ON THE RECENT BART STRIKE. BART strike is not about workers’ greed, it is about what every middle class American across this great nation must stand for and support, a decent pay and benefit package to live and raise a family on with dignity and peace of mind. This is exactly what is being vilified and tabooed in this nation by the corporate owned media, greedy industrialists, Wall Street bankers and their politician underlings. People deserve to make a decent living in this country. Pitting one group of workers against another is an old and proven colonialist tactic: divide and conquer. Workers must be smarter than to fall for this old ruse. Workers must unite and demand what they deserve. Ask why is the economy in shambles? Was it because of teachers, transit workers and police officers? No, it is the result of the greed and reckless behavior of fat cat Wall Street bankers. Now, the middle class workers are being forced to pay for their mistakes. If middle class workers refuse they are labeled as greedy and out of touch with reality. The prevailing argument in the media that one or more class of workers do not have, for example, employer sponsored health insurance therefore, BART workers must follow suite, is ludicrous. This logic is upside down. The argument must about setting BART’s benefit package as a minimum base line for all industries and shame those employers who offer anything less to their workers. Let’s have a race to the top not to the bottom. Middle class is being railroaded and trampled upon since the early 1980’s when President Regan fired the flight controllers. The main idea was to roll back the gains that unions fought for in the last century and take us back to when workers had no right and were treated inhumanly as fungible and disposable commodities. Is this what we want to revive? It seems we are taking as granted the very basic and universal work rules that we all enjoy today, like 40- hour work week, two- day weekend, no child labor, lunch break and so on. Where did these rules come from? I can safely assure you they did not come from employers’ generosity coffer. Labor unions fought for every one of them over many years and now they have become the universal rules across all industries. Let’ not start down the slippery slope of taking more and more away from the middle class. We as a society must decide how do we want to treat our workers. Do we want them to be poor and deprived, not able to afford the very basic necessities of life like health care, education, and above all a decent pension, or do we want to rejuvenate our shrinking middle class and with it bring back the glory days of this country. Think about it before you criticize BART workers and remember what they gain will eventually be your gain and what they lose will eventually be your loss. Do not bring down your follow middle class workers. Go out there and elevate yourself by demanding what you deserve and make this a better world for all of us.
Posted on: Sat, 13 Jul 2013 18:24:05 +0000
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