On Wed, Nov 06, 2013 at 04:31:42PM +1100, Tim Connors wrote:
Bah. Unions. Oooh, change is scary, let's ban change!
if you think that's what resistance to technology changes in the workplace is about, then you're a fool. it's about jobs, it's about livelihoods, it's about the workforce's - the union's membership - ability to feed, clothe and house themselves and their families. it's nowhere near as simple as the idiot reflexive technophobia you make it out to be. ultimately, and most importantly, it's about whether technology and the economy and all of humankind's other contrivances exist to serve humanity or whether humanity exists to serve them. the luddite movement has freqently been miscast - by the winners, the captains of industry and their propagandists in the media - as fearful and blind opposition to new technology. it was, and remains, about equitable distribution of the spoils of technology and automation - i.e. that the wealthy, the capitalists, the owner classes, should not be the sole or even primary beneficiaries of "progress". that people should not be consigned to the scrapheap, to financial ruin and starvation, merely because a more efficient means has been invented for the rich to own more than they already do. craig -- craig sanders <cas@taz.net.au>