When labor and unions are diminished, inequality goes up. Just look at South Korea. They are facing the same thing as the U.S. where the 1 percent are getting richer each day while what’s left of their middle class is growing poorer by the day.
This is a very rich country that could be the poster child for how the capitalist system should work to the betterment of all, but instead greed has taken over and the wage slaves have had to go to the streets. At this time, South Korea is in the same fight as us with the need for a living wage, healthcare, pension, free education, the right to form a union, free assembly and free speech.
The people, led by unions, including the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions, are accusing the government of passing policies that weakens democracy, changes labor laws to benefit the corporations/wealthy and rewrites the country’s history to a conservative bent. Han Sang-gyun is calling for a general strike against "labor conditions that only fattens capitalists."
This could very well bring down the government or drive the protesters underground, like they did in Hong Kong, Bangladesh, and other countries that have had the rich disrupt the flow of wealth to benefit just themselves.
The oligarchies are providing the world’s extremists with fertile recruiting grounds from the Have Nots of the world. Some of these people will just picket and protests, but some will take other actions. Just look at U.S. history in the 1920s-1930s.
The wage slaves could only take so much before they had to decide what course of action to take. They had to decide between working peacefully under terrible conditions for small wages or turn to other actions and fight back.
If workers and their families are well taken care of they will behave peacefully, work hard for all to prosper from the 99 percent to the 1 percent. But, if the 1 percent carves out the 99 percent and they see no hope, this could lead to the end of the capitalist system and democracy as we know it today.
The oligarchies hold their future in their money vault and grubby hands and it very well lead to their demise.
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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