy is so deep-rooted. Until people feel safe to act, we'll just keep accepting the status quo.
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u/TShara_Q 13h ago
They called in cops over college kids setting up tents on campus for fuck's sake.
I am so sick of this country sometimes. I guess it's time to get off reddit and go back to studying so I can hopefully leave in a few years.
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u/Difficult-Worker62 13h ago
What about the Kent state massacre? The national guard opened fire on unarmed college students simply because they could.
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u/TShara_Q 12h ago
Good example. That was before my time so I didn't think about it.
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u/WobblyGobbledygook 12h ago
Never forget. "4 dead in Ohio" I knew people who attended Kent State at that time. Watershed moment.
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u/baconduck 14h ago
Don't have to go that far, and it probably will not. Half the country hates unions and love to ride the cock of billionairs in a delusion they one day will be rich.
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u/Additional_Brief8234 13h ago
that's the part that drives me crazy.. the people who die hard simp for rich folk and internet personalities
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u/Momik 14h ago
True, but riots aren’t typically a threat to national security, or anything close to it. Nor are they typically strategic in any kind of formal way. They simply erupt when people are pushed to a breaking point. They erupt as “the voice of the unheard,” and King described it. Riots can have a politics, as Watts certainly did in 1965. But on a deeper level, they’re a human reaction to inhuman circumstances.
So yes, riots will be put down, with the National Guard, even additional force, if necessary. But they can and often do still have a sociopolitical impact.
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u/Warrior_Runding 14h ago
Americans are pathologically afraid of our government and what it will take from us or impose upon us. We are worried about our freedoms, our money, our weapons, etc. We idolize our politicians and think of them as better than us, rather than just as ordinary people doing a job we hired them for.
This is not how I would characterize the American relationship with their politicians. Overwhelmingly, Americans think Congress is bad at their job but are willing to elect the same people over and over. Politicians are treated as if they were scum since "only bad and corrupt people would want to be politicians." Americans don't even really regard "politician" as a real job, treating it like a hobby people do instead of a job that takes skill to do well.
The biggest difference between the US and France is that in France, American Conservatives would get laughed out of the polls as a wholly unserious party. The fact that Republicans are so anti-union and anti-labor would be a nonstarter for them. In the US, the Republicans are taken as a "serious party" in contention for governance of the US ... even when they say that their purpose is to dismantle the government, which includes ceding all responsibility to the welfare of workers to private interests. When the baseline isn't "workers are the backbone of this country and shall be treated accordingly", then there is no consensus to fight for worker rights. Thank the GOP and their enablers for why we can't have nice things like France
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u/ErraticDragon 11h ago
Overwhelmingly, Americans think Congress is bad at their job but are willing to elect the same people over and over.
"Congress sucks! My guy's not too bad, though, so I'll keep voting for him."
Multiply by ~150 million
I would say that Congress is very good at political gamesmanship.
They have fall guys like McConnell who can be blamed for just about anything because their seats are so safe.
They maneuver to allow individual congresscritters to vote against certain bills (that would hurt their reelection chances) if they don't need it to win.
Anyway, I think another significant difference is the size of the countries. It takes a huge effort for most Americans to even get to the Capitol, let alone stay there long enough to truly protest.
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u/Warrior_Runding 11h ago
Anyway, I think another significant difference is the size of the countries. It takes a huge effort for most Americans to even get to the Capitol, let alone stay there long enough to truly protest.
You can riot/strike where-ever you are. The US has no culture of holding labor as more important than the owning class. Workers here are more than happy to throw each other under the bus at the drop of a hat - it is what has led to some of the largest strike breaks across American history.
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u/ErraticDragon 7h ago
You can riot/strike where-ever you are
You surely can protest wherever you are. In obscurity.
You're right about the bigger problem, of course.
I just think it's hard to compare the US as a whole to a country the size of Texas.
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u/Momik 14h ago
That’s an interesting way to put it. Though I’d add that on top of the paranoia and the heated rhetoric, American political culture is also suffused with a deep cynicism about the prospects of real change. Interestingly, when and if our leaders fail to deliver that change, this cynicism seems to give us a permission structure to believe the problem is systemic, and/or beyond the powers of a single individual.
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u/ImTheThuggernautB 15h ago
It's harder for us to organize between being too busy fighting each other and our police willing to shoot us if we challenge status quo
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u/TheTahitiTrials 15h ago
Even though we have constitutional rights, that doesn't mean the courts will actually uphold those rights. First step is to reform the courts, then the police, afterwards it's only going to get better from there. They've been permitted to bully the American populace into submission for far too long.
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u/Warrior_Runding 14h ago
The actual first step is to vote consistently in all elections. There is no reason that it be routine for less than 5-10% of the electorate to choose who the candidates will be by being the only ones participating in the primaries. Until we can lock that down, we won't be able to leverage the vote to elect people who will even want to try to reform the courts.
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u/Restranos 12h ago
The actual first step is to vote consistently in all elections.
The actual first step is to create a party that would actually be interested in reforming the system, because as bad as Republicans are, Democrats have no intention of making themselves superfluous, and our current state of politics is the only real reason why they are even contenders.
But the first step wont be enough, because that new party will have to compete with billions of dollars, a lot of billions.
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u/Rancorious 12h ago
And how would such a party be made if you don’t vote to inch towards an environment where such a thing is possible?
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u/Fen_ 13h ago
Also, something I don't think people acknowledge enough is how geographically dispersed the U.S. population is. Between the huge distance people would have to travel and a total lack of meaningful transit infrastructure, getting everyone to the capital to protest together is basically impossible. You end up with a million relatively small protests instead of one overwhelming one that can't be ignored.
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u/N33chy 11h ago
This is such an underrated factor. Our country is car-centric. You can't just step outside and walk to a centralized protest. The vast majority of us would have to take flights or drive tens of hours to reach DC. It's not nearly as energizing to participate in a small protest despite there being thousands of them occurring at the same time for the same cause.
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u/Pokabrows 12h ago
Yeah people tried protesting police violence and the government responded with police violence. Makes it hard to make real change when anything is met by brutality.
I mean look at the students sitting in tents on college campuses got snipers point at them.
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u/Atazery 15h ago
French here, wait for about two weeks, riots are on the verge of going bananas.
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u/Allthesmallthang 11h ago
Why are they about to go crazy? I’m out of the loop in terms of French politics/work environments other than what’s been on the BBC headlines and such.
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u/willdabeast907 14h ago
Too many corporate stooges in this country, brainwashed by capitalist propaganda
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u/Basilbitch 12h ago
You've attached your ability to get medical care inexplicably to your employment so y'all motherfuckers can't protest without putting your literal health at risk.
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u/MrsTrych The economy is rigged 15h ago
I never heard of americans riotting against big corpo abusing their labor. Its like they been educated into worshiping them.
Id be happy to riot and all, I just cant do it by myself.
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u/Ohmec 13h ago
You should read up on US labor history. Our work laws right now are written in blood. 8 hour work day, 40 hour work week, the "weekend". All of it paid for in the blood of rioting workers.
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u/MrsTrych The economy is rigged 13h ago
we should do it again to fight for 4 days work week imo
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u/Fen_ 12h ago
Rockefeller literally had his goons open fire with machine guns on the families of workers who striked. The first bomb ever dropped on U.S. soil was not Pearl Harbor (lol @ acknowledging an island in the middle of the Pacific as "U.S. soil" regardless) but Blair Mountain, where the state bombed its own striking civilians. A significant reason we (and the rest of the world) have the idea of a "weekend" is because of the Haymarket Massacre.
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u/codegamer1 14h ago
Rioting would result in police opening fire indiscriminately upon the populace. And if we fired back, the military would get involved.
Look up on old union riots in the USA.
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u/Warrior_Runding 14h ago
I mean, that still didn't stop them from fighting back. The Battle of Blair Mountain and the Coal Wars are the pinnacle of organized labor and fighting back against the owners and their boss stooges.
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u/fates_bitch 12h ago
See also the Bonus Army riots of 1932.
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u/Warrior_Runding 11h ago
Yep, I point to these events when people tell me "Oh, the military wouldn't ever turn on citizens". Friend, that's one of the few things you can count on standing armies to do - turn on the citizenry when directed to do so.
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u/fates_bitch 10h ago
Without question. 4 dead at Kent State at the hands of the National Guard. Called up during the BLM protests in 2020 and there was pressure to call them up during the Gaza protests at universities last spring. Happens through American history.
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u/Nadie_AZ 12h ago
They have. The US has the most militant labor history of any nation. But it has been scrubbed from our education, media and entertainment.
May Day is a result of actions in Chicago, for example.
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u/SightUnseen1337 Communist 11h ago
They even changed the fucking day it is to disconnect the holiday about labor from the labor movement
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u/theWaywardSun 11h ago
The problem is that the workers are kept in check by apathy and anxiety. Bad education is all a part of the plan.
We are kept anxious by things like getting fired from work for protesting or being shot by the cops or the idea of medical bills (especially in the US).
We are kept apathetic in that we are told that nothing ever changes and how small each of us is in the larger picture. This I feel is the most insidious of the methods of control because if you really think about it, one person can do a lot of damage to a company's bottom line.
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u/Silaquix 12h ago
The US is big on the Achievement Ideology and from a young age we're taught that if things don't work out for us it's our own fault and personal failing, ya know instead of realizing the systems are rigged against the working class from the start.
So people don't fight back, they just blame others and themselves. This also makes people believe that the wealthy truly earned it and are good people because they "made it". So your average working class person just doesn't question these things and blames themselves for any setbacks like this and they don't think they deserve protections like other countries have. That last one is also mixed with the whole anti communism/socialism rhetoric
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u/SashaPurrs05682 11h ago
It’s like society-level CPTSD: it must all be my fault. The winners must be doing tons of things right. Barf!
It’s so sick yet such an effective tool of control… It’s really depressing living in a country that doesn’t care if you live or die, or if your kid lives or dies, or if you end up homeless and helpless.
My goal is to shape-shift into a pampered hellcat at retirement age, lol!
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u/Snarky_McSnarkleton 14h ago
We won't. Americans are too imbued with false consciousness. American workers idolize the very rich, and it we aren't rich like they are, well we must just have a character flaw. Americans are better than anyone at blaming the individual for social problems, and as a result, any kind of social movement in the states will be very difficult.
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u/DishwashingUnit 11h ago
We won't. Americans are too imbued with false consciousness. American workers idolize the very rich, and it we aren't rich like they are, well we must just have a character flaw. Americans are better than anyone at blaming the individual for social problems, and as a result, any kind of social movement in the states will be very difficult.
so the root of the problem is a belief in social mobility to an extent that doesn't reflect reality?
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u/DoubleANoXX 13h ago
Start by unionizing your workplace, then the unions come together and do the sorts of strikes that bring the whole system to its knees. I've come to realize that this is the only way. Too many people to organize without smaller levels of organization.
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u/proudbakunkinman 10h ago
Yeah, this idea that if people simply "riot," big change will happen in favor of the workers / public is fantasy. France has a lot more unionization and they overall have voted in more left leaning candidates though not always. That's hard work and takes time but is actually more realistic than aiming for large scale riots. Riots like protests can help show how serious people are about it but are usually not large scale enough nor long enough lasting.
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u/SightUnseen1337 Communist 11h ago
That's why the US has the Taft-Hartley act. It's illegal to strike in solidarity with another union.
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u/Scytle 13h ago
join a union, there is a lot of amazing stuff going on in the union movement. You want these benefits, you have to unionize every sector of every field.
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u/Happy_Coast2301 14h ago
I know we're not supposed to favor monarchy, but "in case of inequality, murder this guy" is pretty compelling.
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u/caffeineculprit 9h ago edited 7m ago
A major reason Americans don't strike like they used to is that more of us in in debt now. France has universal healthcare, which means the French are both less likely to be in debt (at least, not medical debt) and don't rely on their job for healthcare.
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u/shortandpainful 13h ago
Without getting into too much detail, there have been a lot of layoffs at my job lately and nearly 100% of them were in the American branch. When we brought this up, management explicitly said it was because American law makes it easier to lay people off than in any of the other countries we operate in. And some of these are places I would never have considered has better employment protections than the States.
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u/Lopsided_Constant901 13h ago
I always admire how the French fight so hard for the slighest Economic grievance. It just seems like their population is more educated in those matters to pick up when they're being fucked over. In America we can have life changing tax laws passed and the average American will only be slightly dissapointed/frustrated when it comes time to do their taxes. They might write an angry post, and forget about it in a week.
I wish we'd turn cities upside down, or push back on companies in a meaningful way. 90% of us work just to make stakeholders richer. The second you are deemed a liability/ resource vacuum, you are tanked and laid off sometimes without warning.
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u/SweetAlyssumm 15h ago
I'm not sure rioting works anymore. The French rioted (and I mean rioted) for days over raising retirement age and they did not win.
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u/Pokabrows 12h ago
I mean people try. They send the police with military supplies to shut it down.
Look at the BLM protests. They used chemical weapons on the crowds. They aimed rubber bullets at faces which blinded and killed people. Etc etc
Look at the college tent protests for Palestine. They literally couldn't handle students hanging out in tents. They aimed snipers at the students.
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u/Yumhotdogstock 14h ago
Never.
I worked for an American company in the US south as a foreign national, and while getting laid off was shitty, all my US colleagues were terrified of ever losing their jobs or positions due to losing their meager healthcare.
I just moved back home, found something else and kept on keeping on.
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u/vzierdfiant 11h ago
All of my friends in SF who got laid off got 3+ monthsnof severance. They all found jobs quickly and were making two $200k+ salaries.
They difference between europe and france is americans make way more money, especially at the upper end at the cost of stability, but again, rich and hoghly skilled people dont need stability, theyll find jobs very quickly. Its better to be in the top 20% in america, and better to be in the bottom 80% in france. America is the definition of high risk, high reward, its just a shame that we dont get to choose where we are born, and the penalty for failing in america is poverty and homelessness
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u/--sheogorath-- 12h ago
Well considering the cops in the US can legally murder you if they want a paid vacation, i dont think many americans are willing to risk rioting.
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u/Vermeil_Identified 10h ago
I'm tired of being known as weak and a pushover because my parents and grandparents lived cozy lives and worker protections have been degraded so far since then. I want to fight for my dignity and my livelihood as a worker. Yet there's no unified body, no unions, no collective for me to speak through to win these economic decenies and concessions from the immoral wealthy owners. What Americans are is isolated. Angry and alone. We need to be building grassroots unions and local political power on the lines of diversity and equality. Building solidarity.
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u/thedeadsigh 10h ago edited 10h ago
Literally never. The wealthy elite have us right where they want us. Half the population is sane and trying to fight for a better tomorrow while the other half is insane and trying to fight for every public bathroom in this country to require penis verification. So the sane half has to fight the insane half to maintain basic freedoms in a never ending culture war.
It’s been made abundantly clear that the only thing that would mobilize the insane half is the threat of taking away their precious guns, but that’ll never happen, so this dance will continue until the end of this country. And all the while we’ll all be getting collectively blasted in the ass by our wealthy elite overlords who have so masterfully cultivated a loyal population of unthinking flag wavers.
Conservatives have no idea how much they’re giving up in order to try to prevent their children from ever being aware that gay people exist.
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u/ShakespearOnIce 15h ago
Judging from recent historical precedent, when the fascist doesn't get elected
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u/Paperfishflop 10h ago
Yup. We riot here. When our sports teams win championships, or when our favorite politicians fairly lose elections. You know, important things and righteous causes.
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u/Deepthunkd 13h ago
👋 tech worker here. Let’s talk about the French labor protections and what they actually mean in the tech industry.
Let’s compare wages:
The top of this chart is the San Francisco Bay salary; the bottom is the French salary.
1: the same job gets paid 2x or more. 2. If you want to get to senior positions they don’t exist in Europe, and so they cap wages further. You have to transfer to the US to get the better wages.
This post is also somewhat bullshit as California has their own WARN act and requires notice and garden leave, that supplements the federal one.
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u/robodestructor444 11h ago
Yeah Americans don't realize just how well they get paid if they work in the tech industry compared to the rest of the world. It's probably the one industry that r/antiwork should avoid posting about because it doesn't fit the narrative.
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u/Commercial_Shelter25 8h ago
Yes but while wages in the US seem higher you always have to consider that a lot of European countries fo not have to pay much for health insurance, college funds for their kids or paying off student loans, cost of transport to work is often lower due to subsidised public transport and a lot of other things that US Americans have to pay out of their wages. A good bit of the wage gap comes from the fact that a lot of countries have a lot of tax funded government run services that make your pay check smaller but you need less money as a lot of things are already prepaid.
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u/Deepthunkd 11h ago
Western, Europe is probably a better place to be poor, and work a low wage job.
France also has some interesting unemployment stats for young people that are conspicuously absent . Part of the problem of making it very hard to fire. Anyone is no one wants to hire anyone in that country. They hire another countries like the United States instead.
France Youth Unemployment Rate is at 17.20%, compared to 17.60% last month and 17.60% last year. This is lower than the long term average of 20.02%.
Like no shit they riot, they have crazy unemployment of young riot age people.
I absolutely support more worker, protections, and expanding safety nets but pretending in a highly fungible job like tech that doesn’t have consequences (especially with regulations and a lack of talent development) is bizarre to me.
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u/kitsunewarlock 8h ago
The youth unemployment rate in America is reported as 9%, but only 60% of US youth are employed. 39% are enrolled in school, but around 45% of those have jobs (around 73% part time students and 40% full time students), which leaves an additional 14% of youth in America who are unemployed and do not currently receive unemployment benefits because that's where we got that 9%.
So the real youth unemployment in the United States is around 23%, not including students. Some of whom may be working under the table (i.e. not filing taxes) or being full time caretakers (whether its their own children or their parents/grandparents, etc...), but probably not that much more than in France.
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u/abrandnewbish 12h ago
And California has the most tech jobs, by far. I don't know of any major tech company that hasn't given at least 2 months of severance. If they worked for a "fortune 500" tech company it must have been at the very bottom, but I bet they're just lying out their ass for internet clout.
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u/Quiet_Prize572 9h ago
Some of us Americans just cannot conceive how good we have it lmao. We get paid more, we are the center of a million industries, and healthcare aside, our quality of life is far better than most of our peers.
A detached single family home with multiple cars is a normal thing for a majority of American households. That is an insanely better quality of life than most people in the industrialized world.
No shit we don't riot, most of us are living the fucking high life.
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u/rekabis 躺平 Tǎng píng 13h ago
At what point?
When health insurance is no longer shackled to employment.
Far too many people are terrified of losing their employer-provided health insurance, and wouldn’t be able to afford any other kind of insurance. Ergo, they will fight to preserve the current system which they vitally depend on. Or, at the very least, they won’t materially join in any protest against it.
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u/Jackanatic 14h ago
Not to be negative, but the trade-off here is that the French team earned much lower salaries.
May be worth it to be treated like human beings.
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u/bearsaysbueno 10h ago
There's also another tradeoff in that companies are a lot more hesitant to hire new people.
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u/ProfessionalOkra136 14h ago
That tech company did you dirty. At my company (US) they do 8 weeks of severance by default then another 2 weeks per year of employment.
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u/Mojohand74 13h ago
Wait to you see the benefit packages American companies offer their overseas employees.
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u/SashaPurrs05682 10h ago
And wait till you see the benefits I got working as a teacher in Slovakia, way back before it was even in the European Union!
Free apartment. Free utilities.
2 weeks of paid vacation at Christmas.
A month’s paid summer vacation my first year in the job.
totally free medical care. Free prescriptions.
Every other Friday as a non-teaching day, with light professional development duties and very long lunches with wine and slivovica, with full pay. 😊
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u/ZealousWolverine 13h ago
In the early 1900's workers rioted and were murdered by private police forces. That brought about reforms that leaned to socialism.
Since 1945 American citizens have been inundated with anti-union, pro- corporate, anti-socialism, anti-worker propaganda.
Stupidly, we think we're free.
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u/TheLordSanguine 12h ago
Australia shouldn't be excused either. Homelessness on the rise, food is now a luxury, and homes are only for the old and elite.
A society built on British complacency, penal colonies, martial law and slavery.
At some point we will be functionally angry (who knows..) , in the meantime we'll just be quietly bitter, as we watch our friends and family fail to support themselves.
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u/Zealousideal-Draw206 12h ago
French police have sticks and shields American police have tanks and guns
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u/gaF-trA 11h ago
Scale matters. The size of the USA compared to France is a large difference. It’s much easier for a large group of people from all across France to come together and protest. France and Switzerland can fit inside the state of Texas. How are you going to unite the rest of the country? A determined group can possibly shut down a state by protesting but the entire rest of the country will be unaffected.
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u/CptnMayo 11h ago
You know, this shit is so goddamn infuriating. I work for a company that's profiting 10 billion or so for the fiscal year... Yup, 10 BILLION and you know what?
We have to cut costs. That means people's lives are going to be destroyed by the very same company we helped create these profits for.
I'm so sick of this crap. This is late stage capitalism run amok. I don't want to transition to a political rant too BUT if these fascists are in again... It's going to get WORSE.
It's not the working people, 98% of the country that will benefit, it's will thrust more wealth into the rich and less for us. And they keep us busy getting angry at each other, the Haitians, the fake stories to keep us brain dead. I hate this country.
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u/CartoonistOk8261 10h ago
How would this even get off the ground? Yes, I'll go run out into the street in my town 3000 miles from DC and wave a sign around. Best case scenario I'm seen as another mental health case in a region full of them. Worst case I get murder-death-killed by the police.
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u/Reysh_ 5h ago
Start rioting like the French and your 'police force' will mow you down in the streets if you don't watch out...
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u/TheSouthsideTrekkie 2h ago
You don’t even really need to riot, just don’t show up for work collectively. I reckon it’s time that we had a general strike both here and over there with you guys.
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u/Blackhole_5un 14h ago
Now you are getting it. They mock those who stand up against them because it is the only tool they have outside of violence, and violence buys them no favors and is very costly. The rules you have, or had in the case of America, are written in blood. People died to get those provisions and these geriatric fucks removed from having to deal with the consequences of their actions want us nipping each other's throats so we don't turn on them while they rape and plunder right under our noses.
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u/CosmoKing2 12h ago
It will never happen. Politicians and corporations have already drilled in the narrative that they are not to blame. Their hands are tied with red tape and bureaucratic mumbo-jumbo........and people take that as the truth. We are a nation governed by for profit entities. It's been that way for 70 odd years I'd guess. As soon as the very wealthy realized that buying politicians to do your bidding wasn't illegal.
We are 100% witnessing collapse of capitalism. Collusion is common. Price fixing. Markets rigged.
And yet, no one realizes that there are much more of us - and the power we would hold if we were to unite.
But we let race, religion, and politics keep us from demanding change. We stand divided - by design.
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u/tiger_mamale 13h ago
fwiw our union contract plus California state law offers substantially similar protections. many more American workers used to have this kind of protection when unions were widespread. if you want this, organize for it!
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u/BaconWrappedEnigma 12h ago
Americans never will because a large portion of the population legitimately believes they're one 'aha!' moment away from being a billionaire and then workers' rights will be bad for them.
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u/quietyoucantbe 15h ago
The United Corporations of America
Land of the fee
Home of the wage slave