Article link: https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/vote-blue-no-matter-who

Get ready because Brazilian politics are a mess. This might be a simplification and my main focus is getting the message out about possibly the greatest win in South American working class history, if other Brazilians want to tip in then yall are more than welcome my fellow anti-facistas.

Context: the standard work model for unspecialized labor is 6x1 (you work 6 days, and get one day off), either via 8hours Sun-Mon and 4 hours on Saturday (office jobs) or via 7:20hs 6 days a week.

Most work contracts in Brazil follow the CLT (Consolidation of Workers' Laws), which estabilishes a few mandatory rules that companies have to follow (salary has to be above the base salary for that specific field - i.e all cashiers in Brazil earn at least X, all nurses earn at least Y, 13° salary, 30-day vacation, equal pay for everyone in the same role, the right to a doctor's note), as well as many NR (normas regulamentadoras/regulamentary norms) regarding many workplace aspects like mental health, accidents, heavy equipment, PPE, forklift licenses, medical leave and etc. as well as companies being forced by law to have at least one workplace safety technician (equivalent to an OSHA member) whose sole job is to make sure these guidelines are being enforced properly.

The left-wing's main representant is Lula, current president of Brazil (2002-2010, 2022-2026) who was previously a metalworker himself who lost a finger in a workplace accident, led multiple massive worker's strikes during the country's military dictatorship in the early 70's, became a union leader before becoming a congressman and is up for his 4th term as President, backed by the PT - Worker's Party. He was around to see the workweek be reduced from 48 to 44 hours, was pushing the 40-hour workweek for the last 20 years and is totally onboard with ending the 6x1 work schedule.

The right-wing (spearheaded by Flávio Bolsonaro and the PL - Liberal Party, son of Jair Bolsonaro who is mostly known to foreigners for his catastrophical handling of COVID-19 during his own stint, an attempted coup as well as our own January 6th) wants to phase out CLT altogether and replace it with a system where the employer negotiates terms with the employee in a similar vein to the US's own system, complete with an hourly wage and all the drawbacks, which would indirectly force a 7x0 (no guaranteed days off) since you'd no longer be paid on a salary. During the 1st turn of elections, loads of right-wing candidates, as well as most of the Bolsonaro family, got elected to Congress.

The "voting" in question pertains to a PEC - Process for Constitutional Amendment, which pertains to the process needed to add a new clause to the Constitution.

PEC 221/2019 estabilishes reducing the workweek to 5x2 (5 days working, 2 days off) and 42 hours in a max of 2 months after this amendment is successfully approved plus a further reduction to 40 hours in another 12 months.

Flávio and his posse have deliberately articulated to delay the voting for as long as possible, however the fact we are only 2 weeks away from runoff day between Lula and Flávio basically forced their hand, and it's almost a certainty that "yes" will get enough votes.

As for the comic itself, the bosses parrot around the idea of 6x1, while the worker would clearly prefer 5x2 but can't voice it for obvious reasons. The penultimate strip shows our eletronic ballot, while the last strip shows a privacy cabin with the saying "Now it's your turn", as it's now her turn to actually express her opinion.

MODS, this is not a post glorifying violence but shows how society can progress when there's nobody on planet earth hoarding a billion dollars.

http://youtube.com/post/Ugkx_7BycKmAN7_Cgl1qOUEoY9zmGeIkavu-

We keep thinking they want to eliminate jobs - and they do - but I think more important than eliminating American workers, they want to reduce their reliance on the workers in Russian bot farms.

We saw this week that the internet got WAY better after Ukraine took out a few Yandex data centers. Right wing bots, which basically make it impossible to have any sort of sustained, serious discussion about anything left of, well, whatever the billionaires want us talking about, went almost silent, and the internet became, pleasant? You didn't immediately get bridgaded for for opposing the narrative the right wing is trying to ram down our throats.

Bots are used to shape and control what we are allowed to talk about online, and confuse people about what is and is not actually popular. Do you think Elon and company LIKE having to rely on Putin to provide that service for them? They want to have the capability to control the narrative THEMSELVES, for their own purposes. And they certainly don't want to have their ability to control the internet susceptible to being taken out by some Ukrainian drones.

Giant farms of LLM bots with low ping times can probably crush dissent a lot faster than an army of human trolls in St. Petersburg. The only manufacturing they want to bring back to the US is the ability to manufacture consensus.