[This weekend on the Artblog Reader Advisor: What does your workplace offer? If it doesn’t come with kittens, it might be time to unionize. — the Artblog editors]
This is a Reader Advisor to celebrate the weekend and remind you of one very important fact:
No unions = no weekends.
Our weekends and the 40-hour workweek that they sustain are not natural occurrences, but rather the hard-fought territory won by labor movements of years past. We would do good to remember that companies and governments provide benefits to their employees not because they want to (Comcast would have you clock in eight days a week if it could), but because at some point, a group of workers organized in solidarity and demanded better treatment–establishing the workplace standards that we now enjoy. But this battle is far from over, and at every opportunity, capitalists and politicians are slowly eroding bargaining powers, sowing distrust in unions, and lowering workplace expectations. Let these links show you why labor organizations and unions are more important than ever and how they keep your weekends alive.
A cat library is great. Maternity leave is also great, via Buzz Virals
An important labor struggle for the Philadelphia arts community, via News Works
Gawker gets it, via New York Times
Did you think just because MOMA is a cultural institution that it would be more sensitive to worker rights? Not the case, via Hyperallergic
