If there is a choice for labor between a strike or an election—always go for the strike unless there is no one on the other side like the Koch brothers and private business who will oppose the union’s election. If it is about money or taxes and dues the unions will lose all elections for those things.
All strikes must be political and all types of workers with all types of jobs and even those without jobs must be welcome to join and this will work if the strike is not a single issue and there are lots of issues to pick from, like education, universal healthcare, pensions, $15 to $18 an hour minimum wage, Black Lives Matter, inequality in income, homeless, veterans, endless wars and opportunity to better our lives.
The strikes should be hit and run—hit the streets then run back to work before you can be replaced. Also, support at places where you don’t work and hope workers at these places reciprocate. Some of the best unions to support and study at this time are the nurses and teachers. They are well educated and very organized. They also are very good speakers and can use the media to their advantage.
Labor leaders need to study the Art of War and think about using guerilla war tactics in some cases. The fight for $15 to $18 an hour minimum wage is just starting because politicians have pacified people with the promise of $15 an hour, but the measures are being slow walked to $15 and people need it now, not in three or five years. Why is it the worker has to wait three to five years to get a decent wage that will be out of step with inflation by the time they earn it, but corporations don’t have to wait to get their profits?
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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