Working In These Times

The Big Issue: Strike For Your Life

Having navigated, with great imperfection, the chaotic early stage of this crisis, it is now safe to say that the U.S. government has come to the conclusion that its preference is to reopen business as soon as possible. This decision will predictably kill a significant number of workers in many industries, and the U.S. government does not care, and neither do the executives and investors with ultimate control over those industries. They will do what they feel they can to minimize those deaths—without losing too much money—but the calculation has already been made, in the rooms where such things are decided: Getting the machinery of business up and running is the top priority. The deaths that result are an acceptable price to pay.

In the real world, when we are done fantasizing about CEOs undergoing sudden bouts of empathy, how do we change this dynamic? How do regular working people alter a life-threatening situation, when it has been decided by the business owners who employ them, and by the politicians who control the power of government, that they must go back to work again, safe or not? There is only one way to change this dynamic, and that is to strike. Strike for your life.

Nobody is obligated to work under conditions that are intrinsically unsafe. Everything is in place to get the machinery of business running again—but if the workers do not work, the machine does not run. Period. The government had made the choice to put an economic gun to the head of a large part of the population and say: We will not give you sufficient benefits to stay home; we will open your place of work again, and you will work, or you will be kicked off unemployment.



That is the pressure. The Democrats are not coming to save you. The only way to change this is to strike. Tons of working people realize this already, and many of them are bravely striking today. Supporting these people striking for their lives is the absolute highest purpose of the labor movement today. If people have the courage to risk their livelihoods to protect their lives, we have to make sure it is possible for them to win. If they cannot win that basic fight, the future is dark, dark, dark.