Will labor ever have modern day leaders like William D. Haywood, Eugene Debs, Mother Jones, Daniel De Leon, Father Thomas J. Hagerty, Frank Little, Gurley Flynn or Joe Hill? Some of these people were members of the International Workers of the World also known as “Wobblies.” Some were also called “soapboxers” because they were the people who fought for freedom of speech and won the right to stand on a street corner and just talk about whatever they wanted. Most of these people were the voices of labor and talking about all workers in all industries the world over.
So, today we should be using these hard earned rights to point out that the rich are getting richer and refusing to understand or respond to the growing disaster that they are creating. Today’s low-wage workers working full time earn a combined$14 billion while Wall Street took in $28.5 billion in just bonuses. We must take a page from history and look at the Gilded Ages of the oligarchies, which was turned around by the wage slaves, people supporting the New Deal, higher taxation on the 1 percent, good rules and regulations on the Market.
Think of today’s banks and Wall Street, and good rules of politics. There has to be a change for our democracy here and worldwide is at-risk from a combination of lopsided wealth and power. This is where and why we, today, need modern soapboxers, Occupy Wall Street, Anonymous and the Arab Spring.
I hope they are out there planning, organizing and training for this is the year to beat back inequality with the minimal of $15 to $18 an hour minimum wage, free education, universal healthcare, pensions and do not forget about payments for our Commons, which the corporations have free use of. It is time to pay up. But first we must stand up.
Voting is one way to send a clear message. Republican candidates for president, such as Rand Paula and Chris Christy, are coming out of the woodwork advocating the cutting, privatizing or abolishing of Social Security. If they succeed, where will that lead us? They have almost everything already and now they want to take Social Security, too. It’s up to us collectively to put a stop to it.
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…