The workers are losing while our labor leaders sleep or hide out, hoping they can hold onto their position until they retire. Our labor leaders appeared to have given up the rural areas and pulled their efforts into the big cities. This is like having a fort with a moat around it and think they are safe. We all know forts can be conquered in the long run. It’s as if labor leaders learned nothing from the Clinton era.
We, at this time, are losing with the Right to Work laws being passed in 27 states, and now there is legislation in Congress for a national Right to Work law. Couple this with legislation in Congress to ban the Davis-Bacon Act on prevailing wage law, and the attacks on union pensions. These things will drive the nail into the heart of unions. This is happening in other countries, like the UK and France, who are electing leaders, such as Marine Le Pen, a far right leader.
We, here, in the U.S., cannot just depend on the Bernie Sanders-types. We need new, strong unions with good, strong leaders, willing to fight for their members regardless of where they live. If the people in place don’t want to rock the boat, then do like Lee Iacocca once used Laurence J. Peter’s quote, “Lead, follow or get out of the way.”
To our union rank and file members, you cannot wait for someone else to do the work for you. Who do you think will have your best interests and will fight for you or ensure that you keep the eight-hour work day, healthcare, pensions, job safety, and good wages? Now don’t look behind you for there is no one there except, maybe another union member.
The attacks on workers are here, and now being embolden with the election of Donald Trump and in countries like Ukraine, France, UK, Portugal,Italy, Greece, and South America are watching what happens here. So, workers get ready for the streets. This is where our fight will be won and where the new leaders will come from. It will be from the bottom up, not the top down.
Fight for a living wage of $15-$24 an hour, and the right for a union.
In 2012 more than a quarter of all political contributions came from just 30,000 people who represented the 1 percent of the 1 percent, 90 percent who spent the most won. Today, we are an experiment in either a democracy, which started in 1787 or an oligarchy, which is winning. The nonunion people, like Trump and Musk, have most all the tools in their pockets to destroy our unions. They have money, they have the courts, they have law enforcement, they have the media, and 50 percent of workers that don’t know this don’t know the history of the working class people. This is the perfect storm to lose all the gains workers have made whether they’re union or not, even our Social Security and Medicare, and the Affordable Care Act. So, now we will have to go way back to the late 1920s and ‘30s and dig up the old labor party books. One book, written in 1964, has the information, The Rebel Voices, an IWW Anthology by Joyce L. Kornbluh, educator, activist, and advocate. The history of our labor...
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