During the years of the Dust Bowl and our first Great Depression of the 1930s, the American worker not only had to fight for food and shelter, they had to fight for their rights as a work force in the factories, mills and mines. The workers often paid prices in blood or their own lives.
It now seems that unions, a necessity for the American working class, have become enemies of the state. This is all due to politics being run by corporations, who have no need for unions. Global corporations like Wal-Mart, which employs one of the largest work forces in our country and world, does not allow their workers to even hint at unionizing. Wal-Mart is known to fire any employees who talk to unions, even using private investigators to look for any iota of evidence of union activity.
For those who have never heard of this struggle in our American history, a specific example of violence against unions comes to mind from Memorial Day in Chicago, 1937.
Steel workers were disgruntled that their company would not sign the latest contract guaranteeing fair wages and safe working conditions. A large group of workers, women and children included, gathered on the lawn outside the factory to have a peaceful protest and picnic. The Chicago Police Department, under orders from the company, dispersed the crowd in a fast and violent method.
They fired bullets into the peaceful crowd, with many people running away in fear. Ten people were killed and 30 were injured, many permanently due to head injuries from police batons.
The blood spilled in Chicago and hundreds of other cities was not in vain. Workers united against their masters and demanded human rights and livable wages. They won, sending our country into one of the largest economic boom-times in our history. This boom of the 1940s and 50s was not due to corporations and mass profits, it was due to the working class, the largest class of people in our country.
As more and more states and governors are bought by corporate America, it only further highlights the need for a total unionizing of the workers in our country. If the struggles of the 1930s taught us anything it’s that it is the corporations against the workers. Corporate America cares nothing for its work force; they feel it necessary to outsource to third-world countries like Taiwan, where the workers have little choice but to be exploited.
The American worker will not be exploited. We must demand our rights. We must not let corporations dictate politics and dictate what is best for us.
No more bargaining. The time for the union revolution is now.
