The strikes for $15 to $18 an hour are mere incidents in the class warfare. The strikes are tests of strength, periodic drills in the course of which the workers train themselves for concerted action. This training is most necessary to prepare the wage slaves for the final catastrophe, the general strike, which will complete the expropriation of the employers.
The violence of a strike is simply the folding of the workers’ arms or putting your hands in your pockets. This philosophy was eloquently voiced by International Workers of the World organizer Joseph Ettor. If the workers of the world want to win all they have to do is recognize their own solidarity. They have nothing to do but fold their arms and the world will stop. The workers are more powerful with their hands in their pockets than all the property or money possessed by the capitalists and oligarchies.
As long as the workers keep their hands in their pockets, the capitalists cannot put their hands in the pockets of the workers. With this passive resistance and the workers absolutely refusing to move, remaining absolutely silent, they are more powerful against all the weapons and instruments the other side has for an attack. Until the time of the general strike, Ettor said workers must be inspired by a sense of class solidarity and militancy.
This only works when all unions are together in solidarity. Some unions don’t support the $15 to $18 an hour fight at this time. Why? I think some are afraid that one or two unions could become very powerful if all low wage workers end up joining the two unions working with the fast food workers: International Union of Food, Ag, Hotel, Restaurant, Catering, Tobacco & Allied Workers Association, Service Employees International Union 1021 and the United Food & Commercial Workers unions, to name three.
Some union workers think $15 to $18 an hour is too high a wage to pay a fast food worker, as if their work is any less valuable then their own. What the hell is this: I got mine so screw you? If this is some unions’ thinking, the workers of the world are doomed to wage slavery by the oligarchies.
Remember the most important word for us, wage slaves, is Solidarity. It is the only winning strategy.
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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