Things are starting to look up for wage slaves. The economy is slowly recovering. Manufacturing is starting to return to the USA. Construction is starting to build again and most of all the workers are starting to understand how to organize themselves for workers’ rights and not just here, but all over the world. Soon there will not be a country where the anti-union companies can threaten workers with moving their factories to and this is evidenced by the companies that are returning to the USA.
So 2013 could be the tipping point for the workers. Hell, we have already won the people’s election of our president, which showed the power of people over moneyed people so what’s to stop us from getting good wages and benefits from the Walmarts of this world.
The fact is there is nothing to stop us except fear, apathy, and ignorance of how it was done before, and what worked and what did not and for this knowledge we can use the secret weapon, which are our labor histories. Everything we need is all written down: the strategies, tactics, wins, and losses. We can look into one of the greatest playbooks of human labor history, and it seems that this is what our wage slaves are doing.
They are using the old IWW playbook where they did not sign contracts, had a loose leadership and the power was in the workers, using the IWW tactics: walk outs, information pickets, over issue, such as safety working conditions, and a living wage. When Walmart goes, all the other low-wage-no-benefit corporations will follow suit, which will mean that wage slaves will have more to spend, which will mean that someone will have to make more products. This will mean the upward cycle begins: more money made, more money spent, more jobs needed to meet the demand. It’s not rocket science, its simple supply and demand. If we can put more disposable income in the hands of our workers, it won’t take long for a new Middle Class to form.
Yes, 2013 is going to be a very good year for our service men and women will also be coming home, and with that we will need more jobs. But what we do need to do is to find strong, new leaders to replace our fallen labor heroes, such as Rose Pesotta, the Reuther brothers, John L. Lewis, Eugene Debs, and all the old IWW leaders and, I think, we will see some soon out of the Walmart and fast food labor fights – we can hope.
To change the abundance of labor in the world is to put more money in the pockets of the laborer to buy the products their fellow workers are making. Otherwise, when there are more products than money, there is slump in the economy. Austerity policies, low wages and automation (robots) were also of concern in the 1950s when Henry Ford II, CEO of Ford, took Walter Reuther, head of the United Auto Workers Union, on a tour of a new engine plant.
Ford gestured to a fleet of new machines and said, “Walter, how are you going to get these robots to pay union dues?” The union leader turned to Ford and said, “Henry, how are you going to get robots to buy your cars?”
This type of change in the labor has created a new type of working class that swings from task to task in order to make ends meet while enduring the loss of labor rights and bargaining rights. They are called “precariat” workers, a group of workers who live on the verge of collapse due to the instability of the nature of their job…