Are American workers and the other world workers ready to join together to fight for bread? The workers were once literally fighting for bread when they were hungry. It seems at least in America, workers got to where they were not hungry enough and so our workers were happy to sit down and eat their cake. The perception is that unions have settled on just trying to protect what they have and no longer push for the amelioration of broader social inequalities, which are reflected in public opinion polls.
Union approval rates have fallen well below 50 percent and continue to decline. Our unions must stop this decline by telling the union story of what the unions have done for the good of all workers here and around you’re the world. One thing we can do today is use our labor forces to help our low-wage workers fight for bread and the $15 an hour minimum wage would buy some of that bread and maybe even a little cake, too.
Some or most of our unions have been standing in quicksand and sinking while not realizing it or just denying it to themselves. So just stop and think in 1957 union found that Americans had a 76 percent positive feeling about unions. What happened? Maybe too much time eating cake or just apathy. Whatever it is it is time to move out of the quicksand before it is too late.
So union should be among the fighters for the $15 to $16 an hour minimum wage and organize just like Joe Hill told us to do before he was shot to death. Did Joe Hill die nothing?
There are three phases of a general strike and unions must plan for one. Those three phases are: 1. general strike in an industry 2. general strike in a community 3. general national strike We need to move away from being on the defensive and move toward a good offensive. The American Federal of Labor (AFL) could not have held a general strike if it wanted to because they had thousands of different contracts that expired at different times of the year. This was done deliberately so that there is no consolidation of power for a general strike. Also, nowadays, there is no law agency that will support labor, except the National Labor Relations Board (NLBR), which has been under attack and in decline for years. This leaves the burden of change up to unions, and unless unions work together, little will change. We essentially have a combination of job trusts, which are not as strong as contracts, and the courts can break easily because the NLBR will be further weakened and essentially elim...
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