Jobs: what happened and how we changed.
Our work history used to entail jobs that worked from sun up to sun down, seven days a week and no work safety measures. From here we went to six days a week and 12 hours a day and then down to five days week and an eight hour work day. Included in the workforce were children before the child labor laws were implemented, which opened up jobs for more adults.
Most all of these changes were the result of technology and globalization, which we've always had and labor just keeps evolving to survive, and the changes were most always driven by the wage slaves. Here we are with huge inequality in lifestyle and wages, which stayed the same or has shrunk during the last 30 years. So, why not use some of the things that worked in the past?
Like going to six hour work days, four days a week, which would open more jobs for workers, and taxes on corporations, and the 1 percent, who are hoarding the cash, must be raised. Government must get involved for at this time the corporations, banks and hedge funders are ruining this country and the world alike. These greedy people really do believe the free market is really free or responsibility and no one except the rich should be in charge, which is bull malarkey.
There has to be rules, regulations and elected people who are responsible to demand that they are enforced. To bring about the changes needed, labor unions could still be a force to reckon with, but only if they can stop the panic of their memberships’ demise. At this time some unions are acting like they are drowning in a pool of water and each union is climbing on top of the other, which will eventually drown them all.
They need to just stop the panic or greed and work for the benefit of all wage slaves. By educating their members and recruiting them and their families to help fight wage inequality, free education, universal healthcare, and pensions. Don’t forget what we are owed for the use of and rent of our Commons, which would go a long way toward equalizing the wage inequality.
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...
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