The dream of Eugene Debs and the rest of the old union warriors fighting for unions are back. The working people have awoken to the Have Nots and Have Littles and are willing to take on the big boys and win by just staying together and using the existing labor laws to their benefit, knowing the old union organizers bleed in their fight to achieve these protections.
Six Starbucks stores in New York signed cards to unionize in the last two days and employees at the Amazon warehouse in Staten Island, New York put the first crack in giant’s shield by becoming the first warehouse to unionize.
The working people, which some call the working poor, have seen that they can win and who does not want to be on the winning team?
All unions need to be supporting each other for a win for one union is a win for all unions. This opportunity results in a life time of changes for the Have Nots and Have Littles. It did for me.
Our union leaders at the AFL/CIO should not lose this momentum that we have at this time. Let’s take another shot at Walmart and all the other big nonunion businesses. Remember, when the snow ball begins to roll down hill, it gathers snow with it and gets bigger and bigger and faster as it rolls. If the push to unionize stops, it momentum will melt like the snow ball, and we can’t have that. It will be too hard to get it going again.
Unions cannot sit on a victory, it has to keep rolling. Remember, the greatest fear that the big corporations have is a class war. They know the people have the true power in their numbers and can destroy their pampered way of life.
What do we need and want? Healthcare with no out of pocket expenses, good pensions to live on, a good living wage beginning at a minimum of $24 an hour and free education to at least a bachelor’s degree because the more educated our workers, the better the work results. When people criticize the $24 an hour, ask them why the people who do the work shouldn’t be able to afford nice things, when the employees' supervisors or owners of the business can afford whatever they want? The “ants" are doing the heavy lifting and should be compensated as such.
There are three phases of a general strike and unions must plan for one. Those three phases are: 1. general strike in an industry 2. general strike in a community 3. general national strike We need to move away from being on the defensive and move toward a good offensive. The American Federal of Labor (AFL) could not have held a general strike if it wanted to because they had thousands of different contracts that expired at different times of the year. This was done deliberately so that there is no consolidation of power for a general strike. Also, nowadays, there is no law agency that will support labor, except the National Labor Relations Board (NLBR), which has been under attack and in decline for years. This leaves the burden of change up to unions, and unless unions work together, little will change. We essentially have a combination of job trusts, which are not as strong as contracts, and the courts can break easily because the NLBR will be further weakened and essentially elim...
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