Skip to main content

Keep Up the Pressure

The low-wage, fast-food workers put up a good fight in their two-day protests. Now they just need to keep it up with well-timed events, which hurt the pockets of the money people, like on Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year’s. The low-wage inequality of living standards is just not here in the USA, it is worldwide. Some countries have made great strides in dealing with the needs of their workers. What the wage slaves need to do is cherry pick the best ideas from all over the world and develop a strategy that will make the odds in their favor for winning against the greedy. Look at the Denmark’s wages in fast food, which is $21 per hour versus the U.S.’s $7.25 federally and $8 in California. The cost of a Big Mac in Denmark is only $5.18 versus a Big Mac in the U.S. is $4. Denmark’s fast food workers are unionized. Could this be the reason they receive a living wage when our fast food workers don’t? Then there is Germany, where the corporate leaders sit with the workers and decide what is best for the corporation and the workers. It seems that this is working very well for both sides. There seems that in some cases worker co-ops have worked well for some workers. But, whatever the way the toilers use to better their lives the commonality is that the toilers must all be together to win. People power is hard to beat if used smartly. We must not mistake privilege for liberty, the money anti-labor people wants protection from government intervention to counter union movements for the 1 to 5 percent, but no protection for the 99-95 percent. This is what the toilers are up against when they protest. The cops and National Guard are used by the union busters, which the toilers pay for with their taxes. We need to even this out by some better and fair court decisions and new labor laws to plug the holes, which have been blasted by the anti-worker U.S. Supreme Court. In the last 60 plus years beginning with President Eisenhower and some of his policies that began the attack on the workers, but we can change this by the ballot box or the street. It may be too late for the ballot box because of the Koch brothers and their fake organizations created to fool the unsuspecting voter. This leaves the streets and makes the fight worldwide just like the old International Workers of the World said it would be years ago. As a demonstration of this, workers from Denmark came to the U.S. to support our workers in their fight for a living wage. We have maybe one more chance at the ballot box. We need people like Big Bill Hayward, the Reuther brothers, Eugene Debs, Jack London, Thomas Haggerty, and Mother Jones. These are the types of people we need today. They are out there; we just need to find them.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Time for an Offense

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...

If Gompers Could Do It, We Can Do It

Labor must vote for the person who will support and vote for labor’s best interests. And in turn, labor members have to support those who are running for office who support labor unions and vote down ballots. Voting down ballot gives the person at the top more power to do what’s best for us. This includes elections for city, county and state positions, as well. If you think a four day work week is wishful thinking, remember workers had to fight for an eight-hour work day and a five-day work week. We, labor members and supporters, need to find people who can fight and win. We need to clean the Congress and Senate of the old Democratic guard who have voted repeatedly to hold the working class back while enriching themselves. This would rebuild solidarity in a magnitude greater than anything either party has seen or offered in the last fifty years. If we can bring about the change in the ruling class we can improve all of our lives. This would be the start of the end of the tyranny of the...

Shock Troops

Gerrymandering is the only legal form of voter theft. Workers, our long range plans should involve 1. crushing Citizens United; and 2. getting rid of the Electoral College. We have been trying to get rid of the electoral college since 1876, and we are still waiting for the revolt. Our unions need to start training some members to be our shock troops and if all unions would do this and work with our local Labor Councils, it would be a good start. Our members need to know our labor laws, local laws, and learn how to protest in the streets if necessary. The antiunion people like Trump, Musk and his billionaire friends work together to crush the working people and convince workers they’re doing them a favor and then use them as shock troops against unions and their workers. All union and nonunion working people must come together and work together to protect what we have now. Labor Councils have retired union members and they could work together to prepare to bring the movement forward....