With the tentative success of the UPS Teamsters, the seemingly growing unionization of Starbucks locations, and the ongoing SAG-AFTRA strike, is it…appropriate to have some optimism for the working/salaried classes in the US?
pessimistic take: still underpaid
optimistic take: wealthy understand this and are willing to pay a little more to cover worker costs to keep the machine running so raises will come
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It’s not warrented, but it’s necessary.
Some of this fight has to be legislative. We need to repeal Taft-Hartley.
Legislative solutions would be optimal, but over half of Congress are fascists/fascist enablers and the vast majority of them all are corporatists. Labor organizing and strikes are on-the-ground and happen much faster than hoping for a Democratic majority in 2024.
Even getting that majority only brings a slim chance of any good legislative action.
Yet, theres a looming threat of generative AI heavily disrupting the job landscape for many people.
In Canada recently we had the largest strike in Canada’s history from the public servants union and the deal they ended up getting was actually worse than the offer they started out with. However everyone voted to ratify it because of strike fatigue, and because the union did a shit job allocating strike pay. The union leaders have been gaslighting the members saying it’s a better deal, but literally the only gain was a lump sum payment of $2000 (in exchange for locking an extra year into the contract with raises that don’t keep up with inflation). The management decided to take advantage of how poor and desperate everyone is in the union to basically bribe them with a one time payment rather than make any concessions on pay or benefits.
So no, I’m not optimistic. A lot of people have been trampled on for so long that they are willing to accept a slightly lighter trampling instead of not being trampled on at all.
Optimism, yes. But withnthe acknowledgement that we will have to claw every right and benefit we get from the capitalists, and make them jolly sorry evey last time they try to roll those benefits back and away.
And until we do, they’ll make us bleed for wanting to be treated humanely.
So provided we’re willing to commit to relentless pursuit of civil rights and workers’ rights for all, we can get them. But we can’t tolerate even a jot of their equivocation.
