Why haven't american workers woken up?

[MillennialDem]

Small strikes can be broken, but big strikes cannot. We have the power to withhold our labor, but we have rarely exercised our ability to do so. Big business and republicans used the financial crisis as an excuse to bust more unions, and I hoped that there would be a response through striking.

Sadly I was wrong. It seems like fast food workers are waking up, but the rest of the working and middle class is still sound asleep.

[bunnies]

1. I think it may have to do with the fact that...

so many Americans live paycheck to paycheck. The reality of striking (no paycheck) would be disastrous for many families in the short run. Also, I wouldnt doubt that people would be afraid of losing their jobs. Theres always someone willing to step in a take a job when it opens. People desperate for work are sometimes willing to cross a picket line.

When you keep people poor, its easier to control them.

[tularetom]

4. And when you keep them uninformed, it's easier to keep them poor

[bunnies]

10. exactly.

Thats exactly what the 1% wants. As long as the rest of us are stupid, scared and poor... they "win".

[Atman]

2. Money.

It's that simple.

It is the reason unions were busted...they used to pay employees during strikes. No union, no pay. No leverage. When you're living paycheck to paycheck who can afford to take a stand against a multi-billion $$ company?

Thanks, Ronnie! You're our hero!

[RockaFowler]

6. I think you nailed it

This has been the calculated strategy of the right for so long now. Break the unions and the workers will have no other recourse.

Heck I remember a few years ago a union was trying to come in to Comcast here in Florida. That day Comcast sent an individual from corporate to speak to all of us about how bad the unions really are. We didn't even get to talk to a union representative at that time. They made most of the workers fear for their jobs so much that most of us dropped the idea. It wasn't a pretty day there. But Comcast got their point across. They wanted to make sure we did not revolt against their imperial ways. Soon after they did this "switch" with Adelphia cable and all of us became Adelphia employees (with less benefits mind you) and we all lost our seniority. If we would have had a union I doubt the switch ever would have taken place.

[Awknid]

3. Fear

The financial crisis made everyone even more fearful than before. I think it was all planned that way.

[RKP5637]

5. They have been so propagandized their lives, and the media is worthless, and

many live delusions. Also, their views are US-centric, not exposed to other ideas and opinions expressing their plight. Also, IMO, many fall victim to the purposeful divides created in the US. ... and fall for it's their fault for not working harder and being billionaires.

And others that want to do something have no path to follow, no strong national spokesmen, no movement to join. So, we sit in this muddle. It needs a strong national movement ... I had thought that would be coming in 2008, but to me, TPTB did not lead and follow through for the majority.

[Marrah_G]

7. Because so many people live on the edge.

When you live paycheck to paycheck and are barely getting by, as many are, then taking time off is a big and often impossible risk. When you spend every dime to make every week often times a missed day of work means no food shopping that week.

Also, with the job market the way it is, people are afraid of losing their jobs. When you get fired there is no unemployment safety net.

[1-Old-Man]

8. Don't you understand? They got on the edge because they abandoned the Unions.

Being 'on the edge' is not the cause of the problem, it is the result of the problem.

[Marrah_G]

9. Of course I understand that

That doesn't change what I wrote. These are the reasons why so many cannot/willnot join in a strike, even for a day. It's a huge problem that will have to get alot worse before people are desperate enough to fight back.

[HughBeaumont]

11. Really a four-fold conundrum . . .

A. Where would they HEAD?

Washington, where nearly everyone is purchased, or sit-ins at corporate offices, which are in various locations across the country? And what would Washington do? This problem of inequality and corptocracy is a long-standing and complex one largely caused by two elements: Big (name industry here) and their lobbyists and 32 straight years of Friedmanomics practiced by Repubs in both parties. It affects nearly everything from elections to environmental policy to public policy.

Our still-Republican-controlled Congress and over-filibustering Senate leaves us kind of helpless in this matter. Other than a small handful of Sherrod Browns and Elizabeth Warrens and Bernie Sanders, our government has proven they're really not interested in taking corporations and their leaders to task and many are willing to make life even easier for them, hard as that is to fathom. I'm finding more and more each election cycle that, economically, there is NO OPTION.

B. Who'll broadcast it without casting a smarmy, sneering eye?

News anchors are, by and large, one-percenters hired by the one-percent of the one percenters, and we have arguably the most conservative, corporate-controlled media among industrialized nations. Exhibit A: Erin Burnett and half of her CNN co-horts. Exhibits B and C: nearly every anchor on Faux and CNBC. Exhibit D: Morning Joke.

Like it or not, Cable News, Inc. is still influential. In the age of the internet, cable news and its opinionated anchors should be fossilized. Yet people still watch it. Yet it's ubiquitous . . . how many times do you see Rupert Murdoch's garbage channel on in dentist's & doctor's offices, hospital waiting rooms, bars, restaurants, auto repair places, etc?

C. Who'd be able to participate in a protest for even one day, let alone several?

I think the greatest reason why Americans don't/can't protest is also one of the greatest reasons for it's vast inequality: No Universal Health Care. You cannot risk losing your job primarily because there are so few good jobs to be had and losing insurance means having to buy it on your own; ask anyone who does, any small business owner how costly that is. On the other hand, if we HAD Universal Health Care, it'd be an employEEs market and corporations know this. How many people can't start their own businesses due to health insurance costs? How badly are wages being suppressed because of health insurance costs?

D. Who'd listen?

I'm willing to bet nearly half of America clings to this Horatio Alger myth and this "American Dream" crap; both of which have largely been lost thanks to corporatization, free trade and suppressed real-dollar wages. But, thanks to reason "B" above, they're still hypnotized into believing it even though it's painfully evident that economic mobility in America is worse than any time in the modern era. They're still in absolutist "It's either THIS or SOSHULISM" mode, not even accepting that there could be a happy medium.

I would love, LOVE to participate in a march on the important issue of worker rights and think it's far overdue; I'm just wondering, with all of the venom directed towards the Occupy movement (even among supposed Democrats), how effective it would be and how it would happen.

[enough]

15. Great post. (nt)

[area51]

18. +1

Big Corps(e) don't want single-payer health care, where employees would be free to get up and leave if they are dissatisfied, without worrying about repercussions for themselves and their families.

[MrSlayer]

12. I'm a union guy and a third of my coworkers are teabaggers.

I recently had a huge argument over the flat tax with these knuckleheads. People are just ignorant. They are literally clueless about what goes on in congress and how the big money people are fucking us.

[RKP5637]

13. Exactly, that is where a lot of it stems from, people wrapped in ignorance. Americans

are so damn easy to manipulate with the right hot buttons pushed. Also, once this crap they are fed sets in their minds, it is often very difficult to substitute rational beliefs.

[Brickbat]

14. Lack of solidarity, and a culture that makes solidarity something laughable.

[Populist_Prole]

16. Guns, religion, and some selfishness

Seriously. As long as they are single/double social issue voters, they will continue to carry water for the same crowd that is squeezing the life out of their peers. Those not yet negatively affected suffer from a combination of selfishness and confirmation bias: As long as they themselves are OK, they have no trouble bashing other working class types, and they're sure not going to rock the boat of their comfortable worldview by thinking too hard.

I can agree with 'MrSlayer' in his post above. I'm in a similar situation: In a union shop, though we don't have all that many teabaggers in my workplace as he has in his, I still see far too many narrow and selfish jerks who vote republican for the reason I stated in the first paragraph. When it comes to labor/solidarity etc, they're all for that....for them. Everybody else is overpaid. The other ones are paranoid gun nuts or fundies who cow to authority and have an "honor thy employer as they putteth food upon thy table" attitude.

[Orrex]

17. Many decades of anti-labor propaganda have been successful

I hear people griping about unions almost every day, but they're happy to work 40-hour weeks with health insurance & safety protections.

People have forgotten that unions are responsible for just about every single thing that doesn't suck about the modern workplace. Rather than comprehending that their own wages are too low, they complain that union wages are too high. Madness!

[ljm2002]

19. Relentless propaganda...

...including the use of wedge issues to convince blue collar folk that (what remains of) the left is their enemy and the right is their friend.

It has been a concerted effort.

1 - demonize unions by pressing the meme of "union thugs"
2 - remove all traces of labor history from being taught in our schools
3 - argue that if they are required to join a union for a particular job, that is a basic infringement on their cherished freedom
4 - use social wedge issues to further peel laborers away from the left, since labor is often more conservative socially
5 - encourage Rah Rah USA! jingoism and hatred for The Other

Well I'm sure others can add to the list. But it is a concerted manipulation perpetrated by the oligarchs and it has worked very well. Add to that the fact that most working people are too busy to educate themselves, and even if they tried, most mainstream sources are corrupted. Some people think they can still trust the mainstream outlets, although it is fewer and fewer every day; unfortunately, people who are looking for alternative news sources will often find even less trustworthy sources, and may gravitate towards the far right due to the aforementioned wedge issues.

Right now a lot of people are waking up to the abuses of the government; but this is quite perilous in the current climate and can just as easily lead to an ugly right wing populism / fascism as it can to more enlightened solutions. While I disagree with many here on the NSA spying scandal, they are right to fear the direction things could go as people turn away from trusting the government at all.