Skip to main content

Higher Wages Improves Economy

In a small town in San Francisco’s East Bay, the 22,000 workers, 2,227 of who are minimum wage workers, received a bump in pay. Emeryville, CA, is home to the highest minimum wage in the county at $15 an hour. Emeryville’s wage hike went to $14.44 overnight where Los Angeles’ $15 will make an appearance in 2020. Seattle’s wage hike to $15 is also being slow walked to 2017, but the genie is out of the bottle and the workers have gotten a taste of what a living wage can afford them and others see their gains and now know it can be done—done without having their wages slow walked. Now eight cities in San Francisco's South Bay are contemplating raising its minimum wage. What some of the wage slaves, who make more than $15 an hour, don’t understand is when the people earning $9 an hour wage that goes to $15 it will push all other wages up, and they probably will not even after ask for as raise. Case in point, dishwashers now make $15 an hour and then the cook, who has always made $15 to $16 an hour, now will get an increase. The $15 minimum wage will float all boats. If this goes national as Bernie Sanders wants to do when elected president. It would stop the rise of inequality and restart the middle class, which would let everyone who wants a job have one and stop the drain on our social resources allowing the money saved to be used in education and rebuilding our infrastructure creating even more jobs. The capitalist system works when there is cash in the pockets of the many and not so well when just 61 families have all the cash in their in offshore accounts to avoid taxes. So it’s time to pry some cash out of their pockets by making them pay higher taxes and force them to move their money back to the U.S. or their home country or lose their citizenship. The Have Nots of the world are starting to understand what the hedge funders and big banks have done to the world’s economy and are demanding change—it is the young people whose futures are at stake and if they are smart they will be voting for Bernie Sander. Poverty, like death, robs us our futures. It's time for people to stand up for what's right. Emeryville is the little town that could be the tipping point for the $15 an hour minimum wage in this country.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Time for an Offense

There are three phases of a general strike and unions must plan for one. Those three phases are: 1. general strike in an industry 2. general strike in a community 3. general national strike We need to move away from being on the defensive and move toward a good offensive. The American Federal of Labor (AFL) could not have held a general strike if it wanted to because they had thousands of different contracts that expired at different times of the year. This was done deliberately so that there is no consolidation of power for a general strike. Also, nowadays, there is no law agency that will support labor, except the National Labor Relations Board (NLBR), which has been under attack and in decline for years. This leaves the burden of change up to unions, and unless unions work together, little will change. We essentially have a combination of job trusts, which are not as strong as contracts, and the courts can break easily because the NLBR will be further weakened and essentially elim...

If Gompers Could Do It, We Can Do It

Labor must vote for the person who will support and vote for labor’s best interests. And in turn, labor members have to support those who are running for office who support labor unions and vote down ballots. Voting down ballot gives the person at the top more power to do what’s best for us. This includes elections for city, county and state positions, as well. If you think a four day work week is wishful thinking, remember workers had to fight for an eight-hour work day and a five-day work week. We, labor members and supporters, need to find people who can fight and win. We need to clean the Congress and Senate of the old Democratic guard who have voted repeatedly to hold the working class back while enriching themselves. This would rebuild solidarity in a magnitude greater than anything either party has seen or offered in the last fifty years. If we can bring about the change in the ruling class we can improve all of our lives. This would be the start of the end of the tyranny of the...

Shock Troops

Gerrymandering is the only legal form of voter theft. Workers, our long range plans should involve 1. crushing Citizens United; and 2. getting rid of the Electoral College. We have been trying to get rid of the electoral college since 1876, and we are still waiting for the revolt. Our unions need to start training some members to be our shock troops and if all unions would do this and work with our local Labor Councils, it would be a good start. Our members need to know our labor laws, local laws, and learn how to protest in the streets if necessary. The antiunion people like Trump, Musk and his billionaire friends work together to crush the working people and convince workers they’re doing them a favor and then use them as shock troops against unions and their workers. All union and nonunion working people must come together and work together to protect what we have now. Labor Councils have retired union members and they could work together to prepare to bring the movement forward....