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Lately it seems that we can’t get away from the hard, simple fact that art requires labour — both in the actual creation and in the conditions that make it possible. Where there’s labour there’s normally a lot of hard work and sacrifice. And where there’s hard work and sacrifice, there’s normally some bastard at the top looking to squeeze as much as they can out of those of us who actually work. Much as some of us would love to act like art exists in a separate realm from all of this, it doesn’t. Here’s a brief run-down of the past few years. South Korean assembly workers at Cort Guitars, laid off by the company several years ago, have waged an international campaign to get their jobs back. In Britain, retail workers at music retailer HMV have not only managed to hijack the company’s Twitter account but barricade themselves in their stores until their paychecks were delivered as promised. In the US, San Francisco Bay Area staff at the Legion of Honor and De Young Memorial art museums have gone toe-to-toe with management over the introduction of a “two-tiered” wage system. And this is against the backdrop of apparently never-ending labour disputes involving orchestra musicians from Detroit to New York City, from Chicago back to the Bay Area. Now, it’s Guitar Center’s turn — the world’s largest retailer of musical instruments and accessories. In early April, workers at their flagship store in New York City announced their intention to form a union through the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union, a subsidiary of the United Food and Commercial Workers. http://www.greenleft.org.au/node/54016 -- “Disobedience, in the eyes of anyone who has read history, is humanity’s original virtue. It is through disobedience that progress has been made, through disobedience and through rebellion.” — Oscar Wilde, Soul of Man Under Socialism “The free market is perfectly natural... do you think I am some kind of dummy?” — Jarvis Cocker ________________________________________________ Send list submissions to: Marxism@greenhouse.economics.utah.edu Set your options at: http://greenhouse.economics.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
