Skip to main content

“Workampers” are the New IWW Wobblies

We now have another organization that will enhance the wage pollution for the wage slaves. Walmart started the wage pollution and then temporary agencies, which offer no healthcare or pensions, just temporary low wages. Now we have the online U.S. retail business, which did $197 billion in 2011. The workforce that does the work in these hundreds of warehouses are called “workampers.”

Amalgamated advertises positions on websites that workampers frequent. This is just a modern version of what the old Wobblies had to do in the 1920s and ‘30s; only then, instead, of traveling from place to place living in trailers and motorhomes they rode railroad freight cars and camped in hobo camps called the Jungle, which we still have.

The reason that the warehouse owners like workampers is they are temporary and will not stay year round that way by not staying in one place the workers do not have time to make friends, which could start unions. This is an old way to keep unions out for if people work long hours and are so tired after work that they cannot socialize with other workers. They cannot organize for better working conditions. This is just how the corporations fought the Wobblies, and like the old days the working people are still treated like a piece of crap and left with lasting physical damage. With temp work you cannot receive unemployment, which creates an economic instability.

The sad thing is that the business clients of these so-called fulfillment centers (warehouses) have not a clue what workers endure and lots of these workampers are Social Security recipients who have no choice but to keep working. You think this might be what you might like to do when you are 55 to 70 years old you might ought to check out warehouse work first for Amazon fulfillment centers.

As of today 1 in 3 people are poor or just about poor. This has to get better and the only thing we have going for us are the 99%/OWS and unions for they are the only organizations that can take on the oligarchy and their corporations who think nothing of the wage slaves speed walking 15-20 miles a day for $7.25 per hour. The online retailers expect to make $279 billion by 2015 off our modern-day proletariats-Wobblies-fruit tramps-workampers.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Fight or Perish

In 2012 more than a quarter of all political contributions came from just 30,000 people who represented the 1 percent of the 1 percent, 90 percent who spent the most won. Today, we are an experiment in either a democracy, which started in 1787 or an oligarchy, which is winning. The nonunion people, like Trump and Musk, have most all the tools in their pockets to destroy our unions. They have money, they have the courts, they have law enforcement, they have the media, and 50 percent of workers that don’t know this don’t know the history of the working class people. This is the perfect storm to lose all the gains workers have made whether they’re union or not, even our Social Security and Medicare, and the Affordable Care Act. So, now we will have to go way back to the late 1920s and ‘30s and dig up the old labor party books. One book, written in 1964, has the information, The Rebel Voices, an IWW Anthology by Joyce L. Kornbluh, educator, activist, and advocate. The history of our labor...

Project 2025 will be the Death of Unions

Each blog I write from here on out could be my last. I don’t know if or when they will shut me down, but I will keep the blog going for as long as I can. I’m not engaging in hyperbole, not with what is coming at us in January. We need to protect and defend the National Labor Relations Board. When Trump was last in office, he systematically eliminated workers’ rights to join unions and negotiate collective bargaining with employers—this not only hurt employees, but their communities and the economy overall. Trump weakened worker protections and actively worked at eliminating rules that protected workers. We need to keep the NLRB for all workers, for organizing workers and nonunion workers and build a workers’ union that is much stronger than the MAGA or the old Tea Party. Our unions will fight and win. The benefits unions fight for eventually work their way down to nonunion workers. If MAGAs weren’t so hellbent on owning the Libs, they, too, would enjoy a four-day work-week with full p...

Support Those Unionizing

Workers are still unionizing their workplaces so here is a shoutout to the nurses at the University Medical Center, a private hospital in New Orleans and the only level-one trauma center. The nurses held a one-day strike, but had been bargaining with the hospital for eight months regarding workplace concerns, such as safety and more money. There are about 600 nurses, considered the backbone of all hospitals, working at UMC. All of our unions should be giving them our support in any way that helps them succeed. If the election doesn’t go blue, this type of worker protests could very well end if the election goes red. This year with our president’s and vice president’s support of unions, there have been some big wins for labor. If we lose, the National Labor Relations Board will be eliminated and all states will become right to work states, which is the kiss of death to unions. Today, twenty-seven states have right to work laws, which prohibits union contracts. Right to work is a new t...