Wage slaves are living in a precarious lifecycle and can only obtain part-time work, which is known now worldwide as “precarity.” This description now fits just about all wage slaves from skilled labor, manufacturing, fast food, farm slaves and even the professional managerial class slaves. This came about when workers are not hired in permanent positions, but are hired as temp workers—in reality these workers are hired into a temporary status, also called “permatemping,” which is the new anti-union model to keep unions out.
This new status makes workers feel precarious about their jobs, this and the cuts in unemployment benefits makes it harder for workers to imagine surviving any job loss. For temp workers, there is the elusive hope that their job will turn into a full-time position, sort of like winning the megamillion lotto, but this is the hope that strings the suckers along. In reality very few will ever get full-time status.
Some companies have four temp agencies supplying workers, which are meant to make organizing near impossible. Yet the temp industry has its own union, which is called an association headed by Steve Berchen, the chief operating officer. The temp agencies are a multibillion dollar business. They now place medical doctors, lawyers and most of all types of wage slaves.
The rise of precarity is the triumph of neoliberalism and the decline of the unions, which leads to exploitation of race, gender and stops immigration, according to Saket Soni, director of National Guest Worker Alliance (NGA). NGA puts it this way, “On our current path we’ll all end up as guest workers. Trapped in an economy of temporary intermittent work, struggling with debt rather than building wealth, sourced into labor supply chains rather than climbing career ladders and there we have precarity wage share society.
In order to change it will have to be done by the people who do the work. They must make the push for $15 to $16 an hour, which will then make the temps not so profitable for the corporations. But as long as there is profit in using temps it will breed a precarity wage society.
Yes, they are coming for us. Workers need to have one another’s backs because no one else will. Neither the broader labor movement nor the Democratic party are prepared to meet the urgency of this moment. So it’s going to fall upon the rest of us to mount a real resistance against Trump’s authoritarian takeover. We’re going to have to get our hands dirty. I don’t care if you have a good, well-paying union job and you are in the middle class now—if you see a worker being dragged out of his workplace regardless of how skilled the job and potentially taken to another country, you should be ready to be there for that worker. When I.C.E. shows up, gather around and shame them into leaving. It has worked in other places. America is sleep walking into authoritarianism, and if there’s anyone out there who is a member of a labor union that is safe—at this point— and doesn’t think this applies to them. Understand that they just haven’t gotten to you yet. They’re coming for all of us. There are ...
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