For the last twenty to thirty years, labor fell victim to cultural amnesia. However, labor is seeing a resurgence as it remembers what strong unions can do. Labor is back in a big way, and we are winning with public support.
It’s looking like the stars have come in line for labor is kicking ass. We cannot slow down and we must go for the big things, like a four-day work week with same pay, healthcare for all, free education to a bachelor’s degree or a trade school, child care and elder care. These are things commonly provided to workers in other counties.
We must get most of our contracts to end on April 1 at 12 in 2025. Brothers and sisters, this is real power and we will use it to labor’s benefit. We must build hardcore unions and then fight to get these rights enshrined into law, if not the Constitution.
To do this, we have unionize workers;
Then we have to educate these employees about unions, and how to keep them;
Educate them about the importance of voting and voting for those who support workers and unions,
Teach them what a strike is, how to prepare for and win a strike,
Save money for a strike fund,
Elect the best people to run their unions,
Attend all your union meetings and volunteer when there is a need in your union.
If we can get workers to do these things we will have a smart and disciplined army of union people who will be ready to win all of labors needs for a good life.
Now please consider this:
According to Steven Haddock, LL.B.(Bachelor of Laws), ‘When the Americans left Germany after WWII, they made sure this provision was in their constitution: “Article 9 (Freedom of Association) … (3) The right to form associations to safeguard and improve working and economic conditions is guaranteed to everyone and to all trades and professions. Agreements which restrict or seek to hinder this right are null and void measures directed to this end are illegal.”
Most European countries have something similar.
‘FDR wanted to put a similar provision in the U.S. Constitution, but never got around to it.
‘As such, labor rights in the U.S. are largely left up to the states. All states allow unions, but most also have provisions that make it illegal to exclude someone from a workplace if they aren’t a member of a union. That has created a massive free ride problem where people who don’t pay union dues still get union wages, but eventually that weakens the union and winds up giving them no leverage.
‘There’s also a big cultural difference.
‘Wal-Mart is notoriously anti-union and that didn’t go over well in Germany. In Germany, employees are seen as partners. Many large firms in Germany have boards of directors where half the board members are employees.
‘In American workplaces, management and workers have an adversarial relationship which carries over to wages.
Now ask yourself, why there but not here?
‘If you mistreat your employees in most European countries, people just won’t want to do business with you.’
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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