Engagement, or Enslavement?

What should unions do?

Unions are the united, democratic voice of its members, as well as nonmembers in similar positions. Fight for one, fight for all. But they have been under heavy attack since neoliberalism co-opted globalization in the 1980s.

Why? Large corporations make huge profits through the globalization of exploitation and outright slavery. There are currently more sweatshops and actual slaves in the world today than throughout the rest of history.  This is the cost of unrestrained capitalism where markets are considered sacred. Markets eat their own for profit, and exploit anything and everything they can. Monopoly and oligarchy are the inevitable results. Unions threaten this.

Unions are democracy and peaceful protest in action, or should be. Unfortunately once they achieved most of their initial goals in the developed countries, unions concentrated on protecting their influence rather than helping workers. All unions should form a worldwide association doing everything in its power to spread wherever exploitation exists. They need to maintain past achievements as much as possible but be flexible enough to pitch in when business goes through truly rough times... not just attempts to maximize shareholder and CEO gains. Then they should give back by taking necessary cuts, but these must be reversed when conditions improve. Unions don’t work by tearing down, but by raising everyone up.

Voters may be surrendering their voices without a fight partially because they see unions, the worker democracies, doing the same. Apathy, like depression, anxiety, and the flu, tends to go viral.

Attacks on workers and exploitation effect the majority of the populace, like politics, and government, and economics... three separate things too often confused. Strong unions help ensure a broad and strong middleclass while minimizing poverty. Strong, happy workers equal strong, happy families and societies.  This is good for all except those exploiting the system, particularly in the non-industry (industries create real wealth not its transfer and consolidation) of finance (the ones who created the current mess).

If unions can engage their members, they engage the populace. Enthusiasm and patriotism are viral, as well as righteous outrage. If they fight for and safeguard worker rights wherever needed, they can inspire and drive worldwide change. The kind of globalization the world really needs.

Attacks on unions are attacks by the privileged elite on the common person, though always presented as the opposite. Tjats how depression and evil work. They make giod seem baf and call evil gods work. That’s why the privileged rich convince the poor into thinking everyone is likely to get rich if they are virtuous or blessed and that education creates entitled elites, when in fact education is a far surer path to success for the common person – education opens one’s eyes to such misdirection and you come to realize that hypocrisy is usually quite blatant.

Workers of the world unite. Join your voices for justice, democracy, and equality. The suffering of one is the suffering of all. Holiness cannot be achieved through hatred. Violence never creates legitimacy and is only justified in self-defense, like the way Syria started, before foreigners hijacked the revolution. They only became violent when the government, Assad, insisted on responding to peaceful protest by torturing and killing innocents and children, in fact, only after many years of such oppression and brutality.

Order and safety come only through organization. Together we can support each other as needed, divided we are alone against the powerful. That’s why political parties and unions exist. Both forms of organization are necessary in a democracy, and when one becomes dysfunctional the other becomes essential. When both are suffering from apathy, there are no united voices, no real representation, and no functional democracy, just rule by the highly motivated, and often privileged, few.

Engagement, or enslavement?

Your choice.