For unions to be strong, they must be prepared and protect the one power they have over the 1 percent anti-union oligarchies. That is the strike. In the past, strikes always ended with losses on the wage slaves’ side because the unions never have enough resources to keep their workers fed or housed and money enough to keep the workers’ bills paid.
This is a ploy the money people have used against wage slaves. They make it easy for anyone to get credit and credit cards, which the oligarchies control all aspects of credit cards from the limits to the interest rates, and when the average person needs more money they are encouraged them to tap into the equity in their homes. With no savings, large debts, it does not take long to break a worker and the strike ends. The oligarchies literally starve workers back to work.
The unions must make a concerted effort to educate their union members on money management and how to survive a strike long enough to prevail in the strike. One thing that can be done is to use the example of the Mormons, who stock up with a year’s supply of food; and either have enough saved to last at least six months to a year either alone or in conjunction with their union. The Sheet Metal union I belonged to had a “Christmas fund,” which was used to support us during strikes.
If all unions could get their members and their unions in this plan set up then and only then could labor start planning for the Holy Grail of strikes, which could start with a whole city then expanded to a county, then state, and the country until you have the Holiest of Holy Grail—a general strike. Then make the demand of a living wage, healthcare, pension, good education for everyone, work safety in the work place, enforced food safety, environmental laws, and this would make Jack London’s The Dream of Debs a reality.
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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