The booming crystal industry runs on a massively exploited workforce around the world.

One miner told the Wall Street Journal that she makes an average of $4 a day digging for cactus quartz — which can sell for as much as $40,000.

Thread. Polished quartz can sell for anywhere from a few dollars to tens of thousands, depending on the color and size of the crystal.

Local dealers pay miners $6.50-$19 a kilogram, regardless the color and size, and then mark up the stones to sell to consumers.
wsj.com/world/africa/h…

THREAD: The Supreme Court has now legalized bribery, kneecapped government regulations, and allowed Presidential crime.

That’s because so many justices are deep in the pockets of the rich and powerful. 2) Clarence Thomas has a long history of taking bribes from billionaire Harlan Crow, who has given Thomas all sorts of gifts including free plane rides and lavish vacations. Crow even paid the private school tuition for the grandnephew Thomas raised.
propublica.org/article/claren…

THREAD: Amazon is forcing warehouse workers across India to work without water or bathroom breaks as temperatures reach as high as an unprecedented and excruciating 125 degrees Fahrenheit. Workers from the Manesar warehouse that are represented by the Amazon India Workers Association have told dozens of news organizations that they were forced to pledge to continue working without taking any breaks until their quotas were met.

Some were even punished for just resting.

THREAD: Last year, a woman who had just given birth at Massachusetts' third-largest hospital system died from internal bleeding.

Doctors reportedly could have saved her — but their tools had been repossessed after more than a year of unpaid invoices.
bostonglobe.com/2024/01/25/bus… Then Steward Health Care filed for bankruptcy.

State officials say the hospital system paid out investors and multi-million dollar salaries to top executives as it was running out of supplies to treat patients. wbur.org/news/2024/05/1…

THREAD: Oklahoma just passed a law that lets corporations like Tyson and Cargill pollute water with no consequences.

That means 520,000 tons of chicken waste can seep into streams and rivers every year.

Instead of protecting our water, the GOP is protecting corporations. This new law, which goes into effect in November, says if companies or farmers are “following state laws” then they are protected from litigation for their actions, even if their actions cause demonstrable harm or are proven to have polluted people’s water.

Pennsylvania state law lets private companies buy public water systems and jack up rates.

Now the legislature is debating a bill to make that harder.

A GOP state rep. repeated industry talking points and called the idea that customers should be able to veto a sale "dangerous." As we reported last month, the Chester Water Authority is an award-winning water utility whose officials have repeatedly shot down a sale.

But a subsidiary of a Blackrock-backed corporation is attempting to use the courts to force a sale against residents' will.

Once they buy systems, rates skyrocket.

THREAD: Nigerian workers are shutting things down to demand a higher minimum wage nationwide. Here’s why they’re taking action. Since assuming office last year, Nigerian President Bola Tinubu has cut fuel and electricity subsidies and devalued the country’s currency, causing gas prices to more than double and inflation to shoot up, “reaching close to 30% last month, the highest in nearly three decades.”

Northrop Grumman, one of the five biggest military contractors, plans to give “100% of our free cash flow” to shareholders.

But that cash is your cash, your tax money.

The military-industrial complex is transferring money from you to the super-rich. Thread🧵 On the call with investors yesterday, Northrup’s CFO didn’t mince words.

He proudly said, “We’ve continued to increase our dividend at a healthy clip each year for almost 20 years now” and they don’t plan on changing that anytime soon.

Private equity is buying up and destroying our healthcare system. Here's how.

THREAD 🧵 The US is unique in its extremely exorbitant per patient healthcare costs, but why is that? One is American private equity firms spending hundreds of billions buying a monopoly on health care, whether it's emergency care, anesthesiology or elderly care.
wsj.com/health/healthc…

Red Lobster had $2.3 billion in sales in 2021. Now it's filing for bankruptcy.

Some people want to blame endless shrimp, but the truth is simpler: private equity.

Golden Gate Capital, a private equity firm, bought the chain in 2014. That was the beginning of the end. 🧵 To finance this deal, “Golden Gate sold off Red Lobster's real estate to another entity — in this case, a company called American Realty Capital Properties — and then immediately leased the restaurants back.”

Suddenly, restaurants had extra rent expenses.
businessinsider.com/red-lobster-en…

Workers at an Alabama Mercedes plant have voted not to unionize with the @UAW 56%-44%.

After workers filed their union election petition, Mercedes launched an anti-union campaign that became a highly effective operation.

Here’s how they did it. Thread. In addition to conventional union-busting tactics, the German automaker got the mayor, governor, and a local reverend to speak out against the union.

But a major turning point may have been when Mercedes replaced their U.S. CEO. The new boss came in and promised major changes.

NEW: Postmaster DeJoy wants to make the USPS more efficient.

So his solution is to take mail from this rural Wyoming town, send it to be sorted in Denver, and then ship it back to Wyoming again.

It's not just absurd. It's also disastrous for postal workers and rural residents. It’s all part of DeJoy’s 10 year plan to revitalize the USPS.

In reality, his plan is designed to kill it from the inside out.

Why? So corporations can privatize—and profit off—our mail.

THREAD: Billionaires have been telling universities to send police after students for days.

And the universities are listening. The brutal crackdown at Columbia is just one example.

Colleges are repressing their own students at the behest of billionaire donors. Billionaire Trump donor and owner of the New England Patriots Robert Kraft said he hopes leadership at Columbia "will stand up to this hate by ending these protests immediately."

Over 100 students had already been arrested when he made that declaration.
cbsnews.com/boston/news/co…

BREAKING: The Department of Labor has raised the overtime threshold.

The new rule says that everyone who makes under $58,656 and works over 40 hours a week must be paid time-and-a-half.

That increases the threshold dramatically from $35,568.
substack.perfectunion.us/p/the-departme… In 2014, Obama tried to double the overtime threshold to include workers earning up to $47,000.

This caused an uproar from corporate America and ultimately a federal judge invalidated it in 2017.

Under Trump, the ruling wasn’t appealed and the threshold was set to $35,000.

BREAKING: Over 4,000 Volkswagen workers in Tennessee just joined the @UAW in a landslide.

They’re the first American workers to win a union at a non-union car company in decades.

This historic victory will change the auto industry, and the future of American labor. This isn’t the first time workers at the Chattanooga VW plant have tried to unionize.

Workers tried to organize a union at the Chattanooga factory two previous times — in 2014 and 2019 — and both times they lost by narrow margins.

BREAKING: The Justice Department plans to sue Live Nation/Ticketmaster for running an illegal monopoly over the ticketing industry.

This corporate monopoly charges too much for tickets, exploits venues, and hurts fans and artists.

The antitrust lawsuit is expected within weeks. The suit "could spur major changes at the biggest name in concert promotion and ticketing," WSJ reports.

wsj.com/business/media…

THREAD: Subway used to have $5 footlongs, now it’s “$6, six inches”. The McChicken used to be $1, now it's almost $3. Taco Bell’s Beefy 5-layer burrito was $0.89 in 2009, now it’s $3.69.

Fast food companies want to blame inflation or the minimum wage going up. It’s all a lie. 2. From 2014 to 2024, inflation rose 31%. Only 30 states have a minimum wage above the federal minimum of $7.25 an hour, which hasn’t changed since 2009.

In that time the biggest fast food chains raised prices much, much faster than inflation.

THREAD: Boston University is so determined to union-bust its own students that they’re proposing replacing grad workers with AI.

And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Unionized students at BU (@gradworkersofBU) are on strike, demanding a fair contract with a living wage.

But instead of bargaining in good faith the university has engaged in consistent retaliation.

Boeing has erased the surveillance footage that captured its work on the Alaska Airlines door plug that later blew out, federal investigators just revealed.

The company will not even disclose which people did the work.

Is Boeing just a complete criminal enterprise? The NTSB says that Boeing is blocking it from getting all the information it needs.
abcnews.go.com/US/boeing-over…

THREAD: After two-and-a-half years @SBWorkersUnited and Starbucks have announced a “path forward” to reach collective bargaining agreements for over 300 union stores and thousands of workers.

It’s a huge development in one of the nation’s most high-profile organizing campaigns. Since the first Starbucks store in Buffalo voted to unionize in December 2021, more than 380 stores have voted to unionize.

But in the time since, Starbucks has refused to bargain with the union.

https://twitter.com/MorePerfectUS/status/1571868115251740678?s=20

THREAD: There is a massive, totally legal bribery scheme driving up drug prices in America.

And pharmacy benefit managers—shady middlemen you’ve probably never heard of—are right at the center. Insurance companies hire pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs) to negotiate drug prices with pharma companies, set your co-pay at the pharmacy, and determine what drugs your insurance covers.

And they have another purpose too: rake in rebates for insurance companies. /2