The thought of workers waiting until 2022 before receiving a $15 per
hour minimum wage, an amount that is barely able to provide basic
security today, is an insult to all Labor. How easy it is for the
Ruling Class to suck up the wealth of the Land, but how hard it is for
them to let any of it go, once it is in their greedy grasp.
Carl Jarvis
On 4/11/16, Roger Loran Bailey <dmarc-noreply@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
http://themilitant.com/2016/8015/801556.html
The Militant (logo)
Vol. 80/No. 15 April 18, 2016
(SWP campaign statement)
For $15 an hour and a union!
The following statement was released March 31 by Eleanor García,
Socialist Workers Party candidate for U.S. Senate in California.
I will use my campaign as the Socialist Workers Party candidate for U.S.
Senate to continue to organize and fight along with others for an
immediate and substantial raise in the minimum wage and for unionization
for all.
The fight for $15 and a union has drawn thousands of workers into street
mobilizations and has the support of millions more. This fight has won
concessions. The legislative action on the minimum wage by Gov. Edmund
Brown Jr. is aimed at heading off the independent mobilizations of
working people and drawing us into voting for one candidate or another
of the ruling rich.
Working people welcome any raise in the minimum wage, but Governor
Brown’s bill would not reach $15 until 2022. Sixty million workers in
the U.S., 42 percent of all workers, earn less than $15 an hour. We need
relief today from the effects of a slow-burning depression that means
stagnant wages, the crushing cost of living and persistent unemployment.
The governor says that the bill “takes into account the vagaries of the
capitalistic economy,” by stating that if unemployment goes up, the
economy slows, or there is a state budget deficit, the wage increase
will be stopped. That’s guaranteed.
Workers create all the wealth. The capitalists always strive to drive
down the cost of labor to increase their profit rates at our expense.
That is why workers and bosses are in constant conflict over which will
rise, wages or profits.
I have walked the picket line of striking Kaiser nurses in Los Angeles
fighting for a contract and have joined the picket of warehouse workers
at California Cartage fighting for their rights and dignity on the job.
But our labor unions have shrunk in size and power. Union officials have
refused to mobilize us to fight, instead telling us our only hope is to
elect a Democrat or Republican. But tying our fate to the bosses’
parties is the opposite of what we need.
We need to organize the unorganized and rebuild the unions,
organizations that can unite and defend the working class. We need our
own party, a labor party, based on the unions that will break with the
capitalist parties and rely on our solidarity, power and mobilization of
workers.
This would be a step toward overturning the dictatorship of capital that
we live under today. A step on the road to replacing the bosses’
government with a government of workers and farmers, like working people
have done in Cuba.
Related articles:
‘Workers need to fight to take political power’
Socialist Workers Party campaigns across Wisconsin against capitalism
and its crisis
Join spring activities to build Socialist Workers Party
SWP candidate backs fight to prosecute California cop
SWP Campaign
April 14 actions will demand $15 an hour and union organizing
On the Picket Line
London ‘tube’ drivers strike against unsafe trains
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