Getting Shafted E-Book

Jim Price

• Herausgeber: BookRix
• Kategorie: Ratgeber
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2014

Beschreibung

For over forty years I have been writing pamphlets and newsletters to try and inspire the southern worker to think about the group and not just the individual, to organize in some way to gain more power and traction to balance out the power that has long worked against them. It's been an uphill battle, the southern mind set is highly individualistic and at the same time believes that the only help he or she needs in the work place is from God. In recent years the average worker has been able to get enough credit to buy a car and a house and although it keeps him perpetually in debt he seems satisfied with the crumbs and the credit that falls from the table. There is a desperate need to update our thinking so that we don't have to die in debt and so that there will be money and property to leave to our children. There is a lot of stress in the southern family and it's been there so long that most everyone thinks its the norm. But in this wealthy nation with the top one percent having forty percent of the money something needs to be done to right the concept of equality. Individual action will not get the job done. There's about ninety nine of us to one of them but that still doesn't even up the score. Why? Because they have money power, property power and the power of influence. It might well take five hundred are even five thousand to balance out the power against just one of them. It will take brains, persistence and strategy and a lot of people time to change thing for the better. It can be done with all the modern social tools but we will have to learn to say the right things to the right people and we will have to say them over and over. My hope is that we can change the conversation; listen to a group of your fellow workers here in the south and you will see that the conversation is not moving toward a solution. The average southern worker is not steeped enough in our history to understand that history is repeating itself. What to do? If only we could get something to take off and really go viral, something that becomes a game changer. Will it happen? It hasn't yet! The south has dug in generation after generation. They will not be moved but they desperately need to gain a new focus on the future and how group action can bring about positive change. What can you do to move us in the right direction?

Leseprobe

Jim Price

Getting Shafted

Why Workers Need to Organize

Dedicated to the men and women who have worked in unsafe coal mines, to those who labored year after in hot sweaty factories with barely enough to live on and never enough to retire on. We think of the men and women who work at Walmart, trying to provide for their families on 28 to 32 hours per week of the millions who work in fast food restaurants on limited pay and limited hours and usually without any benefits. We also dedicate our thoughts to the employers who have all along understood what it takes for people to live with decency and dignity and have found a way to make it happen for their employees.BookRix GmbH & Co. KG81371 Munich

Getting Shafted and still loving the Shaffer

Here in the south we have a special attitude toward the captilists, who have worked our tail off; we still think that they are the greatest thing since sliced bread. Seventy percent of us came to this part of the country as indentured servants [ we are talking about our ancesters of course ] but despite being here since the early 1700's there is still that serving the master attitude in our DNA.

The Germans and the Japanese auto makers have studied our history and know it better than we do. They have located their factories here in the south because of our long history of grateful employment of being compliant and of our willingness to work for lower wages than the rest of the nation. Now tens of thousands of southerners are working for less wages than their counter part back in Japan or Germany.

A recent attempt to organize V W's labor force in Chattanooga,Tn., failed by a few votes. The southern blue collar worker is so independant and individualistic that he thinks that he doesn't need any repesentation. There is still the attitude amoung many that feels; " if God is on my side all will be well." This mind-set prevails even though the local dentists and medical doctors have relied on their associations to keep their fees up and basically to set prices.

The fact that men have for centuries, found ways to join together and in doing so made their common life much better has elluded the southern working class. To work together means to expect that others will also prosper from the joint effort. Right now there is no meaningful conversation going on between members of the blue collar class. They seem not to be mindful that they out number the ruling class, nine to one nor is there any worked out stragety on how to make this strength in numbers pay off.

Even Churches have representation of a sort.

A minister in the United Methodist Church told me that he was in fact a member of a strong union albeit the negotiating is carried on in a cool gentlemanly way. Baptist churches have pupit committees that speak on behalf of the minister and the church staff. However the blue collar worker that attends these churches and is expected to support them is in all probability working without any representation at all.

Over the past thirty years wages have slipped here in the U.S. and so have benefits and hours worked. In most cases the worker has had no say in what has happened to him or her. Especially here in the south we have taken this shafting like a whooped puppy. Now we are making do with Check into Cash, places on every corner and paying through the nose with interest rates as high as 200 percent per year. These high interest places have bought off the state legislators and once again the working man is getting the shaft.

For the first time there is now technology in the hands of the working class that could change things for the better. We are of course talking about smart phones, social media and the like but as I follow this on the web I do not see any focused discussion or any pressure being put on the powers that be. Secondly I do not see the savvy that would be needed to pull this off without alerting the gate keepers first. More about this later.