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.
It’s time to pick a side. You want to have and keep unions with good wages and pensions, then it’s time to pick a side. You want to keep Social Security for yourself and family, it is time to pick a side. You want to get or keep Medicare and Obama’s Affordable Care Act, then it’s time to pick a side. It is us against the billionaires. The very rich got that way off the backs of workers, and now want to strip everything away from those workers. It’s time to pick a side. The very rich can buy countries, then make the people get on their hands and knees and grovel and beg for scrapes that usually go into the dumpster. It’s time to pick a side. Is this what we want for our family and our future? It’s time to pick a side. Get ready to fight for you and your families’ lives. There is no middle ground with these greedy people for they want it all—all the money—all the power—all the land so where does this leave us when they have all the commons, like water, land and airways? It’s time to pick...
Comments
Post a Comment