The $15 to $18 an hour is in some places a reality, but in most it is being slow walked. Still a lot of work has to be done but the fight continues as politicians, like the Wisconsin governor, who are not giving up on the attack on unions. Right to Work is a perfect example of propaganda used by these politicians and the manipulation of the English language and has nothing to do with the right to work, but everything to do with the employer’s right to pay less for the work done. Wisconsin governor Walker just signed his state’s right to work joining the 24 other states with this anti-worker law.
I wonder what the unions, who supported Walker, are thinking now. Did the union members in Wisconsin know that their leaders were donating to Walker’s campaign? The Operating Engineers Local 139 donated $43,128, Wisconsin Pipe Trades gave $19,000, Wisconsin State Council of Carpenters gave $12,500, Milwaukee Police Association gave $4,000, the Milwaukee Professional Firefighters Local 215 gave $2,000, the Sprinkler Fitters Local 183 gave $1,500, Boilmakers Local 107 gave $1,000, and Northeast Wisconsin Building & Trades Council gave $100. In a conversation with a long-time Postal worker she was informed that her union donated a large sum to Republican Darrell Issa, who has systematically been destroying her Postal unions for the past several years.
So with this fight against unions and destroying the middle class and widening the inequality gap, we have a new fight to compensate for what Republicans have done to the working class that is the fight for compensation for our Commons. In order for this to happen we must educate the wage slaves what our Commons are and why we are entitled and owed, consider it rent, for the use of these Commons.
Once this is done then we must elect people of the same mindset. If the people of the U.S. would like or could use an extra $5,000 a year or $20,000 a year for a family of four, then this is what is at stake—worth fighting for?
The largest organization that could help would be the unions and hopefully the Democratic Party. The unions need to be strong with more members and the Democratic Party needs to weed out the Blue Dogs. All can be done by voting for the right people and the right causes. Don’t listen to the rhetoric a candidate spews during the campaign because they will say whatever you want to hear, you have to look at their actions and how they conducted their business with regard to people in the past.
Things are moving, but we must not stop for movements are like a huge snowball rolling down a hill. It will get bigger and bigger as long as it keeps moving forward, but once it stops it will stay the same for a while but then start to melt and soon be gone and all will be lost.
We must keep moving on wage and lifestyle inequality, good unions, universal healthcare, pensions, free education, and being paid rent for the use of our Commons. Wage slaves must take charge of their lives for the betterment of the world.
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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