It has been a great few weeks for working folks in the country. We’ve had IATSE pushing studios to the bargaining table by threating a strike. The BCTGM won a new contract for workers with the #NabiscoStrike, then turned around and launched another one against Kelloggs. Then came the big one, 10,000 UAW workers at John Deere walked off the job, forcing white collar office workers to abandon their desks and hit the factory floor. One silver lining of the pandemic is that it has made people realize how screwed up their work/life balance is, and how their bosses have been taking advantage of them for years. It is great to see some large scale labor action happening in America again. Let’s keep it up. Wages have been stagnant in this country for way too long, while executive compensation has skyrocketed. We need to band together and fix that.
In that spirit I want to send out a long distance dedication to everyone out there on the picket lines in Iowa, Illinois, Kansas, Georgia, Colorado, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Nebraska, and Tennessee. A bunch of years ago I wrote a song with a friend called “Clockpunchers“. It was during the “Great Recession“. Lots of people lost their jobs. A bunch of businesses closed up. People were scared. Big companies recognized this fear and took advantage, forcing people to take pay cuts, give up benefits, and work odd hours. The notion was that we should all just be happy to even have jobs. Within a couple of years, the stock market completely rebounded, companies started raking in record profits but… all the repressed wages, lost benefits, and crazy hours stayed the same. This song came about after our bass player, who had been asked a year earlier to take a pay cut so that his company could “survive”, got sent to do some work on the new beach house his boss had just purchased. It was bullshit then and it’s bullshit now. Solidarity, brothers and sisters. Remember, you are worth more.
3am Cynic 