The only power the working class has is the power to produce wealth—for someone else.
The unions’ purpose is to organize the workers to control the use of their labor so that they will be able to stop the production of wealth except upon terms dictated by the workers themselves. This can be done by just putting their hands in their pockets until their terms are met.
It looks like the workers are now seeing that they can have unions and even workers at the big corporations, who pay low wages like Starbucks and Amazon. And the more wins there are the more will come for it’s not uncommon for people to want to be on the winning side.
So, who will be next? Will it be Walmart, McDonald’s, or Tesla? There will never be a better time for workers in our life time to make gains for workers. The stars have aligned in the workers favor and we can credit the pandemic, which showed the weaknesses that company owners actually have; and in all adversity there can be opportunities to take advantage of, such as lack of workers.
Thanks to the pandemic, people have the time to take inventory of their lives and adjust accordingly to how they want to live and work. And, this is when unions come in to play its’ role in getting the wages increased, working conditions, pensions and healthcare. All of the conditions every worker desires for making the owners of the corporations rich, richer and obscenely rich.
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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