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.
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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