Bleeding the Beast

Wage levels: how low would business executives of corporations and owners of businesses like wages to be. Most say $3 an hour or less or even no wage at all. They would like to replace wages with food, housing and basic needs and thus control the conditions that create instability among the workers. It would be like the like the work camp jobs, a true wage-less slave company, just like in the coal mines and logging companies of yesteryear when workers were paid in chips that had to be used at the company's stores. What the workers need to know is how they are perceived by their bosses. The bosses look at workers as “they are not people who you get to know” and will tell the workers that “this job is not a social problem.” You, the worker, are not to know about the corporation’s well-being. The corporations are getting business instruction about “bleeding the beast,” which is squeezing every ounce of work out of their employees. It is getting what you want out of people, such as getting employees to sacrifice family life, even their children’s safety to fit into business interests. The corporate businesses think they have no degree of responsibility to their employees or their families. Workers need to understand that their wellbeing is of no concern of the money people. Their only concern is to make more money so the wellbeing of the worker is up to the worker. This is why the workers need to know the mindset of those they are fighting against for their $15 to $16 an hour minimum wage. It will turn very nasty in the months to come as the workers put pressure on the corporations. The corporations will use any and all reasons to beat back raising the wage. They’ll use talk radio, Fox news and its ilk, threats of closing businesses—as we saw at the Volkswagen plant in Chattanooga, Tennessee, moving the business, layoffs, and even use law enforcement and even the National Guard. Workers must remember everything we have in working rights we got by blood in the streets: 8 hour day, work place safety, unions, weekends, pensions, healthcare and dignity in the workplace; plus a living wage. It was worth fighting for then and it is worth fighting for now.