One of the last things unions can get or have gotten for their members is job protection for 10 years or for life like France has, but this security is under assault. The French government has a bill which will, in the words of the anti-labor government, make France more competitive globally by extending the work, create less jobs and make layoffs easier. All this will do is enrich the companies and their greedy bosses.
These French protests were as much against the political status quo as the labor bill. There’s no difference between the right-wing French Republicans and the left-wing Socialists parties. They are both the same just different names. Both are in the service of big business, which is just what is happening here in the U.S. with the Democrats and the GOP. But in France, the hard-left flank of the General Confederation of Labour, a national trade union, is holding nationwide strikes, which the government is saying it won’t back down.
If the government wins in France, the U.S. labor force will be next in line to fight for our existence, and with all the instant communications available we have the capability but not the wherewithal to hold a nationwide strike. At this time unless we can elect Sanders or at least keep the revolution alive to bring about change that is needed to neuter the corporations’ greedy lust for money.
The workers must be thinking ahead for if the French workers lose and the GOP wins the 2016 election, they will come after workers’ rights, the remainder of the unions, $15 an hour minimum wage, pensions, healthcare plans and safety laws with a vengeance. This fight between the 1 percent and the 99 percent has just begun so pick a side before it’s too late.
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…