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Workers: Unite to Fight for a Living Wage

By Joseph Rosen

Citing low unemployment, Trump boasts that the economy is booming under his leadership. Is this really true? Unless you’re counting the profits of the ultra-rich, no.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) determines the official unemployment rate by taking a telephone poll. If you’ve worked just one hour during the week of their poll, you count as employed. Excluded are more than 2.3 million workers locked up in jails, prisons, and detention camps across the country.

Add to this more than 5.2 million people who currently want a job but have not looked for work in the last 4 weeks. Usually these are merely discouraged workers, but according to the BLS, they have “dropped out of the labor force.”

Economists who continue to take the unemployment rate at face value wonder why wages have barely budged. “Full employment” ought to enable workers to bid for higher wages. If the bosses deny a pay raise, the worker can easily take another job—or so the theory goes.

High paid economists might learn a thing or two from talking to workers. As it turns out, low-wage, temporary, and part-time jobs make up the largest growing sector in the economy, continuing a trend of the last thirty years. A recent study by the Brookings Institution found that more than 44% of U.S. workers make less than $18,000 a year. 36% of the workforce has to work more than one job to get by.

These conditions typify the most recent phase in a global class war in which the capitalists have, with few exceptions, outmaneuvered workers for control over the world’s factories, farmlands, mines, etc.

Capitalists want governments that guarantee them labor as cheap as they can get it, whether that means cutting social programs or enslaving workers. Whenever they succeed in installing governments for this purpose—whether by coups, invasions or bribery—they advance their goal of pitting workers against one another in a global race to the bottom.

We workers have the power to turn the tide. The capitalists depend solely on the labor of the international working class for their profits. Our labor makes the world run. Workers in the United States need to realize that our well-being is bound up with the well-being of the workers of the world. For this reason, we need to come to the defense of any nation that resists the domination of our shared enemy—the ultra rich bankers and bosses who want nothing more than to grind us down so that they can live it up. Workers should treat the borders of every nation that resists U.S. imperialism as they would a picket line.

All workers have the right to a safe and reliable job that allows them time to care for their communities. But we’re going to have to fight to get it; the first step is to know which side you’re on.

Minimum Wage Has Increased in 46 States
It’s time Louisiana workers get paid $15 an hour!
Raising the Minimum Wage
will Raise the Wages of All workers

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Department of Public Works Employees Walk Out!

“IF YOU WORK IN NEW ORLEANS YOU SHOULD BE ABLE TO AFFORD LIVING HERE.”

On August 13, Department of Public Works employees said enough is enough. They left work and marched into City Hall and demanded a meeting with Mayor Cantrell. These workers are underpaid and overworked. No matter the weather, they are out there trying to do whatever they can with a limited workforce to patch potholes and clean drains.

The important city workers were demanding $18 an hour, hiring more workers, safety and training. They pointed out that residents suffer too with unfilled potholes and clogged drains.

Toinette Johnson, a dump truck operator for DPW, told WDSU: ““That’s why our streets are not being repaired. That’s why they constantly complain about the drains and the water. We don’t have enough manpower to (do the work).” Kennan Mitchell operates a vacuum truck for DPW. He said contractors are hired to do the same work that he does, cleaning catch basins, for more than twice the pay.

Johnson further explained how while they are required to live in Orleans Parish, they don’t make enough to afford the rising rents. “I think if you want to work for the city of New Orleans, you should be able to afford to live in the city of New Orleans.”

The city spends 63% of our tax dollars on prisons and cops but is ignoring the fact that these workers and other city workers are not making enough to get by. With rents, taxes, food, utilities, and cable costs rising, studies have shown you need to make $19 an hour to get a two bedroom apartment in Orleans Parish.

The city has given out grants and tax exemptions to real estate developers and other companies while ignoring how the important people who keep everything running are making out. The city has allowed $140 million in city mandated hotel taxes to be given to big capitalist-controlled commissions. But city workers, like these Department of Public Works employees, are ignored. Salaries of the executives in this and other departments like Sewage and Water Board keep going up, while hiring and workers salaries and benefits are inadequate. The Mayor and City Council should make it a priority to immediately give living wages to all city workers, rather than outrageous salaries and perks to commissioners and executives