~Leif Pettitt 20min BLOG March 20,2020
Just when I thought we were having a major shift in consciousness the world took a spin. A world wide pandemic would shut the globe down. People would feel themselves on lock down. Kids staying home from school, parents becoming teachers, and if you were so “privileged” to work, you were unsure when or even if you would be getting back to work.
Many Restaurants scrambling to come up with new creative ways for the experience to reach your doorstep. While storefronts got boarded up down empty streets. Windows have for rent, or for sale signs going up on both businesses and/or the actual building itself.
Construction workers, although ordained essential during this chaotic crisis, say that the social distancing standards that will be needed or set in place during this Phase 1 opening here in Ontario will be a very slow process and a difficult one to meet.
Teachers and students both wondering how it will look and feel with a GAP year perhaps approaching soon.
People sit by their computers and radios listening to the instructions given to them by their own trusting government. If they were allowed to leave their home, if they were so fortunate to have a home.
The Marginized quickly becoming more marginalized.
The economy just needs to pick up they say. People will get back to their jobs and everything will go back to the “New Norm” a normal much different than the “norm” we were used to.
While some reached out for CERB from their governments to help with paying bills or to put food on the table, most found themselves still struggling and opted out of paying rent.
“Reopening business” First stage.
CRA will be looking for a revenue statement from your employer to make sure you didn’t receive any undeserved money in this time of need.
Concentration camps held world wide, including this land they refer to as Canada, known as by many others as Turtle Island. Is one of the many stories of Stolen Land that continued to get as occupied as the poor lands of Palestine.
Jail cells filled up by many inmates, on petty crimes or on a substance that is declared Essential, after being Illegal less than one year ago.
Domestic violence sky rockets in homes, abusing one another while we declare the liquor and beer stores essential.
You could get a ticket for being in a park or with someone who is not living your own residence. Yet we continue to see many politicians and pipeline workers walking around as they normally would.
The world stood somewhat still. Many unsure of what would happen next. “What if it happened to me” couldn’t help but cross the fearful mind.
Rewind this story not even sixteen hundred years. Not even One hundred years. Rewind it only half a year ago.
The world was still in chaos. People in most of the western world were running around trying to make ends meet or keep shelter over their heads with some food on the table.
It was happening all around the world. From Venezuela to Hong Kong, from Canada to the USA.
Almost everywhere in the world, had something to say about the way things were running or lack thereof.
The system was not working. It was meant for the rich and only the rich. The capitalist. The ones with the big bank accounts.
As the economy started to take its first nose dive into the first quarter of the year, you could see those capitalists also starting to panic and worry
Strikes were forming everywhere. From solidarity with Indigenous folks, As always, when we stand up, bosses and their cronies try to beat us down. This last year has been no different.Two particularly egregious cases of the courts coming down on job actions are on the top of many labor activists’ minds, and are a healthy reminder that the legal system is rarely the friend of workers.
Meanwhile, private sector workers in a number of union strongholds got in on the act, showing that strikes can still inflict significant economic damage on employers.
Locomotive manufacturing workers struck for nine frigid February and March days in Erie, Pennsylvania, and beat back the demands of new owner Wabtec, which wanted to unilaterally impose a two-tier system and strip workers of the rights they had won through decades of battles with General Electric.
Thirty-one thousand workers at the New England grocery chain Stop & Shop struck for 11 days in the run-up to Easter, costing the company between $90 and $110 million—3 percent of its annual profits—and fending off the worst of the company’s concessionary demands on health care, time-and-a-half, and pensions.
AT&T workers went out for four days across the Southeast, halting the company’s effort to raise their health care costs. The workers also won big wage increases and pension and 401(k) enhancements. It was the biggest private sector strike in the South in a decade.
Twenty thousand grocery workers in the Pacific Northwest used their contract campaign to highlight a gendered pay disparity. The union’s analysis found that women were twice as likely as men to be hired into jobs on the lower of two pay schedules, with an average gap of $3.50 an hour. They authorized a strike but avoided one, settling a contract that raised wages for lower-paying jobs and formalized the steps to advance into higher-paying jobs.
And in the midst of deepening accusations of corruption against the leaders of their union, 49,000 General Motors factory workers went out on the longest national strike the U.S. auto industry has seen in decades. In six weeks they cost the company $3 billion in profits.
The strike ended with a contentious settlement that brings current second-tier workers up to top pay faster and provides a pathway to permanent employment for some temps. However, the tiers will persist for new hires, and the union conceded the closure and sale of the Lordstown plant and two other facilities.
Beyond the schools, a public sector standout union was AFSCME Local 3299, representing 25,000 campus and hospital workers in the University of California system. This year they waged their fourth and fifth short strikes in a long-running contract campaign—since 2017—that takes aim at racism in the state’s higher education system.
The number of workers on strike is not the only way to measure the strike’s power, of course. We need no better example than the 10 air traffic controllers called in sick during the government shutdown in February, leveraging their unique position to end the political stalemate. Transportation Security Administration agents had also been calling out in record numbers during the shutdown, slowing down airport operations.
In terms of the number of workers who went on strike, 2019 is on pace to match 2018.
Teachers again made a huge showing—this time leading in big, heavily unionized school districts. United Teachers Los Angeles kicked it off in January with a seven-day walkout in the country’s second-largest school district.
Union reformers built that strike, which drew huge crowds of supporters to rally against privatization. The Union Power caucus won leadership of the local in 2014, pledging to team up with parents to demand better staffing and quality schools, not just the wage increase that the previous administration had emphasized.
Denver teachers grabbed the baton in February, striking for three days and winning reforms to a convoluted pay system. Strike leader Tiffany Choi was later voted in as union president on a program of democratizing the union, strengthening community support, and taking on the billionaire-backed “education reformers.”
Continuing their 2018 struggle, West Virginia teachers struck again for two days, defeating a bill that would have sucked funds from public schools and opened the door to privatization. Teachers saw the bill as legislative retaliation for their strike last spring.
Oakland teachers struck next—another reformer-led union taking the fight to one of the most intense fronts in the war with the privatizers. Teachers at eight charter schools held wildcat strikes to join public school teachers on the picket lines.
In the fall, Chicago teachers and school employees struck back, targeting new Mayor Lori Lightfoot. Her promises to leave behind the old ways of her predecessor, union nemesis Rahm Emanuel, didn’t last long. But the unions forced her to find money she said wasn’t there, putting a nurse and librarian in every school.
Their campaign broke ground in expanding the imagination of what a union can bargain for, with demands for affordable housing, which they didn’t win, and support for homeless students, which they did.
Little Rock teachers waged a one-day strike against the racial re-segregation of schools and against a move by the state of Arkansas to retract their union recognition.
Educators in the Boston suburb of Dedham, Massachusetts, defied a court injunction (carrying the threat of fines and jail time) and went on strike anyway. They won all their demands, including a raise and a sexual harassment process. Seeing the writing on the wall, another nearby school district, Newton, hastily settled a teacher contract it had spent a year resisting.
And continuing from 2018, “Red for Ed” rallies at state capitols brought out thousands in Indiana, South Carolina, North Carolina, Virginia, and elsewhere. The list goes on and on.
The number of striking workers balloons to nearly 500,000 in 2018, up from about 25,000 in 2017, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
This is the largest number of people who have walked out on work since the mid-1980s.
As the labor market tightens, workers are becoming more confident about striking for better salaries and benefits.
In September, workers for General Motors walked out in what has now become the company’s longest strike in decades. The strike began after the auto manufacturer could not reach a contract agreement with labor union United Auto Workers. The walkout is estimated to have cost General Motors upwards of $2 billion, according to Bank of America.
Not only are people striking, but the number of people who have voluntarily quit their job, which can be viewed as a measure of job market confidence, hit an all-time high in July. The percentage of striking workers in the total workforce is currently at about 0.3%, compared with 0.4% in the mid-1980s.
Workers are feeling left behind in the expansion. As the gap between executive salaries and worker pay expands, more people are becoming discontent. In the recovery, corporate profits stabilized long before household income, acting as a spark for the surge in strikes, according to The New York Times, which was the first to report on this data.
General Motors workers aren’t the only ones walking out on the job. About 3,500 Mack Truck employees, who are also UAW members, are currently striking across three states for the first time in 35 years over their contracts. The union is seeking better contract terms on issues ranging from wage increases and holiday schedules to health care coverage and retirement benefits.
Among other notable actions, Chicago public school teachers are in their third day of a strike, demanding higher salaries, better benefits and more resources for the classroom. The strike has effectively canceled classes for approximately 361,000 students.
Leading up to the 2020 presidential election, worker pay and employee benefits have been a central campaign point for a growing number of politicians, including Sens. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., and Bernie Sanders, I-Vt. In August, CEOs from nearly 200 companies said shareholders should no longer be the main focus of businesses and that companies should be focusing more on investing in stakeholders such as employees and customers.
All while our mother was also going through some changes. We were in the middle of a Climate Strike. The water, air, forests, all needed our short attention spans attention.
From every walk of life that you could imagine possible it was in dire need.
A revolution.
Water is Life.
While corporate greed continued to suck the water beds dry, contaminate the air, or pollute our lungs with such madness, the majority of civilians lay dormant, on a repetitive wheel, playing the same program over and over again, not necessarily out of choice but perhaps necessity.
We do have a choice.
The cards are stacked against us some say. However, we also know that we have more numbers. It is just once again, the system that is put in place that is faulty.
It is a system that is not out for your best interest, it is not out for my best interest either.