In this election, labor needs to get it right on whom to support. Labor supported Bill Clinton, whose chief of staff was Rahm Emanuel. Clinton opened the flood gates for union jobs to be shipped out of the country with the passage of North American Free Trade Agreement or NAFTA, and Emanuel, who is mayor of Chicago, is still union bashing. He would be back if Hillary Clinton is elected.
Look at what labor spent on President Obama’s election in hopes of getting the Employee Free Choice Act, which went nowhere. It was shoved aside for healthcare. Clinton’s NAFTA is now about to get Obama’s version in the form of Trans Pacific Partnership or TPP, which is NAFTA on steroids, labor says.
Labor needs people elected who will support labor’s fight for $15, free education, sick leave, family leave, single payer healthcare, the right to form a union, climate change, Black Lives Matter, immigration reform, lifestyle and income inequality and payment for Corporate use of our Commons. In order for this to happen it will take all of labor’s unions and nonunion wage slaves, which will bring together all proletarians.
Then we will need to vote people like Bernie Sanders for president, and supporters like Elizabeth Warren, Sherrod Brown, Keith Ellison, Al Franken, and Kshama Sawant, who will stand up to Wall Street and the Big Banks. Our political clout should flow from our wage slaves rather than from the billionaires down. Trickle down doesn’t work with economics and it doesn’t work with fairness in politics.
This could be the unions’ last chance to make their clout felt. If unions don’t win the Friedrichs v. California Teachers Association case, which could eliminate the public sector unions’ ability to fund themselves through fair-share fees paid by those who benefit from unions’ protection.
Labor has more at risk than ever so this election could be the proletarians’ last chance. Get educated and vote smart on what is good for you and your family. Again, our last chance is right around the corner in 2016.
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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