Lately it seems as though the 1%-ers have declared war on the working class. Not only are unions being weakened with “right to work” laws and workers’ rights being eroded, but voter suppression is rampant in blue-collar districts. Lily-white districts that traditionally vote Republican have easy access to the ballot machines, while polling places in largely non-white and/or working class neighborhoods face closure, limited hours, and a dearth of working machines. We are headed straight for another Gilded Age, with an oblivious quasi-nobility living it up while the workers on whom they depend starve. The 1% are slowly strangling the goose that lays their golden eggs.
One of the great weapons that workers and unions have is the walkout, the strike. Employees refuse to work, forcing companies to make concessions, such as better working conditions or higher pay. We have unions to thank for a lot of the working classes’ gains, at least in part – gains that include 40-hour work weeks, overtime pay, OSHA regulations, child labor laws and paid leave.
In comparison with workers in other parts of the world, US workers are bad off. For example, we are the only developed nation that has no maternity leave requirements. Mothers must return to work soon after giving birth or risk losing their jobs. Child care is very expensive, so many a working mom has to do her duties with a baby on her hip – literally. Not every working mother has the option of working from home.
In numerous states, corporations have used injunctions, which judges pass and police enforce, to trample workers’ Constitutional rights to free speech and peaceful assembly. These injunctions limit the number of people who can attend a picket, where they can demonstrate, or even if they can walk out in the first place. Read the Bill of Rights, especially the First Amendment, and you will see that these judges – who are obviously in the deep pockets of the Fat Cats – are gladly pissing all over the very heart and soul of this nation. The police who intimidate the protesters are violating their oath to protect and serve, degenerating into Gestapo terrorists who give law enforcement a rotten image.
These companies are raking in millions or even billions of dollars in revenue, and instead of using that to pay their workers decent wages, they are greasing the filthy palms of corrupt judges to destroy the rights of the working class, hire cops to harass workers and guard scabs, or create vicious and nasty smear campaigns against those who oppose them. Many right-wing editorial cartoonists and essayists gladly vomit their anti-union hogwash onto computers or drawing tables, and brainwashed MAGA ninnies believe it.
As if that is not bad enough, many companies hire scabs, who ride for free in buses and get police escorts to the factories and businesses. Jack London had plenty to say about scabs, which you can read here.
By weaponizing police and the courts to their advantage, powerful corporations have proven that they care not in the least about their rank-and-file workers. The cigar-puffing CEOs regard the working class as just another resource to exploit for gain. In their ivory towers the 1% are completely insulated from reality. The glasses of champagne they raise contain the blood of the working stiffs who made their obscene wealth possible.
The United States cannot continue like this, or we will become scarcely different from a lot of developing nations that have a tiny rich elite ruling over hordes of starving, rag-clad serfs. The 99% must rise up and fight back. We need to enlighten those who have been hypnotized by right-wing baloney and open their eyes so they can see they have been working and voting against their own interests for years. We need to get out the youth and nonwhite vote, and battle against voter suppression. We need to campaign for workers’ rights and against the unconstitutional, un-American tactics of greedy corporations. We need to expose these tactics wherever and whenever they are being used. Letters to the editor, getting muckraking journalists on the case, peaceful demonstrations – we cannot let such evil schemes go unchallenged.
Unless we of the 99% fight back, we will be crushed.
Sorry, the comment form is closed at this time.