In all adversity there is a window of opportunity, a window the University of California’s student researchers crawled through during the pandemic to unionize. Throughout the UC campuses, almost 15,000 student researchers signed authorization cards to join the already 80,000 other academic workers across the country who unionized with the United Auto Workers.
The time is right for trade and factory workers to ask for a union to receive better, fair wages, benefits and safety. These simple workers’ rights were why the UC student researchers unionized. They were doing the work but had no rights or protections for that work, they struggled to pay rent or buy necessities, so they were essentially working as indentured servants.
At this time there is a shortage of workers. You can tell businesses and corporations are getting desperate when they offer potential workers anything from an iPhone to thousands of dollars as sign on bonuses. It will get better for workers when out country starts rebuilding and union trades will have shops kicking on doors for trained people or a way to train people, which the unions have capacity to do.
Then the corporations and the factories will need more people to make and deliver the things needed to rebuild our infrastructure. To the corporations and businesses, this won’t only be about money, it will be about people. The winners will be those who hire the best trained workers, and how many they can get to grow and recover from the years of neglect at the hand of Republicans.
This could be the holy grail of organizing for workers and unions and the UC student researchers are at the forefront of this trend. Typical of non-union businesses, the students were doing the work, but others were benefitting from their efforts.
I would love to be back organizing for my union. This is a once in a lifetime chance for all unions, and we should be all supporting each other. We went from 12 percent unions in 1930 to 35 percent in 1945. Today, it is 10.8 percent. It is time to rebuild and top those numbers and aim for at least 50 percent for all workers.
Remember, as the UC student researchers are showing, there is a lot more to infrastructure than roads, bridge and power.
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
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