It looks like Ukraine might be saved from Russia’s Putin by union steelworkers. One of the richest oligarchies in Ukraine has asked his union steelworkers to start patrolling the cities and forcing the Putin people out of the government buildings taken over shortly after Putin violated Ukraine’s sovereignty over Crimea.
Using the union members is working because it is working people taking care of working people, and not the government, who some in Ukraine don’t trust or agree with their handling of the situation. The union steelworkers are buying time for things to settle down and the Ukrainians to decide for themselves just what is best.
Unions seems to be the way to solve a lot of problems for the working people, such as getting a living wage, mine safety in U.S. and Turkey, which just lost hundreds of miners. Then there is the fire safety in the clothing sweatshops worldwide. The wages and safety for workers will not be solved by governments for they are controlled by the money people.
You only have to look at the Swiss who just voted down a minimum wage hike, which would have been the world’s highest paid minimum wage of $25 U.S. or 22 Swiss Franc. You have to wonder how much government and oligarchies’ pressure was applied to defeat the initiative for a high wage. As the economy accelerates it is just zooming past the working class. The oligarchies are getting richer by the day and the workers are not even out of the starting gate. In fact, most are not even at the gate.
The only way the workers can get in the race, they, the workers, will need the unions help. The oligarchies are underestimated the unions strength, which can be used to the workers advantage. The fast food workers will be deciding factor on the fight of inequality between the 1 percent and the 99 percent.
The workers will need all unions to come together to win this fight for $15 to $18 an hour. This will set the tone for years to come and accelerate union membership and further establish the unions’ credibility.
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…