The idea that workers had rights in their workplaces equal to or exceeded the rights of management motivated union activity during the 1930s. According to historian Sidney Fine, during the sit-down strike at Flint, Michigan, in 1937, the United Auto Workers contended that the strike was legal because the workers enjoyed a property right in his/her job; and in striking, was therefore protecting his private property—his/her right to a job.
The property right of the workers in their job, it was alleged, was superior to the right of the company to use its property as it saw fit since the workers had invested their lives in the company/plant only invested their money.
Remember, it is labor that creates wealth and jobs. Money can do nothing without humans and this is where the power and this is where the power is found. Just look at the 13th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution known as the Glorious Labor Amendment, which gives workers the right to strike to improve wages, working conditions, but also affirmations of personal autonomy and dignity. So the low-wage workers do have the right to strike to get a living wage and whatever else they need to take care of themselves and their families.
These workers should not settle for less than $15 to $16 an hour not $8 or $10 or even $12 an hour. They should hold out for the $15 to $16 an hour. The laws are on your side as is the public.
Remember what Harry Truman said, “Republicans are for a minimum wage. The more minimum the better.”
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...
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