One key factor in a labor resurgence could well be the fight for $15 if there is good movement on this. It could excite the wage slaves and restore faith in the power of the masses, which has always been there, but just repressed by anti-labor GOP people of the 1 percent who have vilified the wage slaves and makes the unions look like losers. We need a win for $15 in ’15 and the April 15 Fight for $15 rally and unions and labor councils should be helping with this fight.
And I, a retired sheet metal organizer, have not heard one word from the sheet metal union and at my last labor council meeting (AFL/CIO) not one word. So, is there a reason workers won’t unite? Labor is now at a 6.6 percent in the private sector.
This is about the same level as when the Ludlow Massacre occurred in 1914 in which several miners and a 12-year-old were shot to death by the National Guardsmen. Then when the canvas tents that they were living in caught fire and 11 children and two women were killed. This is what it took to bring labor together.
It’s been a hundred years and here we are once again starting at the bottom, 6.6 percent, will it take another Ludlow to bring together our workers? Will the wage slaves go to the streets and demand their civil rights—to have the right to build a union, a living wage and have free education, healthcare, safe work environment, pensions and be paid for their commons. In order to do this, workers must become educated and understand that this labor fight is worldwide in places like Ukraine, where they are fighting for their livelihoods lust like the oil, train and fast food workers.
The fight will never be over, but just a few wins will keep the wage slaves going until we can regain the control and ground lost that we had in the 1940s, ‘50s, and ‘60s. Check out workers’ rights online courses, Workers’ Rights in a Global Economy, starting in June 1. For more information, go to:
http://iversity.org/en/courses/workers-rights-in-a-global-economy
and check out the trailer for the course at:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8u8dpMVfFh0
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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