Skip to main content

Unions Create Perfect Wage Slaves

The true wage slave is a good union worker who usually serves a four to five year apprenticeship then begins his or her career in the building trades or other type of specialty work, such as a machinist. Once they finished their apprenticeship they are invested in their pensions, and, in most cases, with a retirement at around the age of 52 to 55 years old. If they leave the trade they cannot draw their pension until they reach 65, which keeps stability in the work force. Part of the unions’ responsibility is to ensure workers’ keep current with their training, keeps them healthy with healthcare, and even providing substance abuse care for members—so in essence unions create the perfect wage slaves. With these benefits in place, it makes it very hard to leave a union job hence unions create dedicated wage slaves and a stable work force. So why do corporations think destroying the unions is good for business? When the very people who support businesses are the ones who are getting their buying power cut, and it’s not just in the U.S., but worldwide. South Korean railroad workers are on strike fighting the privatizing of their jobs, which is being done to cut the employees’ wages. Or the university jobs in Athens, Greece, which is fighting layoffs of 25,000 public employees. Wage slaves are starting to fight back worldwide, though. Employees at three Amazon distribution centers in Germany started a three-day strike on Dec. 16. Amazon has 9,000 workers in Germany. These German workers say they need to stop the anti-worker/anti-union sentiment growing in Germany now because these workers do not want to end up like their U.S. counterparts with mini jobs. The U.S. has about 12 percent union jobs versus Germany’s 60 percent. Just the other day all the employees at Duncan Donut in Pittsburgh, PA, went on strike, closing the stores for the first time in city’s history, according to Fight for 15. One-hundred cities across the U.S. saw its fast food workers go on strike for better wages. Unfortunately, these workers, for all the support they received, had naysayers who don’t understand that a rising tide lifts all boats. If the fast food workers get a raise increase so will they. These people are buying into the GOP’s bullshit. Speaker John Boehner said raising the minimum wage would make it harder on small businesses, while at the same time the GOP blocked all the President’s efforts to create jobs, cut unemployment and food stamp benefits to countless millions of people. The GOP are not the people you should be listening to, and, instead, you should be asking yourself why the GOP, corporations, or 1 percent would want the majority of the people scrambling for crumbs. History shows that when the working class does well financially so do corporations. The answer is control and power. However, the efforts of a relative few are paying off when you consider that Arizona, Colorado, Connecticut, Florida, Missouri, Montana, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, Washington State, and even the District of Columbia, saw their minimum wage increased during 2013. Of the individuals polled, 63 percent of Americans support raising the federal minimum wage from $7.25 to $10.10. To put it another way, on average, rent is $1,300 a month, a person would have to earn $25 an hour or $52,000 a year to be able to afford a place to live. Then consider what France’s president, François Hollande, did by introducing a two-year tax on about 470 companies that pay its executives’ salaries exceeding $1.4 million a year as a way to force the rich to help France shrink its budget deficit. Hollande said it’s about “economic fairness.” Essentially, we have two types of wage slaves and the difference between the two explains the current condition of our country. If we, the workers, are to be wage slaves, then we need to be good healthy, well-paid employees with pensions and not low-wage mini job temp workers. The 1 percent likes instigating a war between the wage slave camps because they win every time workers buy into their anti-union propaganda, which allows the inequality to continue to widen and weakens the power of the common people. This last year we have seen a rekindling of excitement about the possibility of a $15 to $16 an hour wage. The wages are going up. The money people will continue to slow walk the process, but the pressure and the fight must continue. Ask yourself if you’re willing to be a union-protected wage slave or just a slave willing to give up your control and power to greedy bastards looking out for themselves in a world of declining resources. A good site to look at is: http://www.scoop.it/t/arguments-for-basic-income Happy New Year to the workers of the world; we are one large family of wage slaves. We will win. Solidarity.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Time for an Offense

There are three phases of a general strike and unions must plan for one. Those three phases are: 1. general strike in an industry 2. general strike in a community 3. general national strike We need to move away from being on the defensive and move toward a good offensive. The American Federal of Labor (AFL) could not have held a general strike if it wanted to because they had thousands of different contracts that expired at different times of the year. This was done deliberately so that there is no consolidation of power for a general strike. Also, nowadays, there is no law agency that will support labor, except the National Labor Relations Board (NLBR), which has been under attack and in decline for years. This leaves the burden of change up to unions, and unless unions work together, little will change. We essentially have a combination of job trusts, which are not as strong as contracts, and the courts can break easily because the NLBR will be further weakened and essentially elim...

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...

Shock Troops

Gerrymandering is the only legal form of voter theft. Workers, our long range plans should involve 1. crushing Citizens United; and 2. getting rid of the Electoral College. We have been trying to get rid of the electoral college since 1876, and we are still waiting for the revolt. Our unions need to start training some members to be our shock troops and if all unions would do this and work with our local Labor Councils, it would be a good start. Our members need to know our labor laws, local laws, and learn how to protest in the streets if necessary. The antiunion people like Trump, Musk and his billionaire friends work together to crush the working people and convince workers they’re doing them a favor and then use them as shock troops against unions and their workers. All union and nonunion working people must come together and work together to protect what we have now. Labor Councils have retired union members and they could work together to prepare to bring the movement forward....