Inhumanely treated Amazon workers in Europe go out on strike because Bezos didn't give them a new city hall.

Good for them -- Amazon's workers in Europe, that is.

'We Are Not Robots': Amazon Workers Across Europe Walk Out on Black Friday Over Low Wages and 'Inhuman Conditions', by Jessica Corbett (Common Dreams)

Amazon CEO "Jeff Bezos is the richest bloke on the planet; he can afford to sort this out," says a U.K. union leader

Amazon workers across Europe staged a walkout on Black Friday—when retailers offer major deals to holiday season shoppers the day after Thanksgiving—to protest low wages as well as "inhuman conditions" at company warehouses.

Eduardo Hernandez, a 38-year-old employee at an Amazon logistics depot in Madrid, Spain—where about 90 percent of staff walked off the job—told the Associated Press that the action was intentionally scheduled on the popular shopping day to negatively impacting the company's profits.

"It is one of the days that Amazon has most sales, and these are days when we can hurt more and make ourselves be heard because the company has not listened to us and does not want to reach any agreement," he said.

Protests were also planned for Amazon facilities in Italy, France, the United Kingdom, and Germany ...

Becker: "What’s happening at Four Roses has implications for both the broader labor movement, as well as future generations of American workers."

Photo credit: WKYT.

I didn't know an international brewing company (Kirin) owned Four Roses.

In Japanese, "kirin" can refer to giraffes, or to Qilin, the mythical hooved Chinese chimerical creatures. Kirin Brewery is named after the latter.

Whether it's Japanese or Jamaican is of little consequence.

The crux to me is that while celebrated craft brewers can be small and privately owned, tending not to be unionized, the doctrine of "bourbonism" generally rests on the investments of larger corporate conglomerates.

Just an observation: there'll come a time, craft beer nation.

Here's why the workers' strike at Four Roses has bigger implications, by Richard Becker (Courier Journal)

Production work came to a halt at the Four Roses Distillery in Lawrenceburg on Sept. 7 and at the company’s bottling facility in Nelson County. The workers, who are represented by three different unions, have been in prolonged and fractious negotiations with the company for several weeks. After the company issued its “last, best, and final offer,” the workers nearly-unanimously rejected it and voted to go on strike.

But this is no ordinary strike. What’s happening at Four Roses has implications for both the broader labor movement, as well as future generations of American workers.

Kirin Brewery Company, the parent company of Four Roses, has proposed a partial “two-tier” contract, in which future workers will have less paid time off than current workers. Two-tier union contracts have become increasingly common over the past several decades, but have only recently begun to capture the public’s attention. If you’ve followed the brewing unrest at UPS over their contract, you may have already heard of the concept. Essentially, a two-tier contract creates a second level of benefits and/or wages for workers hired after the effective date of the contract, while wages and benefits for current workers remain generally the same.

Obviously, companies seek to implement such systems in order to cut labor costs over the long term. And the evil genius of them is that their likelihood of passing in a vote by the workers is quite high because in theory, current workers have nothing to lose from such a setup. That’s what makes these workers’ resistance to the company’s proposal so uniquely selfless. These workers understand that two-tier contracts are potentially devastating for the survival of a vibrant American labor movement ...

The coaches could pay H-O-R-S-E instead: "NCAA Players Should Strike at the Final Four."

Photo credit: Forbes.

They're schools first, and sports programs second. Perhaps the single point uniting Democrats and Republicans is a shared tendency to ignore this fact.

That's why I'm obliged to continue reminding you.

NCAA Players Should Strike at the Final Four, by Dave Zirin and Etan Thomas (The Nation)

They have the power to force a change, but only if they refuse to be pawns in someone else’s game.

 ... One common argument against paying these athletes is that the cost of their tuition and room and board is already covered. But NCAA is a billion (with a b) dollar annual industry. The idea that players should just be grateful for what they get is in line with the contention that workers in a multi-national corporation’s sweatshop should be grateful to earn pennies for their labor. Free market proponents argue that those workers are better off because they have been given the “opportunity” to make those pennies, but that doesn’t change the reality of exploitation. That’s what’s going on in the NCAA. The NCAA sits on a cash cow, a Scrooge McDuck-type gold mine, and they are very happy with the system working the exact way they designed it to work ...

 ... Whenever the topic of paying college athletes is brought up today, forecasts of the death of college sports flood the airwaves. Yet the only thing that will destroy intercollegiate athletics is continuation of the current system, a system without a moral center that careens from one scandal to the next and is rooted in rank exploitation. This system will either be wrecked by its current minders or remade by the players themselves.

The NCAA is not going to change anything if they are not compelled, just as the NBA and MLB weren’t going to change anything back in the day without the push of people like Oscar Robertson and Curt Flood. The players have the power to force a change, but only if they refuse to be pawns in someone else’s game.

Plaid Friday 3: "Americans have chosen cheap ... (and) it's led to a cycle of impoverishment."

Something to consider while you're standing in line.

Who's Really to Blame for the Wal-Mart Strikes? The American Consumer, by Jordan Weissmann (The Atlantic)

... It would be a mistake, however, to think of this simply as a clash over one company. Rather, it's symptomatic of forces Wal-Mart helped set in motion and now shape our economy in fundamental way. It's about big box retail's refusal to pay a decent wage. It's about the way we've stacked the deck against unions. And it's about the choices we make as consumers.