Old International Workers of the World’s (IWW) dream of a worldwide workers fight for economic justice is coming. This has got to feel very good for the old IWW’s Wobblies and it is showing respect for the martyrs who gave their lives or did prison time on mostly trumped up charges.
All workers and retired people need to stand up and support the $15 an hour wage or a living wage, which some, like California Rep. Barbara Lee (D) say should be in the $26 an hour range, which is where it would be today if the minimum wage had kept up with inflation. The proletarians worldwide have awakened to the fact that no government is going to help them, they’re on their own. Just like always.
It is the families and fellow workers who help you. Remember when you have nothing you don’t have much to lose and this is where the oligarchies have made a strategic mistake. You never force your enemy into a corner (Art of War) and left them with no alternatives, but to fight. Also remember if you are afraid to be seen in front of your fast food place, just swap with another fast food worker at a different place, like Burger King, KFC, Taco Bell or McDonalds; hell, even a Walmart worker. You’re all in the fight together. We all are. This last week saw fast food workers from all over the world coming together and striking for fair wages.
Don’t buy into the malarkey of robots taking over your jobs. Companies have been trying this concept for a few years now, but it’s a human to fix the automated scanners when they malfunction, which they usually do. Sit back and watch sometime at a store with self-scanners few get through the process without an employees’ help. Vending machines are similar because it takes humans to design the machines, usually construct the machine and other humans to cook and package the food in them.
So, fast food workers are winning and they will float the wage ship up for the rest of the workers and will become stronger with each strike so don’t let up. Keep the pressure on and as you do more and more workers will join the mounting fight for $15 an hour. Right now many states are slow walking the wages up, but some cities, such as Davis, California, have a petition for a resolution for $15 an hour and there will be many more joining this trend.
I would like to see a $15 a petition for a resolution in Redding, California, which would turn the economy around in what is referred to as poverty flats. Redding is a very conservative area, and the people can’t seem to see how they hurt themselves when they support GOP candidates with anti-worker agendas.
For example, in a recent video, Rand Paul, the senator from Kentucky, said poverty wages for workers is the “tough love that people have to accept” in order to get our economy out of the Bush recession that he and the GOP voted for. Austerity does not work. This is what we’re up against folks, and consider the poor saps who support Paul and don’t realize he’s trying to cheat them out of their wages. Link below:
http://www.occupydemocrats.com/watch-rand-paul-poverty-wages-are-tough-love-people-have-to-accept/
This mentality is a perfect example of blame the victim. Paul, or any politician in Washington, D.C., doesn’t work hard for his money, but they want us to believe we should work harder for more money. Well, the facts are against them. According to workingamerica.org, U.S. workers have been more productive than ever, but the wages haven’t kept up with the productivity.
“Between 1973 and 2011, worker productivity increased 80 percent. In the same period, worker wages went up only 10 percent (median hourly compensation). Between 2000 and today, productivity increased 23 percent – adjusted for inflation, wages didn’t increase at all.”
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…