In a creative effort to bolster union finances heading into what could be a long and stinky painful strike, representatives for City of Toronto workers are asking recently laid off and unemployed people to send their benefit cheques directly to Local 416. As a union rep recently explained:

In these trying economic times, it is more important then ever that workers stand together and fight for the wages and benefits they deserve. And who better to understand the importance of this then the thousands of people in the city that have recently lost their jobs, or haven’t been able to find one in a long time? In turn, we are reaching out to this long disenfranchised group, and asking them to join our fight by signing over their unemployment or welfare checks directly to us. If workers and, er, those without work can unite in this way, we can stand strong and maintain our basic human right to, for example, be able to accumulate our sick days and receive multi-thousand dollar payouts just before we retire onto our gold-plated pension plan.

When queried about whether the union would consider giving up a few of these benefits to create new jobs for struggling workers and provide better service to the city during these trying times, he replied “I’m sorry, I don’t understand what you just said – you must be speaking Korean or something” before heading off to throw rocks at people trying to drop their kids off at now-closed day cares.

As the news that GM is finally filing for bankruptcy failed to make a single wave in the market given that “everyone and their dog knew this was coming“, the UAW is trying to regain the spotlight by highlighting how they are “looking forward to bankrupting bigger, better things in the future.” As a spokesperson explained to chTONGUEeek this morning:

As century-old GM filed for bankruptcy this morning, we know what everyone has been asking – what took so long? After all, the combination of shitty products and absurd compensation systems indicate that this destruction of a once seemingly omnipotent company should have happened decades ago, and we too are shocked at the number of years we’ve had to wait for this inevitably. But rest assured, we will now work faster, smarter and better in the coming years as we pursue our goal of bankrupting bigger and better things.

Continued »

By extrapolating the results of survey of their own employees out to the broader market, GM has learned – “in a very cost effective manner” – that their innovative offer to “make your payments for you if you lose your job” is “remarkably appealing” to 100% of people in the world. As a GM spokesperson recently explained:

In what we consider definitive proof that our company is serious about reigning in our ridiculous cost structure, our market research department is saving millions of dollars a year by restricting our surveys to our own employees, and extrapolating the results outwards to determine what it is the world wants. Through this innovative, cost-saving process, we have learned that fully 100% of the world find our offer to “make your payments for you if you lose your job” remarkably appealing. Not only that, but everyone single one of them said they would definitely take us up on it, because they are absolutely certain their employer is going bankrupt, which proves just how powerful this new plan will be for saving our company from bankruptcy.

When pressed on how GM planned to finance this, the spokesperson indicated they are working closely with the “financial braintrust” at AIG to sort out the details, before heading out for her mandatory 7-week paid vacation.

In a move that goes one step beyond Microsoft’s efforts to force laid-off workers to repay “erroneous severance overpayments“, GM is now asking workers to pay back over 30 years worth of “erroneous wages” – which is a rough estimate of how long the company has been “functionally insolvent, if you exclude various government subsidy packages provided along the way.” The auto workers union has been slow to respond to this request thus far, noting that “we can’t be expected to reach the 82% of our members who are currently retired somewhere in the tropics overnight.”

Breaking news: chTONGUEeek has just learned that American automakers are now threatening to give taxpayers a stake in their beleagured operations, if they are unable to secure yet another round of government bailout dollars. Off the record, industry analysts are speculating that if this tactic fails, the automakers, their respective unions, and sympathetic government officials are ready to go to the “defcom level 1″ threat: forcing citizens to actually buy their shitty cars. We will keep you apprised of the situation as it devolves.

Users of popular social news sites Digg and reddit who are looking for love may be in luck. In response to the inability of the sites’ user communities to get dates, either collectively or individually, one user believes he has discovered the solution: to form a union.

And so the union, Federated Users Combining Kilobytes (Instituted Nightly) Growing Less Obviously Sad, Even (Rarely) Scoring, was formed by Marxluvr28; he explains: “This all started yesterday in the lecture of my intro to political theory class, and I immediately saw the parallels between Marx’s working class, exploited by the bourgeoisie, and my friends and I who are exploited by a system designed to keep us girl-less and overweight. The solution was that none of us are as strong as all of us.” And so Marxluvr28 created a new discussion thread, posting “Internet users unite! You have nothing to lose but your virginity!” 

The union’s first order of business was to discuss going on strike. A strike which would include immediate cessation of: fixing computers, commenting on youtube, listening to girls as they complain about their boyfriends, all cheeto consumption, the sale of neck-beard trimmers, supplying lunch money to bullies, photoshopping catchphrases typeset in Impact onto photographs of cats and kittens, and reading XKCD. Furthermore, the group threatens to bankrupt Blizzard Entertainment by forcing all members to close their World of Warcraft accounts.

Reddit co-founder Aaron Swartz says he cannot speak on behalf of the community, but wishes them the best of luck.

So far the response has been favorable, with site-wide adoption rates ranging from 99% on reddit to 100% on Digg. 

In a shocking development heralded as “one for the little guy”, workers from the private and public sector alike banded together today and successfully sued for “their fair share of the bailout dollars.” To quote spokesperson Bill Patrika: “As Obama so eloquently pointed out, bailouts have to be about Main Street, not just Wall Street – so we decided to take action. In turn, our now successful lawsuit asked that instead of bailing out all of those greedy banks and oil companies, we finally make them pay – and use all their ill-gotten profits to save the pension plans of workers everywhere!”

After Congress shocked the world by voting to support this incredibly progressive proposal, every pension plan in the country was deemed fully funded at 1:12 pm. After celebrating for seven minutes, at 1:19 pm it was revealed that 72% of the pension plan assets had been invested in banks and oil companies, which were now being marked down to a fair asset value of $0. At 1:20 pm Patrika announced to perplexed supporters that the pension plans were now “incredibly, even more bankrupt than they were this morning”, but pointed hopefully towards the future thanks to new efficiencies that had been revealed in the process – such as cutting down on legal costs by just having workers sue themselves directly the next time around.

Teetering on the edge of bankruptcy, U.S. automakers are once again looking to the government to bail them out. In order to help with the cause, the United Auto Workers (UAW) union is reaching out to working class Americans everywhere with a simple message: Help prevent us from becoming like you – support your local auto worker bailout!

As Union spokesman Chris McCurty explained late last evening: “As a working class American, you probably know that your job and pay package is pretty sh$%!y, and how hard that makes your life. Well, we’re different – our workers have been making many times than what most of you make each year, for many decades, while working less. Hell, some of them often get paid to just sit at home and do nothing! I’ve got to tell you, it’s pretty awesome, and that’s why I’m appealing to your sense of worker solidarity. Please, let’s stick together and keep the dream alive – support the bailout to help prevent us from becoming like you!”