Skip to main content

Coming Together One Country At A Time

In California there is hope for the $15 an hour minimum wage because we are seeing two unions fight for this new amount for minimum wage. One is the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) and it wants $15 by 2020. The other union is United Health Care Workers West wants to raise the wage by $1 an hour every year until it hits $15 an hour by 2021 and the SEIU’s state council is prepared to spend $20 million to $30 million on the campaign. This all sound good and productive, but why would these unions invest so much money to start such a low amount for the minimum wage? This slow walking of the minimum wage will do nothing more than bump workers off the assistance programs that allows them to work and eat or seek medical care without going broke? The Teamsters have a word for unions that cater to corporations’ interest and it is “business unionist.” The minimum wage has not kept up with inflation, had it kept up minimum wage would be about $24 an hour, so these low increases will perpetuate the problems workers face. The fight for $15 started when the fast food workers has had enough and came together, and then got backing from unions. The workers of the world are winning the old International Workers of the World (IWW) people, like the UK electing Jeremy Corbyn of the British Labour Party; Greece electing Alexis Tsipras of the Syriza Party; in Spain the Podemus Party is on the rise; Ireland is seeing mass protests. We have all sorts of radical politics developing in Latin America and South Africa. Here in the U.S. we have Senator Bernie Sanders, who is shaking up the presidential race as a socialist Democrat. People are more aware of the fights for wage slaves around the world and are becoming more engaged. They are supporting each other on labor rights, and standing up for workers when there is injustice, such as the frame up of Thomas Harding and Richard LaBrie, the two rail workers threatened with life in prison as scapegoats for the 2013 oil train disaster in Lac Megantic, Quebec. The wage slaves of the world must stand by all proletarians and with our voices, boots on the ground, and money we can beat back austerity and the corporatization of the world and its greed. If we stay together and educate ourselves and our brothers and sisters and then vote the right way, we can persevere.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

May Day 2028 or Sooner

Unions’ long game is to get all union contracts to expire on the same day nationwide. The United Auto Workers combines contracts ends on April 28, 2028. This could then result in a mass national strike starting on May Day beeginning that year. This could then put enormous pressure on employers, but also on lawmakers. It’s the muscle and sweat of the workers that keeps this country great, not the individual company or corporations. This May Day strike would be the time to change the workers’ world for the better by negotiating for a 32-hour week with the same pay, and the U.S. adopts a healthcare for all with no out of pocket costs. This would also help the employers as they would no longer have to provide healthcare. By striking, the UAW won same pay for new workers, all UAW contracts will end on the same date, a 25-percent pay increase, a cost of living adjustments, a guaranteed right to strike over potential plant closures, and also the right to vote to unionize through the card che
Post a Comment
Read more

Standing At The Precipice

Unions do not do well in a dictatorship because unions are the first thing dictators destroy, and rest assured the workers won’t be allowed to hit the streets in protest. If Trump is elected he will invoke the Insurrection Act and send troops into the cities to crush them and send a message that he will terminate and dissent. They will eliminate unions and unionized workers. We are standing at the precipice and it's up to us to fight the fall into a dictatorship. By voting for the GOP, maga people and anyone else will be able to keep their guns until Trump says, “No.” By then, he will have already amassed an Army of foot soldiers in place to take over the government jobs. They will be Trump’s people and they will do whatever he tells them to do. The only way this can be stopped is for all unions and their members to put aside their political and social differences and stand strong for democracy, unions, workers rights and workers safety. This is not a drill. It will happen just loo
Post a Comment
Read more

“Workampers” are the New IWW Wobblies

We now have another organization that will enhance the wage pollution for the wage slaves. Walmart started the wage pollution and then temporary agencies, which offer no healthcare or pensions, just temporary low wages. Now we have the online U.S. retail business, which did $197 billion in 2011. The workforce that does the work in these hundreds of warehouses are called “workampers.” Amalgamated advertises positions on websites that workampers frequent. This is just a modern version of what the old Wobblies had to do in the 1920s and ‘30s; only then, instead, of traveling from place to place living in trailers and motorhomes they rode railroad freight cars and camped in hobo camps called the Jungle, which we still have. The reason that the warehouse owners like workampers is they are temporary and will not stay year round that way by not staying in one place the workers do not have time to make friends, which could start unions. This is an old way to keep unions out for if people w
Post a Comment
Read more