Where Is This Country Headed?

Today, we are still fighting for a living wage at a minimum of $15 an hour, when, in fact, it should be $24 an hour had it kept up with inflation. This fight has been going on for a very long time, and nothing seems to change. In 1905—a 112 years ago—the International Workers of the World (IWW also known as the Wobblies) held a convention in Chicago to lay the groundwork for one big union. IWW members were the “shock troops” of labor. Their prime purpose was to make the first breaches in the entrenched industry. They fought and won the free speech fights so they could continue to educate the workers on what should be their right to a safe work place, fair pay and reasonable work hours. Some died exercising this right. These Wobblies traveled the country in search of work, as timber fallers or on farms (they were known as fruit tramps). Many worked to unionize the textile workers, long before the New York Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire in 1911. Here in 2017, we are still fighting for full-time work, along with pensions and healthcare. Retirees, and people forced into retirement, who are finding their pensions or Social Security isn’t keeping up with the cost of living (inflation) are now in the same position as the old IWW workers. The IWW used to hop railroad cars or walk the country in search of work. Today, people, if they’re lucky, travel the country in travel trailers, motorhomes, vans or tents. These people are called “workampers” (pronounced work campers), “van dwellers,” or “rubber tramps.” Noticed how these people, who are trying to make a living are tagged with condescending descriptions? They chase short-term gig jobs at farms, but mostly at warehouses, like Amazon, which hire workampers through temp agencies, especially during the holiday season, mainly Christmas. This has been described by workers as backbreaking work with no safety nets in place, like workers’ compensation or healthcare. These workers are mostly white (which explains the angry white voters, political pundits talk about—voters so angry with the establishment they vote against their own self-interests). Many of these workers are still lucky to have some kind of roof over their heads, food and can make enough money for fuel to get to the next gig job. The sad thing is, there is no end in sight in the search for the next gig job, except maybe death. There is no retirement, no healthcare, no savings, and when their vehicle breaks down, there’s no money to fix it or if their body becomes sick, there’s no money for a cure. Is this what millions of our workers get to look forward to? What happened? Did we vote the wrong people into office? Did we help break the labor unions by voting these people in? Did workers experience some bad luck along the way? Did we get sick or did we make some bad decisions in our life? Or was it some or all of the above? Doesn’t really matter, we are human beings and this is still the richest country in the world were it not for the greedy and selfish who have forced us into these conditions yet again. Living conditions could be and should be so much better, but it’s up to us. We have to run for office at any level, or listen to, research and question the candidates and vote otherwise we will continue this path towards the despair that Charles Dickens wrote about in 1838 in Oliver Twist or in 1843 in A Christmas Carol—we’re better than to allow this.