If Gompers Could Do It, We Can Do It

Labor must vote for the person who will support and vote for labor’s best interests. And in turn, labor members have to support those who are running for office who support labor unions and vote down ballots. Voting down ballot gives the person at the top more power to do what’s best for us. This includes elections for city, county and state positions, as well. If you think a four day work week is wishful thinking, remember workers had to fight for an eight-hour work day and a five-day work week. We, labor members and supporters, need to find people who can fight and win. We need to clean the Congress and Senate of the old Democratic guard who have voted repeatedly to hold the working class back while enriching themselves. This would rebuild solidarity in a magnitude greater than anything either party has seen or offered in the last fifty years. If we can bring about the change in the ruling class we can improve all of our lives. This would be the start of the end of the tyranny of the rich over the rest of us. There are a lot of questions regarding how our current administration came into power, but it won’t be forever despite what they believe. This administration does not care about anyone or anything but their pocket books at any cost to us. The followers of the current occupant of the White House is slowly losing his supporters as they come to realize they were conned and now they’ll pay for their fealty to a person who is incapable of caring for them or anyone else. They want to enrich themselves at the expense of the rest of us. It’s up to us. We need more union workers and stronger union organizations. We need a union campaign that demonstrates to workers why they need unions now more than ever. Unions need to come together to work toward a stronger and more powerful worker allegiance and unionize all workers, retail, child care—anything that has not been considered before. To accomplish this we need to go back and use tactics from our history, such as Samuel Gompers, the first president of the American Federation of Labor, used to make this happen. He was active during a time that is similar to today’s and he developed the principles of “voluntarism,” which was for unions to use economic actions by exerting coercion: strikes and boycotts. If he could do it then, we can do it today.