Labor, unions, $15 an hour minimum wage, pensions, and safe working conditions are all under attack here in the U.S. and around the world. In the U.S., the Republicans have put out a bill to gut Social Security and raise the retirement age to 69 years old.
The anti-worker people are coming for everything President Franklin D. Roosevelt accomplished. They want to destroy Social Security and Medicare. This is what Newt Gingrich, former speaker of the House, told an audience at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank.
Donald Trump, who was handed the presidency by the electoral collage, is lining his cabinet with other like-minded people as himself. Trump has recruited corporate individuals that he promised his followers he would banish from Capitol Hill. Trump filled the Secretary of State position with an Exxon Mobil executive; for the head of the Treasury; Trump chose an executive from Goldman Sachs; Secretary of Labor is a fast food executive; he chose an anti-gay person as his Attorney General; and the “bankruptcy king” as Secretary of Commerce. What could go wrong?
The onslaught is on as Trump has fulfilled the right wing’s wish list to see laws and regulations gutted on climate change, nutrition, education, healthcare, wages, voting rights, the environment, social benefits, work-place safety, and any and all legislation that made this country strong and enviable.
In 1933, Hitler said, “We must reduce workers’ salaries and take away their right to strike.” This is now happening all across the U.S. and in parts of other countries. In Michigan state, the legislators adopted anti-labor laws, which can fine workers up to $2,000 for protesting. The outgoing North Carolina Republican governor, Pat McCrory, signed a bill passed by the GOP-held legislature that strips the newly elected Democratic governor of some of his authority and reduces Democratic Party's control over election boards.
This is just the beginning, and a lot of what is happening is not being reported by our corporate owned media. The decimation of our country can be laid at the feet of people who vote without investigating the promises politicians make to get elected and the greed that motivates people to screw a country into ruin.
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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