Skip to main content

Joe Hill's Passive Sabotage

Joe Hill wrote in 1914 about how to make work for the unemployed, which was about, “How to use new ways and tactics of carrying on the class struggle to emancipate the workers from wage slavery. The best way to strike is to strike on the job. First, present your needs or demands to the bosses. If they should refuse to grant them, don’t walk out and give the scabs a chance to take your place. “No, just go back to work as though nothing had happened and a new method of warfare, which is to slow down things [like accidently unplugging a refrigerator or copier, its passive sabotage] every way possible as not to give the bosses a good reason to fire you, and when things begin to happen be careful not to fix blame on any certain individual unless that individual is an undesirable from a working class point of view. “The bosses will soon find the cheapest way out of it (the slowdown) is to grant your demands. This is not a mere threat; it has been successfully tried more than once. Striking on the job is a science and should be taught as such. It is extremely interesting on account of its many possibilities. It develops mental keenness and inventive genius in the working class and is the only known attitude for the infamous Taylor System [mistreatment of workers for profit and gain]. The aim of the Taylor System was to work one half the workers to death and starve the other half to death” Does this sound like the fast food, Walmart, Home Depot, Target, K-mart, restaurants and most all big box stores and anti-union corporations? The workers could be the Trojan horse inside the business so just let your inventive genius. Figure out how to do what is needed to gain the $15 to $18 an hour minimum wage, pensions, respect, job safety healthcare, and full-time employment. This action will work worldwide. It will take each person’s genius so don’t set back and wait on the other person. It is your life and your family’s. Time is running out. The oligarchies billions are holding most of the money. We have to pry some of that money away from them to stop the scourge of inequality.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Fight or Perish

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...

Project 2025 will be the Death of Unions

Each blog I write from here on out could be my last. I don’t know if or when they will shut me down, but I will keep the blog going for as long as I can. I’m not engaging in hyperbole, not with what is coming at us in January. We need to protect and defend the National Labor Relations Board. When Trump was last in office, he systematically eliminated workers’ rights to join unions and negotiate collective bargaining with employers—this not only hurt employees, but their communities and the economy overall. Trump weakened worker protections and actively worked at eliminating rules that protected workers. We need to keep the NLRB for all workers, for organizing workers and nonunion workers and build a workers’ union that is much stronger than the MAGA or the old Tea Party. Our unions will fight and win. The benefits unions fight for eventually work their way down to nonunion workers. If MAGAs weren’t so hellbent on owning the Libs, they, too, would enjoy a four-day work-week with full p...

Support Those Unionizing

Workers are still unionizing their workplaces so here is a shoutout to the nurses at the University Medical Center, a private hospital in New Orleans and the only level-one trauma center. The nurses held a one-day strike, but had been bargaining with the hospital for eight months regarding workplace concerns, such as safety and more money. There are about 600 nurses, considered the backbone of all hospitals, working at UMC. All of our unions should be giving them our support in any way that helps them succeed. If the election doesn’t go blue, this type of worker protests could very well end if the election goes red. This year with our president’s and vice president’s support of unions, there have been some big wins for labor. If we lose, the National Labor Relations Board will be eliminated and all states will become right to work states, which is the kiss of death to unions. Today, twenty-seven states have right to work laws, which prohibits union contracts. Right to work is a new t...