Union workers do not want to be seen as the 1 percent of the wage slaves because of their good pay, pensions and healthcare. The way to not be seen as the 1 percent of workers is to give back to the workers that don’t have a union working for them.
Unions can do this with money support and support in the fight for $15 to $18 an hour. The unions can educate wage slaves on tactics and legal advice in their support. Union workers can also show and help the low wage workers how to start or join a union or even a group that will stand up for what the wage slaves need.
Wage inequality is a worldwide scourge and will only be stopped by the people. The government can help, but the workers must make them. Governments will not volunteer to do it on its own. There is a need for large changes, like free education, single-payer or universal healthcare, and card check to make unions’ certification faster.
The largest pool of low paid workers is found in the fast food, restaurant, farm, retail, homecare, car wash, and quickie lube job—these are the people the unions and their members should be trying to bring into their fold. We, the unions, need them as bad as they need us.
Unions need to always be organizing otherwise they get rusty and lose their skills, and people who are good at organizing will lose interest in being associated with inactivity. Organizing is considered a diminishing skill, which needs to be a never ending job keeping up with the GOP anti-union tactics for the corporations.
This is the right time for a worker revolution. We have the tools of communication (cell phones and social media), just this alone is much more than we had in the 1920s-‘40s when unions were at their strongest. Also, keep up the ongoing fight for USW refineries, longshoremen, Ukraine and Turkey coalminers, and, of course, the fight against austerity in Greece. These are some of the fights we know about. The people must win.
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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