The plight of workers the world over is getting worse each passing day with the corporations and governments fighting against unions and worker rights. The jobs have gone to countries where the workers can be easily exploited or to U.S. southern non-union or Right to Work states, where if there are unions the employees have the options to pay dues or not, which further kills off unions.
To add injury to this bleakness, the Iowa legislation passed a bill, signed by its governor, Terry Branstad, to reverse the minimum wage law, which in effect will steal the raises of the lowest paid workers. The minimum wage will revert from $10.10 and $8.25 back to $7.25. The republicans say it’s just teenagers or entry level people working for minimum wage. They lie, 84 percent of the workers are 20 years of age or older; 31 percent are parents; and at least a third are 40 years or older.
Then there is automation. Robots and driverless cars and trucks, which will conceivably put up to 3.5 million truck drivers out of work. What will happen to these workers and their families? At this time workers are fighting a feeble defense and losing ground every day.
So what is needed to slow the worker alienation? Some solutions might include Universal Benefit Income (UBI) of about $1,200 a month for all older than 18 years of age and older. This would help undercut the power of the oligarchies hoarding the wealth and power by taxing them accordingly and putting the cash back into the economy.
It is the spending habits of the 76.5 percent that stimulates the economy, building, and spending, which creates more jobs. With a minimum wage of $15 an hour, plus UBI, all would win. The workers, the capitalists, and the governments, which would have tax money for healthcare, free education and pensions of Social Security for all. If workers with UBI wanted more money or a better lifestyle, they can work or start a business or they can band together and have worker-owned businesses.
We need a world where people don’t try to control others for personal gain and greed, but instead, equal the playing field so everyone can flourish.
In order for that to happen and to save the capitalist system, we need: $15 an hour minimum wage, healthcare for all, free education, and UBI of $1,200 a month for 18 years and older, which would cost $1.75 trillion. We also need better union laws with teeth that work for workers, state owned banks so the profits stay in the state, which to help pay for the state’s and its citizens’ needs. Also, like Alaska, the continental U.S. needs to charge for the rent or use of our Commons to defray some of our costs. These should be the new Bill of Rights for all.
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…