Workers Take Over Factory in Chicago Workers who got three days' notice their factory was shutting its doors voted to occupy the building and said Saturday they won't go home without assurances they'll get severance and vacation pay they say they are owed. In the second day of a sit-in on the factory floor that began Friday, about 200 union workers occupied the building in shifts while union leaders outside criticized a Wall Street bailout they say is leaving laborers behind.

Zapatistas Call for Worldwide Festival of Dignified Rage Mexico, September of 2008 To the adherents of the Sixth Declaration and the Other Campaign: To the adherents of the Zezta Internazional: To the People of Mexico: To the Peoples of the World: Compañeras and Compañeros: Brother and Sisters: Once again we send you our words. This is what we see, what we are looking at. This is what has come to our ears, to our brown heart. I. Above they intend to repeat history. They want to impose on us once again their calendar of death, their geography of destruction. When they are not trying to strip us of our roots, they are destroying them. They steal our work, our strength. They leave our world, our land, our water, and our treasures without people, without life. The cities pursue and expel us. The countryside both kills us and dies on us. Lies become governments and dispossession is the weapon of their armies and police. We are the illegal, the undocumented, the undesired of the world. We are pursued. Women, young people, children, the elderly die in death and die in life. And there above they preach to us resignation, defeat, surrender, and abandonment. Here below we are being left with nothing. Except rage. And dignity.

From the Occupied Faculty of La Sapienza, Rome National Call, Rome, 22.10.2008 To the faculties in mobilization, to the undergraduate and Ph.D. students, and to all the precarious researchers “We won’t pay for your crisis”, this is the slogan with which a few weeks ago we started our protest at the university of La Sapienza, Rome. A simple, yet at the same time immediate, slogan: the global crisis is the crisis of capitalism itself, of the financial and real estate speculation, of a system without rules or rights, of unscrupulous companies and managers. The burden of this crisis can’t fall on the educational system - from the school to the university - on the health system or generally on taxpayers. Our slogan has become famous, spreading by word of mouth, from town to town. From the students to the precarious workers, from the working to the research worlds, nobody wants to pay for the crisis, nobody wants to nationalize the losses, whereas for years the wealth has been distributed among few, very few people. And it is exactly the contagion that has been produced in these weeks, the multiplication of the mobilizations in the schools, in the universities, and in the cities that should have stirred up a lot of fear. It is well known that a fearful dog bites; similarly, the reaction of President Berlusconi was immediate: “police against who occupy universities and schools”, “we will get rid of violence in our Country”. Only yesterday Berlusconi declared that he was willing to increase the financial support to the banks and that the State and the public expense would stand surety for the companies’ loans: in a few words, cutbacks to education, less founds for the students, cutbacks to the health system, but public money for the companies, for the banks and the private sector. We are wondering where is violence: is it a violence to occupy universities and schools or instead that of a government who imposes the Law 133 to cutback the founds for the education system refusing the parliamentary debate? Is it the dissent violent or is it violent who intends to put it down by the police? Who is violent: who mobilizes for the public status of university and schools or who wants to sell them for a few private profits? Violence is on Berlusconi government’s side, while in the occupied schools and universities there is the great joy and indignation of who fights for his own future, or who doesn’t accept to be put in the corner or forced to be silent. We don’t want stay in silence in the corner, of who wants to be free.

Starbucks to Require Employee Availability Around the Clock and Cut Workforce in Major National Initiative The Starbucks Coffee Co. is in the process of an extreme revamping of its workforce policies according to company documents obtained by the Starbucks Workers Union of the Industrial Workers of the World. The initiative, dubbed "Optimal Scheduling", will require employees to make themselves available to work essentially around the clock to obtain so-called full-time status. Even for workers able to make the extraordinary sacrifice to obtain "full-time" status, no work hours are guaranteed- identical to Starbucks' current system of part-time status for all retail hourly workers. In addition, Starbucks will lay off workers who cannot meet minimum availability requirements. As baristas learn of the new program, discontent is rising. "I've had to make myself available each week from Tuesday to Sunday starting at 4:45am until 11pm in the hopes of possibly getting 32 hours of work but not being guaranteed a single hour," said Liberte Locke, a Starbucks barista in New York and member of the IWW Starbucks Workers Union. "It's impossible for me to get a second job now even though I need one and impossible to have a life outside of work." Under the new system, baristas who opt for pseudo full-time status have to make themselves available to work 70% of the total hours their store is open during the week. In an example given in the company documents, a store open 115 hours per week requires a barista to be available to work 80.5 hours each week - over double the standard work week. Week-to-week Starbucks can then schedule workers anywhere within that availability. In addition, workers who cannot make themselves available for at least three shifts a week will be fired, absent a "compelling reason" which Starbucks has not defined. Weekend workers must be available for at least 16 hours to avoid termination.