Old International Workers of the World’s (IWW) dream of a worldwide workers fight for economic justice is coming. This has got to feel very good for the old IWW’s Wobblies and it is showing respect for the martyrs who gave their lives or did prison time on mostly trumped up charges.
All workers and retired people need to stand up and support the $15 an hour wage or a living wage, which some, like California Rep. Barbara Lee (D) say should be in the $26 an hour range, which is where it would be today if the minimum wage had kept up with inflation. The proletarians worldwide have awakened to the fact that no government is going to help them, they’re on their own. Just like always.
It is the families and fellow workers who help you. Remember when you have nothing you don’t have much to lose and this is where the oligarchies have made a strategic mistake. You never force your enemy into a corner (Art of War) and left them with no alternatives, but to fight. Also remember if you are afraid to be seen in front of your fast food place, just swap with another fast food worker at a different place, like Burger King, KFC, Taco Bell or McDonalds; hell, even a Walmart worker. You’re all in the fight together. We all are. This last week saw fast food workers from all over the world coming together and striking for fair wages.
Don’t buy into the malarkey of robots taking over your jobs. Companies have been trying this concept for a few years now, but it’s a human to fix the automated scanners when they malfunction, which they usually do. Sit back and watch sometime at a store with self-scanners few get through the process without an employees’ help. Vending machines are similar because it takes humans to design the machines, usually construct the machine and other humans to cook and package the food in them.
So, fast food workers are winning and they will float the wage ship up for the rest of the workers and will become stronger with each strike so don’t let up. Keep the pressure on and as you do more and more workers will join the mounting fight for $15 an hour. Right now many states are slow walking the wages up, but some cities, such as Davis, California, have a petition for a resolution for $15 an hour and there will be many more joining this trend.
I would like to see a $15 a petition for a resolution in Redding, California, which would turn the economy around in what is referred to as poverty flats. Redding is a very conservative area, and the people can’t seem to see how they hurt themselves when they support GOP candidates with anti-worker agendas.
For example, in a recent video, Rand Paul, the senator from Kentucky, said poverty wages for workers is the “tough love that people have to accept” in order to get our economy out of the Bush recession that he and the GOP voted for. Austerity does not work. This is what we’re up against folks, and consider the poor saps who support Paul and don’t realize he’s trying to cheat them out of their wages. Link below:
http://www.occupydemocrats.com/watch-rand-paul-poverty-wages-are-tough-love-people-have-to-accept/
This mentality is a perfect example of blame the victim. Paul, or any politician in Washington, D.C., doesn’t work hard for his money, but they want us to believe we should work harder for more money. Well, the facts are against them. According to workingamerica.org, U.S. workers have been more productive than ever, but the wages haven’t kept up with the productivity.
“Between 1973 and 2011, worker productivity increased 80 percent. In the same period, worker wages went up only 10 percent (median hourly compensation). Between 2000 and today, productivity increased 23 percent – adjusted for inflation, wages didn’t increase at all.”
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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