The disempowerment of the workers worldwide and the USA is driving the wage inequality wider each day, which puts the capitalists’ consumer-driven economy into a death spiral. This spiral began in the mid-1980s when executives and directors tossed aside their old patriotic inhabitations against laying off workers, cutting wages, closing U.S. plants, moving production overseas to dirt-cheap labor, and taking on debt.
Most of this was driven by locally owned companies becoming stockholder corporations where the bottom line was all that mattered, no matter the cost. Their only concern is the shareholders; but this way of doing business is proving counterproductive. There is no way to grow. There is no wages or jobs. No spending. No economy. It’s essentially like committing business suicide.
This type of death spiral was also supported by the business roundtable in the 1990. They changed their statement of corporations’ mission from making goods available at a fair price to generating economic returns to its owners.
In the past, workers were able to raise their wages through widespread collective bargaining or full-employment economy with an unemployment rate was at 5 to 4 percent, neither option is available today or likely to be any time soon.
So what to do? Niccolo Machiavelli wrote in “The Prince,” that there are two methods of fighting. One is with laws, and the other is force. The first one is proper to man, but the second is proper to beasts. Because the first one often does not suffice (think recent U.S. Supreme Court rulings) one has no recourse to the second.
Unions’ long game is to get all union contracts to expire on the same day nationwide. The United Auto Workers combines contracts ends on April 28, 2028. This could then result in a mass national strike starting on May Day beeginning that year. This could then put enormous pressure on employers, but also on lawmakers. It’s the muscle and sweat of the workers that keeps this country great, not the individual company or corporations. This May Day strike would be the time to change the workers’ world for the better by negotiating for a 32-hour week with the same pay, and the U.S. adopts a healthcare for all with no out of pocket costs. This would also help the employers as they would no longer have to provide healthcare. By striking, the UAW won same pay for new workers, all UAW contracts will end on the same date, a 25-percent pay increase, a cost of living adjustments, a guaranteed right to strike over potential plant closures, and also the right to vote to unionize through the card che
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