In op-ed, Sanders applauds
autoworkers' efforts to unionize in the face of vicious corporate backlash
As Nissan workers in Canton,
Mississippi are set to begin voting Thursday on whether to form a union in
the face of "one of the nastiest anti-union campaigns in modern U.S.
history," Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) penned an
op-ed expressing his support for the workers' effort, linking it to a
broader struggle against racial injustice and America's staggering
income inequality.
Sanders, writing for The
Guardian, begins by invoking the words of Martin Luther King Jr., who wrote in
his Letter from a Birmingham Jail, "freedom is never voluntarily given by
the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed."
"This week, thousands of
courageous workers at a Nissan plant in Canton, Mississippi are
doing just that," Sanders writes.
"They are voting for the right to join a union, the right to make a
living wage, and the right to job security and pensions. And they are doing so
by connecting workers' rights with civil rights, as the plant's workforce is
over 80 percent African American."
Since the 1970s, union
membership in the United States has declined rapidly; as union membership has
fallen, research
shows, inequality has soared and worker pay has stagnated.
During his 2016 presidential
campaign, Sanders brought these themes to the national stage, and in recent
weeks he has continued to push legislation
that would raise the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour and guarantee
healthcare to all Americans.
The struggle of Nissan
workers, Sanders argued on Thursday, is connected to struggles of workers
across the country fighting for the right to organize and earn a living wage in
the face of corporate backlash.
"The truth is Nissan is
an all-too-familiar story of how greedy corporations divide and conquer working
people," Sanders writes. "The company has brought in large numbers of
contract employees and paid them less than they paid full-timers for the same
work—an old trick for driving down everyone's wages. The company is also
telling those undecided about the union that their pro-union co-workers would
cost them their jobs."
Sanders goes on to argue that
Nissan's vicious anti-union push is geared entirely toward protecting its
"obscene profits," which he suggests "are a direct result of
corporations' decades-long assault on workers and their unions."
"Nissan is not a poor
company. It is not losing money," Sanders writes. "Last year, it made
a record-breaking $6.6 billion in profits and it gave its CEO more than $9.5
million in total compensation."
Despite the high-minded
justifications the company has offered for its campaign against the workers'
attempt to unionize—which the National Labor Relations Board argues has violated
workers' rights—Nissan "does not want unions in the U.S. South,
because unions mean higher wages, safer working conditions, decent healthcare,
and a secure retirement," Sanders writes.
No matter what results the
vote brings, Sanders concludes, "Nissan workers should be very
proud."
"They have exposed the
system of racial and economic injustice that corporations like Nissan are
perpetrating," Sanders writes. "We need to build on their courageous
efforts, and fight for an economy that works for all of us, not just the top
one percent."
The only way to defeat Trump—
and to redeem what is worth saving in liberal democracy—is to detach ourselves
from liberal democracy’s corpse and establish a new Left.
Elements of the program for
this new Left are easy to imagine.
Trump promises the
cancellation of the big free trade agreements supported by Clinton, and the
left alternative to both should be a project of new and different international
agreements.
Such agreements would
establish public control of the banks, ecological standards, workers rights,
universal healthcare, protections of sexual and ethnic minorities, etc.
The big lesson of global
capitalism is that nation states alone cannot do the job—only a new political
international has a chance of bridling global capital.
Excerpt from:
“We Must Rise from the Ashes
of Liberal Democracy”
BY Slavoj Žižek
http://inthesetimes.com/article/19918/slavoj-zizek-from-the-ashes-of-liberal-democracy
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