Imagine two football teams playing on Sunday afternoon. Team A has high tech protective gear, water as they need it, the referees are in their back pockets and they are allowed to play with 14 players on the field. Meanwhile, team B has no gear at all, they are not allowed to drink any water during the game, they’re blindfolded and they can only have 9 players on the field at any one time. Obviously team A will route team B every time no matter how good the players on the disadvantaged team are.
The scenario I painted above doesn’t happen in the NFL but it sure happens ALL THE TIME between workers and corporations. The advantages that corporations have over their employees is actually a thousand times more insidious than the one leveraged by team A. Corporations dictate all the terms and employees have been rendered powerless and are nothing more than indentured servants of CEOs—workers’ rights has been neutered.
It was not always like this, there was a time during the first half of the 19th century when workers enjoyed some level of parity with corporations. That was back when unions were a big part of America’s landscape; if companies like Ford Motor Company or Union Pacific Railroad tried to ride roughshod over their workers, unions would call a strike and the targeted businesses would come to a screeching halt. During the 1950’s, the average CEO was paid about 20 times the typical worker’s pay. Labor was not dictated to, they were able to push back and dictate terms as needed.
Fast forward 70 years and what we have before us is a terrain where workers have been rendered impotent and executives have become our overlords. In the span of half a century, the average CEO went from making 20 times the typical worker’s pay to now raking in 320 times as much as their average employee. Jeff Bezos, the rapacious chieftain of Amazon, makes as much money in 11.5 seconds as his lowest paid employees make in a year. I know we have become desensitized by endless outrageous and ceaseless controversies but this ought to shock even the most comatose person in the world. While his workers slave away, Bezos lives in ways that make the richest sultans in Oman seem like beggars.
If you think it is bad now, wait until we emerge on the other side of Covid after malicious and counterproductive lockdowns have eradicated small businesses. Already, multinational corporations like Amazon, Walmart and Big Bank cartels are consolidating market shares and squeezing out their competition. As if corporations did not already rule with an iron fist, within short order they are going to start dictating with gold plated boots that will be firmly ensconced on our collective necks. There to assist Wall Street will be their new harlot Joseph Mengele Biden who will use the pandemic and the US Capitol “insurrection” as a pretext to eviscerate our rights, do away with our privacy and transfer more of our meager savings to Wall Street by way of fiscal and monetary policies.
The implications are ominous; the bottom 90% are literally placed in a meat grinder where those at the bottom are being pulverized and those in the middle and even those near the top are waiting for their turn to be crushed into dust. Tent cities that are popping up left and right in towns and cities around America will proliferate as poverty, homelessness and hopelessness become the new norms. Gone are the days of graduating from college and finding a good paying job, workers are now turning to panhandling by way of crowdfunding and cash apps to make ends meet.
NEW YORK IS A UNION TOWN! Thanks to all our sisters and brothers in labor for standing with the Hunts Point Market workers of @Teamsters Local 202. The workers who feed NYC deserve a fair wage! #1u pic.twitter.com/NLsUwhNx4p
— Teamsters JC 16 (@TeamstersJC16) January 19, 2021
If you think this will not happen to you, let me assure you my friend it can and it most likely will. In 2014 I was making six figures as a consultant at Booz Allen Hamilton until I lost my job in February of that year. Within short order, I was homeless and living on the streets of Greenville, South Carolina. I went from living in a high-end condominium in Falls Church, Virginia sleeping on 800 count sheets to catching winks on plastic mattresses and donated blankets. We are all but a missed paycheck away from disaster. I do not say this to scare you but to warn you; it’s not a matter of if but when before we join the the invisible citizens who abound on the streets and beg for spare change.
If we are to avert this future that awaits us—if we have any hope of reclaiming a bit of leverage as workers—it will only come to fruition if we organize and act with one accord. This is the reason why we initiated Wildcat Strike USA 2021 that was launched on January 20th with the aim of continually coordinating a nationwide strike throughout the year. This article is thus a call to action; right now we have 10 organizers dispersed in California, Texas, Florida and Virginia. If we are to succeed, we need to attract a large group of energetic, dedicated and motivated organizers who are willing to push and promote #WildcatStrikeUSA2021.
I saw first hand how millions of Americans worked tirelessly to get Barack Obama elected in 2008, I was one of them. The time has come for us to work for us instead of breaking our backs for bankrupt politicians. I am asking you to be a part of our effort; you can join our telegram group by CLICKING HERE to be an organizer so that you can take part in the daily conversations and ideation sessions. Our aim is to form chapters of 12 organizers; once 12 organizers are reached, they will disperse and start their own chapters. Twelve begetting twelve; exponential growth can raise an organizing army of thousands. Listen to the Spotify podcast below as I detail this concept.
But even if you are not interested in being a part of the organizing committee, you can help us by simply spreading the word. Use social media for a purpose and share this article and the videos herein using #WildcatStrikeUSA2021. It is time for the plutocracy to understand that they cannot continue to shatter our hopes and our means with impunity. They have the potency of their cash but we have the power of unity if we choose it. No more waiting for public serpents like Biden and Trump to deliver us, it is time to deliver change for ourselves. #UnionOrOblivion Click To Tweet
The poor labor by their hand and languish; the rich succeed by cunning and flourish. The hand grows weary; the cunning should be leery::
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Teodrose Fikremariam
Latest posts by Teodrose Fikremariam (see all)
- Union or Oblivion: If We Workers Don’t Organize, We Shall Be Pulverized - January 21, 2021
- Con Games: Diversity for Democrats, Adversity for the Rest of Us - January 20, 2021
- Workers Unite! #WildcatStrikeUSA2021 - January 20, 2021
