High fuel costs are actually turning out to help American manufacturing. Manufacturing jobs were sent overseas, but to bring the products back to this country is proving to be very costly due to the high fuel rates and the fact that countries are starting to demand better wages for their workers. These facts are proving too much for the greedy corporatists, and they are starting to move jobs back home. This gives small local businesses the financial incentive to start Made in America companies, which can now label their products made in America or even with a local brand. The consumers seem to support this.
So like I have always said, “In all adversity there is a window of opportunity.” But one of the concerns is the trained workers needed to make the products or maintain the higher technical equipment. We have had the state controlled apprenticeships programs for years through the unions. You know the programs that the anti-union GOP has been destroying for the last sixty years. Now it is coming back to bite them in the ass.
Still there is a great opportunity for both employers and wage slaves to raise wages, which will make more jobs by having more spendable income to put into the consumer-driven capitalist economy. We, workers, also must remember that one hell of a lot of our jobs are still overseas. They still have to bring the products back over here to sell it. Workers must keep the pressure on for the $15 to $16 an hour wages and if the fast food workers prevail then this will float the ship up for the high-end and medium-end restaurants, which will push up wages for highly trained workers.
Remember the key to all of this is the $15 to $16 an hour wage hike and the wage hike will make more jobs then we will probably be able to fill. I would predict the unemployment rate at between 5 to 4 percent, which is the Holy Grail for wage slaves.
I still remember those days when your boss gave you shit, all you had to do was walk across the street for another job and probably get 6 bits or 75 cents more an hour in pay. So don’t think it cannot happen again. Remember the 1 percent has an instable appetite for more money and they need us to get it. All we want is our share.
They put up their cash; we put up our sweat and bodies and sell it one hour at a time. Fifteen to $16 an hour—hell yeah.
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 ...
Comments
Post a Comment