[ILUG] ilug@linux.ie phones in sick on May 1 (or May 2)

[Dr. RTMark]

   This message is not commercial. Get off our list by writing
   mailto:remove at rtmark.com?subject=ilug at linux.ie.

April 26, 2000
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

RTMARK DECLARES MAY 1 AN AMERICAN HOLIDAY
May 2 elsewhere; holiday to protest corporate erosion of leisure

     Mayday info, Phone In Sick Day press, Andrei Codrescu clips:
         http://rtmark.com/sick/, http://gatt.org/sick/;
         contact mailto:sick at rtmark.com
     Decadent Action: http://www.underbelly.demon.co.uk/decadent;
         contact mailto:decadent at underbelly.demon.co.uk

RTMark, a U.S.-based corporation whose "bottom line" is cultural 
profit, has acquired the three-year-old Phone In Sick Day from the 
Europe-based Decadent Action group.

The holiday comes with an impressive track record: it was considered 
responsible for the "sickouts" of 2000 British Airways employees in 
1997, and of thousands of Irish policemen in 1998.

Until this year, Phone In Sick Day was observed on April 6, the start 
of the U.K. financial year. At the urging of its largest investors, 
RTMark has moved the date to May 1 (May 2 outside the U.S. and 
Canada) for three important reasons:

1. To bring an important American holiday back home.

Mayday commemorates ten Americans who lost their lives fighting for 
the eight-hour day, and their sacrifice has been celebrated since 
1889 nearly everywhere in the world *except* America. As the U.S. is 
RTMark's primary market, RTMark wishes to help rectify this imbalance. 
(See http://rtmark.com/mayday.html for more history.)

2. To call attention to the loss of the eight-hour day and other 
quality-of-life indices in America.

Mayday heralds the approach of summer, a time that still means 
"vacation" to those in most First-World nations. But substantial 
vacations, like the eight-hour day, have passed into American 
leisure history. While the average number of hours worked per year 
has gone down throughout the First World, it has gone up in America, 
with Americans now working six weeks more per year than they did in 
1973 to achieve the same standard of living. Phoning in sick en masse 
will function as a "mayday" distress call by increasingly harried 
Americans. (Visit http://rtmark.com/sickday.html to see Andrei 
Codrescu explain this most eloquently.)

3. To call attention to the dwindling quality of life everywhere.

The erosion of leisure is no longer limited to America. As European 
countries are increasingly forced to dismantle social programs and 
adopt American-style measures to benefit corporate health, we can be 
sure that they will all go the way of the United States: two-month 
vacations will shrink to two weeks, maternity leave will go from six 
months to five days, etc. Therefore RTMark encourages Europeans, and 
other First Worlders for whom May 1 is already a holiday, to phone 
in sick on May 2. (In the Third World, of course, the effects of 
neoliberalism are unspeakably worse than a mere erosion of leisure; 
it would be tasteless to suggest that phoning in sick might 
accomplish anything there.)


RTMark's primary goal is to publicize corporate attacks on the 
public welfare. To this end it acts as a clearinghouse for anti-
corporate sabotage projects. RTMark's Phone In Sick Day takeover bid 
was accepted by Decadent Action in part because of RTMark's greater 
rights as a U.S. corporation, which permits it to pursue profit with 
fewer legal hindrances than anywhere else. As Decadent Action 
spokesperson Kitty Banks says, "We are pleased with the handover to 
RTMark, who are in a better legal and geographical position to take 
the event to a global audience."

                             # 30 #

   This message is not commercial. Get off our list by writing
   mailto:remove at rtmark.com?subject=ilug at linux.ie.

   If you are receiving multiple copies of this release and would prefer 
   to receive only one, remove as above all address versions but one.