The GOP’s unintended consequences is having a devastating effect on our country. The GOP’s attack on trade unions led to a shortage of trained and skilled workers. The union trained workers go through an apprenticeship programs to ensure the workers are properly trained in their particular field. The GOP’s fight to keep wages low in restaurants and fast food places, for example, has lead to wage inequality, which copied with a deadly virus spreading across our nation is making employees reluctant to return to work.
Now the workers have the upper hand, and are taking advantage of the labor shortage by now demanding higher wages, unions, job safety, healthcare and pensions. These demands have spilled over into federal government jobs, such forest service firefighter called fire techs. Last week President Biden was appalled to learn that these firefighters beginning pay is only $13 an hour and promised to correct. It’s kind of the problem, these career politicians have no clue just how little these frontline workers make or the cost of groceries yet have no problem keeping workers at starvation wages. This low wage is why the federal government are having trouble hiring Hot Shot crews or keeping the firefighters it has as they leave to work with state fire departments.
Now, a lot of businesses have to pay money up front to get workers in to fill their job vacancies, and this can all be traced back to the leadership of the GOP and its austerity wages for workers, anti-union, anti-workers agenda. All of this GOP anti-worker tactics have lead to the fight to unionize Amazon at no matter what it takes. The unions have made the commitment to win no matter the time or cost. Having failed with the Amazon workers Bessemer, Alabama to join the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union, the Teamsters are making a nation-wide push to organize the Amazon delivery drivers. The drivers have complained about rigorous delivery schedules that force them to urinate in bottles just to keep up with their delivery schedules.
I have always said that we could not stop companies from leaving the U.S. for manufacturing for cheap labor to make the cheap merchandize, but these companies have to bring that merchandize back to the U.S. to sale is where the workers can get even by joining a union for better wages, working conditions, enforcement of labor laws, pension and healthcare.
For cheap labor to make a product might work for the anti-union corporations, but they still have to sell it and deliver it to make a profit, and this leaves the door open for the unions. They just have to force their way in and fight hard to stay in. When the unionized workers win and they will, the corporations can put the blame on the leadership of the GOP for not seeing the unintended consequences of their greed and actions.
Yes, they are coming for us. Workers need to have one another’s backs because no one else will. Neither the broader labor movement nor the Democratic party are prepared to meet the urgency of this moment. So it’s going to fall upon the rest of us to mount a real resistance against Trump’s authoritarian takeover. We’re going to have to get our hands dirty. I don’t care if you have a good, well-paying union job and you are in the middle class now—if you see a worker being dragged out of his workplace regardless of how skilled the job and potentially taken to another country, you should be ready to be there for that worker. When I.C.E. shows up, gather around and shame them into leaving. It has worked in other places. America is sleep walking into authoritarianism, and if there’s anyone out there who is a member of a labor union that is safe—at this point— and doesn’t think this applies to them. Understand that they just haven’t gotten to you yet. They’re coming for all of us. There are ...
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