We need to get our shit together, and unless we are together we will continue to be stomped on by the 1 percent. One way to get our act together is organize our efforts to keep track of what the different organizations are doing, a clearing house of sorts.
The workers of the world must expand and reinforce the war on inequality. The workers must carve out some of the cash that the oligarchies and corporations are hording. The wage slaves of the low wage jobs will have to force wage hikes by strikes, walkouts and withholding their labor. If you are making minimum wage, you probably can’t fill up a gas tank even at $3 a gallon, the average tank would be about $54—about a day’s work.
So, minimum wage workers walkout will hurt the fast food, Walmart corporations’ executive officers more than you for you need the money, they worship money and they have to report to stockholders, which can get them fired. You just missed a day of work, or didn’t have work the day of the walkout, but their profits will be impacted. They look for ways to cheat their workers to appease their stockholders, which why minimum wage workers work less than 40 hours a week so they don’t qualify for benefits.
This is a worldwide fight. Read and study what other workers in other countries are doing like the UK, France, Turkey, Greece, Hong Kong, Ukraine, South American countries, Ireland, and Sweden. The people in all of these countries are fighting for more or to hold onto what they have. We, toilers, are not alone. We need a clearing house, like an incident command center for new tactics so all workers worldwide know what is working and not working at this time.
Workers in the San Francisco airports are fighting for higher wages, laborers in Washington, D.C., are fighting for a union, also in Washington, D.C., Walmart are fighting for $15 an hour and full time work. In New Jersey homeworkers are fighting for reinstatement and in Quebec Canada, the daycare workers are fighting for more money. All the workers and their leaders need to be talking to each other and provide information and intel to each other, maybe asking for help, support or money for when one wins we all win, which keeps up the pressure on the corporations for if we can keep up a good offense, it will weaken the opponents defense and slow down their offense at this crucial time of the GOP right-wing, union-busting attacks.
The fight for $15 to $18 an hour minimum wage, pensions, 40 hour work weeks, healthcare and the right to have a union. Then there is Walmarts’ credit card for its workers, which is just like the old coal mining stores where workers end up owing their paycheck to the company stores with no way out unless they make more money, at least $15 to $18 an hour.
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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