Coming Together One Country At A Time

In California there is hope for the $15 an hour minimum wage because we are seeing two unions fight for this new amount for minimum wage. One is the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) and it wants $15 by 2020. The other union is United Health Care Workers West wants to raise the wage by $1 an hour every year until it hits $15 an hour by 2021 and the SEIU’s state council is prepared to spend $20 million to $30 million on the campaign. This all sound good and productive, but why would these unions invest so much money to start such a low amount for the minimum wage? This slow walking of the minimum wage will do nothing more than bump workers off the assistance programs that allows them to work and eat or seek medical care without going broke? The Teamsters have a word for unions that cater to corporations’ interest and it is “business unionist.” The minimum wage has not kept up with inflation, had it kept up minimum wage would be about $24 an hour, so these low increases will perpetuate the problems workers face. The fight for $15 started when the fast food workers has had enough and came together, and then got backing from unions. The workers of the world are winning the old International Workers of the World (IWW) people, like the UK electing Jeremy Corbyn of the British Labour Party; Greece electing Alexis Tsipras of the Syriza Party; in Spain the Podemus Party is on the rise; Ireland is seeing mass protests. We have all sorts of radical politics developing in Latin America and South Africa. Here in the U.S. we have Senator Bernie Sanders, who is shaking up the presidential race as a socialist Democrat. People are more aware of the fights for wage slaves around the world and are becoming more engaged. They are supporting each other on labor rights, and standing up for workers when there is injustice, such as the frame up of Thomas Harding and Richard LaBrie, the two rail workers threatened with life in prison as scapegoats for the 2013 oil train disaster in Lac Megantic, Quebec. The wage slaves of the world must stand by all proletarians and with our voices, boots on the ground, and money we can beat back austerity and the corporatization of the world and its greed. If we stay together and educate ourselves and our brothers and sisters and then vote the right way, we can persevere.