Are American workers and the other world workers ready to join together to fight for bread? The workers were once literally fighting for bread when they were hungry. It seems at least in America, workers got to where they were not hungry enough and so our workers were happy to sit down and eat their cake. The perception is that unions have settled on just trying to protect what they have and no longer push for the amelioration of broader social inequalities, which are reflected in public opinion polls.
Union approval rates have fallen well below 50 percent and continue to decline. Our unions must stop this decline by telling the union story of what the unions have done for the good of all workers here and around you’re the world. One thing we can do today is use our labor forces to help our low-wage workers fight for bread and the $15 an hour minimum wage would buy some of that bread and maybe even a little cake, too.
Some or most of our unions have been standing in quicksand and sinking while not realizing it or just denying it to themselves. So just stop and think in 1957 union found that Americans had a 76 percent positive feeling about unions. What happened? Maybe too much time eating cake or just apathy. Whatever it is it is time to move out of the quicksand before it is too late.
So union should be among the fighters for the $15 to $16 an hour minimum wage and organize just like Joe Hill told us to do before he was shot to death. Did Joe Hill die nothing?
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 ...
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