There's a national labor uprising happening right now that the media isn't reporting
Decades of wealth concentration and corporate domination leave unions no other choice
As the national press corps fixates on the coming and goings of President Trump as if it were the only story, the American labor movement is rising up, informed by almost a half-century of wage suppression made possible by unchecked corporate greed that’s turned our economy into a pyramid scheme where all the wealth drifts to the top.
For a generation after Ronald Reagan fired the nation’s striking air traffic controllers, unions were intimidated from striking. Those days are gone. With our politics so consumed with the blood sport of partisan self-preservation, the actual conditions in the country continue to decline. Hence, it is falling to organized labor to be last backstop against abject societal decline.
It has been decades since there been such tumult on the labor front with teachers going on strike in Oklahoma, Arizona, Los Angles and Denver. Last month United Automobile Workers (UAW) ended a 40-day walkout against General Motors. And last year, there were more strikes than there had been in 33 years.
Last week, 8,000 members of the Transport Workers Union Local 100 turned out in front of the Metropolitan Transportation Agency Headquarters in lower Manhattan chanting “a people united, will never be divided.”
In 18 months, working around the clock in a dangerous underground environment, they restored a subway system that the politicians had neglected for a generation and let fall into a decrepit state of disrepair. Yet, even as the system was showing signs of a rebound, with increased on-time CONTINUE READING: There's a national labor uprising happening right now that the media isn't reporting | Salon.com
