The low-wage, fast-food workers put up a good fight in their two-day protests. Now they just need to keep it up with well-timed events, which hurt the pockets of the money people, like on Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year’s. The low-wage inequality of living standards is just not here in the USA, it is worldwide. Some countries have made great strides in dealing with the needs of their workers.
What the wage slaves need to do is cherry pick the best ideas from all over the world and develop a strategy that will make the odds in their favor for winning against the greedy. Look at the Denmark’s wages in fast food, which is $21 per hour versus the U.S.’s $7.25 federally and $8 in California. The cost of a Big Mac in Denmark is only $5.18 versus a Big Mac in the U.S. is $4. Denmark’s fast food workers are unionized. Could this be the reason they receive a living wage when our fast food workers don’t?
Then there is Germany, where the corporate leaders sit with the workers and decide what is best for the corporation and the workers. It seems that this is working very well for both sides. There seems that in some cases worker co-ops have worked well for some workers. But, whatever the way the toilers use to better their lives the commonality is that the toilers must all be together to win. People power is hard to beat if used smartly.
We must not mistake privilege for liberty, the money anti-labor people wants protection from government intervention to counter union movements for the 1 to 5 percent, but no protection for the 99-95 percent. This is what the toilers are up against when they protest. The cops and National Guard are used by the union busters, which the toilers pay for with their taxes. We need to even this out by some better and fair court decisions and new labor laws to plug the holes, which have been blasted by the anti-worker U.S. Supreme Court.
In the last 60 plus years beginning with President Eisenhower and some of his policies that began the attack on the workers, but we can change this by the ballot box or the street. It may be too late for the ballot box because of the Koch brothers and their fake organizations created to fool the unsuspecting voter. This leaves the streets and makes the fight worldwide just like the old International Workers of the World said it would be years ago. As a demonstration of this, workers from Denmark came to the U.S. to support our workers in their fight for a living wage.
We have maybe one more chance at the ballot box. We need people like Big Bill Hayward, the Reuther brothers, Eugene Debs, Jack London, Thomas Haggerty, and Mother Jones. These are the types of people we need today. They are out there; we just need to find them.
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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