The best vacation a working slave could go on is a protest for higher wages or a protest for the right to form a union. Consider it an educational vacation that a toiler can take their families and friends on and save money while increasing your chances of gaining more.
The fight for workers’ rights and a living wage is worldwide. Some of the protests are against JetBlue fast food places, day laborers, postal workers, rail workers, teachers, nurses, car dealerships, in-home helpers, and lamp factory workers. These are just a few areas in the U.S., but Canada there is a teachers’ strike on wages and class size. In China, Apple parts plants are on strike; North London care workers are on strike regarding pay cuts; and then we have construction workers striking in Turkey. The death of ten construction workers is a result of profit driven greed and a disregard for worker safety while the toilers are still dealing with Ukraine and Russia, Poland.
So if workers would like to do something good for workers and their families there are lots of places to go and spend a day or weekend and lend support helping out by marching or volunteer to help with food or money. The fight we are in is worldwide and we need to teach our little ones, which side they need to be on.
I think labor did not pay attention to educating its members for the last forty-to-fifty years and this is one of the reasons that we don’t even have the support of the offspring of our old union families. This needs to change if unions and workers are to survive the wage and living inequality not just in the U.S., but worldwide.
There does seem like there is some hope in some South American countries, and a little hope in Mexico. But we need young people for the old hardcore union people are gone or dying off. There is lots of work for everyone so if you see a picket or a labor march, park your car and join in. It would mean much more than just honking your horn.
These are people who are in most cases fighting for their and your rights, such as Social Security, Medicare, unemployment rights, pensions, preventing privatizing of the postal service, food safety and healthcare.
The 1 percent are waking up to our fight. Recently, Nick Hanahuer, a famous venture capitalist and entrepreneur, said, “Raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour would inject about $450 billion into the economy each year. That would give more purchasing power to millions of poor and lower-middle-class Americans, and would stimulate buying, production and hiring.”
According to the Center for Economic and Policy Research, “The 13 states that raised their minimum wage at the beginning of 2014 saw employment increase by 45 percent more than the 37 states that didn’t raise their minimum.”
So remember these two references the next time you get into a debate with an anti-worker/anti-union person.
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…