We're now in hour 11 of the Woot writers' strike, and our resolve shows no signs of breaking. It helps that we've been asleep for at least nine of those hours. Among the powerful organizations who've joined the cause in solidarity with our struggle include:
- Urban Beekeepers Against Women's Suffrage
- The Aryan Homeopathy Front
- Babywearers United for a Sane Fluoridation Policy
- The Mumia Abu-Jamal Foundation for Open-Source Vaccines
- Radical Faeries Against the Gold-Fringed Flag
But as we roll this snowball of solidarity into an unstoppable snowman of social justice, we realize the need to illuminate the brutal conditions Woot management has recently imposed on its heroic, selfless, talented, irresistibly sexy writing team. WARNING: the following paragraphs contain graphic descriptions of workplace discomfort.
The beer taps in the men's room have been removed. Management expects us to meet all of our beer needs with the taps in the writers' office. This means the lines at those taps have grown to as many as three deep. They say it's a cost-cutting measure - but writers who are standing in line for beer aren't producing copy.
We are no longer allowed to run torrents from our office computers. Some of us have been reduced to actually paying money out of our own pockets to watch movies. Others still haven't even seen Real Steel. Strike action is an extreme measure, but we could not stand idly by and watch our share ratios suffer.
Our Xbox team-building time has been reduced to two hours a day: In the wake of the recent release of Cabela's Big Game Hunter 2012, this ruthless crackdown could not come at a worse time for morale. If I don't know if I can trust my co-workers to shoot a virtual leopard, how can I possibly trust them to write a good joke about a paper shredder or gaming mouse?
I could go on, but that would require more writing, which kind of goes against the whole point of this strike. The key takeaway here is, if we're not laughing, nobody's laughing. And we're confident this strike has proven that truth.
Another truth we've seen forged in the furnace of struggle: if you're going to picket your workplace, do it on Sunday. We haven't had to chase away a single strikebreaker or delivery truck. We thought we had one a little while ago, but it was just some dude who needed to turn around. Suffice to say, that scab had to find himself another driveway.
The Woot Writers' Strike Committee
