Further Thoughts on Workers and the Trade Union Movement
Channel: Richard Mellor
Date: 2022-07-19

We are witnessing a very positive development in the US as some of the most exploited low waged workers are on the move. Workers at Amazon, Apple and Starbucks have been unionizing and challenging today's modern Robber barons. The organized working class has also fought back in this post pandemic economy.

With inflation in the US at 9.1% in June, we can expect increased class conflict as workers, who have been told how important we are for the past years of the pandemic refuse to buckle under in the face of the usual efforts by the bosses' to make us pay. Bloomberg BusinessWeek reports that US fossil fuel producers are "raking up profits from higher gas prices" with the top five making $10 billion in three months and that "Exxon's US refineries will make more in the second quarter than the previous nine combined." BW7-18-22

This is not going unnoticed by the US working class. The trade union leadership will do its best to minimize demands for the reasons I explain in the video. We will be told we have to be reasonable. In the course of these struggles, and there are similar battles taking place in the UK, workers, particularly the new fresh layers confronting the capitalist offensive must include international solidarity as an important aspect of our offensive. We must build links with our brothers, sisters and comrades throughout the world. After all, we only have our chains to lose.