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   Michał "rysiek" Woźniak · 🇺🇦 (rysiek@mstdn.social)'s status on Tuesday, 31-Dec-2024 22:38:32 JST Michał "rysiek" Woźniak · 🇺🇦

   • Anka Adamczyk

   So this happened. 🤡 🍿

   h/t @adamczyk

   • bhaugen and Joachim repeated this.
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     Michał "rysiek" Woźniak · 🇺🇦 (rysiek@mstdn.social)'s status on Tuesday, 31-Dec-2024 22:41:38 JST Michał "rysiek" Woźniak · 🇺🇦

     in reply to

     A while ago I did a short thread on "expats", "economic migrants" and immigration:
     https://mstdn.social/@rysiek/109931921984437190

     I said:

     > [Anti-immigration rhetoric is] not about making refugees not come. It's about making sure they never get the protections the local labor force already has.

     > Because then they become super cheap labor. And a way to dismantle labor protections for everyone!

     The problem for Musk with hiring Americans isn't that they're under-qualified, it's that they cannot be easily exploited.

     bhaugen repeated this.
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     Michał "rysiek" Woźniak · 🇺🇦 (rysiek@mstdn.social)'s status on Tuesday, 31-Dec-2024 22:49:05 JST Michał "rysiek" Woźniak · 🇺🇦

     in reply to

     Trump MAGA voters hoping that his administration would stop immigration and thus "make "more jobs available to US citizens are now learning the hard way that it was never about that.

     It was never about availability of jobs. It was always about availability of exploitable labour.

     An immigrant on an H-1B visa – or better yet an illegal one! – will accept way lower wages and way more abuse than a US citizen.

     The money for those $50bln Tesla pay-offs to Musk need to come from somewhere, right?

     bhaugen repeated this.
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     Michał "rysiek" Woźniak · 🇺🇦 (rysiek@mstdn.social)'s status on Tuesday, 31-Dec-2024 22:55:09 JST Michał "rysiek" Woźniak · 🇺🇦

     in reply to

     MAGA supporters are now having a "wait we thought we all agreed it's about racism and keeping these Black and Brown people out!" moment.

     Perhaps some of them will figure out that it has always been the other way around – that racism has always been a tool to divide and conquer the working class so that it can be exploited by the obscenely rich.

     I am not holding my breath though.

     bhaugen repeated this.
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     Trebach (trebach@functional.cafe)'s status on Tuesday, 31-Dec-2024 22:59:01 JST Trebach

     in reply to

     @rysiek Labor is the US is already at will in every state except Montana, but no, they need to be able to violate labor laws at will with a group that has everything to lose if they raise a fuss about being exploited.

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     Michał "rysiek" Woźniak · 🇺🇦 (rysiek@mstdn.social)'s status on Tuesday, 31-Dec-2024 23:03:56 JST Michał "rysiek" Woźniak · 🇺🇦

     in reply to

     This whole H-1B visa kerfuffle shows one more important thing.

     Namely, that the interests of a techie wage worker, even with their lofty salary, are way more closely aligned with other wage workers (yes, the so-called "blue-collar" labour, factory workers, etc) than with Musks and Bezoses of this world.

     Both the techie and the factory worker are likely a small number of paychecks away from homelessness, for example. Both risk financial ruin if they lose their health benefits.

     Haelwenn /элвэн/ :triskell: likes this.
     bhaugen repeated this.
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     Michał "rysiek" Woźniak · 🇺🇦 (rysiek@mstdn.social)'s status on Tuesday, 31-Dec-2024 23:11:10 JST Michał "rysiek" Woźniak · 🇺🇦

     in reply to

     The amount on the paycheck of the techie might be an order of magnitude higher than for the factory worker. But the power dynamic is pretty much the same.

     As anyone fired recently by a Big Tech company has been very painfully made aware of.

     Musk (an immigrant himself!) calling US workers the r-word and insisting on bringing in easier to exploit, thus cheaper, immigrant labour – instead of hiring from the thousands of tech recently laid off in the USA – workers puts this in stark relief.

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     Michał "rysiek" Woźniak · 🇺🇦 (rysiek@mstdn.social)'s status on Wednesday, 01-Jan-2025 00:02:07 JST Michał "rysiek" Woźniak · 🇺🇦

     in reply to

     There is a great talk about exactly that, by the way, given by Guy Standing at the #35C3 in 2018:
     https://media.ccc.de/v/35c3-10021-the_precariat_a_disruptive_class_for_disruptive_times

     Well worth a watch.

     #Precariat

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     Michał "rysiek" Woźniak · 🇺🇦 (rysiek@mstdn.social)'s status on Wednesday, 01-Jan-2025 00:03:34 JST Michał "rysiek" Woźniak · 🇺🇦

     in reply to

     • Chip Butty

     @otfrom sure. And often these are the same people. I'm sure many MAGA people would not mind having a Black slave. The important thing is that Black folks don't compete with them for jobs they want.

   • Embed this notice
     Chip Butty (otfrom@functional.cafe)'s status on Wednesday, 01-Jan-2025 00:03:35 JST Chip Butty

     in reply to

     @rysiek I think there is an important bit of racism you've missed - some racists are happy to have other races around in a hierarchy they approve of. Some racists want other races eliminated from their areas.