The new attack on unions is Verizon’s move to cut pensions and healthcare, which Verizon says it needs to do to keep up with its competitors. If it wins, its cuts will be a death spiral to the bottom for union workers. There are two ways for unions to win: one is to stand fast; the other is to put pressure on the nonunion competitors or a combination of both.
Workers must know that these attacks on them come from the GOP’s call for austerity and that ideology imported from Europe, mainly Angela Merkle’s Germany, and big banks, which is being forced upon countries like Ireland, Greece, Portugal, and Italy. These banks and corporations would very much like to import austerity here into the U.S. to break unions.
This is or should be the tipping point for workers to go on the offensive instead of always playing the defensive game. A good offense will always defeat a defense. And at this time it looks like workers and labor unions have retreated to large cities and abandoned the rural country sides in the U.S. There is some hope, though, with new rules, which could help labor.
The National Labor Relations Board (NRLB) just made the biggest change to the NRLB in decades, which is how future labor elections are run and streamline the union election process by allowing documents to be filed electronically rather than through the mail. These rules also delay legal challenges from employers until after the votes are cast. The GOP tried to get an opposing bill passed to counter these new rules.
For decades employers had been able to delay each election by filing a flurry of election challenges in order to buy their union-busting attorneys time to design campaigns intended to harass and intimidate workers.
President Obama vetoed the GOP’s opposing bill. With this new law and the gains on the $15 to $18 an hour minimum wage fight, all workers and union must up their game for there are cracks in the GOP, Europe’s hold on the countries using the Euro slipping, and more people waking up to the injustices being imposed on them.
Since the people sell their lives one hour at a time, they should have the right to set their wages and not the employers, who strive to keep wages low; but to make it fair, employees should be setting the wages throughout the whole country and worldwide.
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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