Mobilize for May Day. Fight the Senate. Rally and Mobilize for the PRO Act

With a new president and a new Congress we are in the midst of a real turning point to define the tenureship of those in power. Their time can be utilized to stand for a people’s agenda, or to cover for the business and corporate classes. They can stand with the workers or they can stand with the exploiters. 

So far, time is telling that they are standing with the exploiters. 

Despite the biggest general basic income package to the American people, our Congress and President failed to deliver what the workers will need in the long run: $15 an hour.

A lawful raising of the wage floor for the conduct of lawful business, lawful employment of labor, would have ensured that the proceeding inflation of value we will see would not harm the working class. Between the 2008 Recession and the stimulus packages to address the coronavirus, we have seen trillions flow out of the US Treasury and into the economy, but for the paltry couple thousand we get (more for people with children or other dependents) we are seeing tons more go into the pockets of the wealthiest of the capitalist class.

Often the “essential” is that work which has not seen the overall raise in wages over the last couple decades. In many places there are serious reversals for the working class. $15/hr died in the US Senate. It died because of the hostility of the Republican Party; it died because of the treachery of Democrats like Sen. Joe Manchin and Sen. Kyrsten Sinema; it died because of the general indifference of the Democrats to prioritize a class conscious movement; it died because of the failure of even our best advocates in holding a line against the elimination of the most proletarian economist reform - a reform that shifts balance ever so slightly for the wage worker.

That moment has passed and we must learn. We stand in a new day. In the middle of last summer we saw a whole episode of people’s resistance in the streets in the midst of a pandemic. People have been brave enough to step up for what they see as just. We as a labor movement must for once stand for ourselves as a national democratic workers’ movement.

The Protecting the Right to Organize (PRO Act) was a working bill since 2019. It is a sweeping legislation that enables workers to organize themselves towards greater collective bargaining power against the employers. 

• This bill brings civil penalties against employers who fire pro-union workers that are organizing.

• It can make a general contractor liable for the unfair labor practices of a subcontractor. Staffing and temp agencies can no longer do the dirty work for a contractor. They will be considered "joint employers."

• It will restrict overly broad "independent contractor" categorization of low wage workers, particularly by tech apps like Uber, Seamless, etc., so workers can begin to have collective bargaining rights.

• It makes it more difficult for the employers to subvert workers’ votes to have a union and protects the workers right to search out for unions to defend them.

• It will eliminate predatory right-to-work legislation in 28 states.

• It forces employers who negotiate in bad faith to arbitrate with unions.

• Protects workers more in strike activity and gives us power to go after companies by allowing secondary boycotts.

This bill is especially important now considering the rising monopolization across industries by companies like Amazon. As you can read from these points, this bill swings a great deal of power back to workers within the legal framework. It is increasingly more important that we, the rank and file militant unionists, agitate and mobilize our brothers and sisters to push the Senate to pass the PRO Act.

In order to do this we must make our union leadership accountable to our general interests - our shared interests as organized labor - for what they have dropped money in these politicians' pockets. Inactivity is not an option. 

We must call our locals and see what they are willing to do to fight for the PRO Act. We must call our Central Labor Councils (CLCs) of the AFL-CIO and demand to know their plans. We must push everywhere up the ladder to get the entirety of our forces to wage a total national effort to fight for this bill.

And who are the targets of this fight? The politicians, particularly those in the Senate. We need their offices overwhelmed by both our calls and by us physically when called for. Republican Senators in particular are poised to vote against this act. Most Democrats are poised to support it, but there will be those who will not support it, these purple Democrats like Joe Manchin. 

Regardless, even those Democrats who support it in name will not fight for it if there isn’t mass mobilization of the workers. 

This is why we call for all who read this to mobilize for May 1st, May Day, International Workers’ Day, at the offices of Senators around the country. 

Our aims are simple, target those politicians who hold the future of this bill in their hands. If they pass it, it just needs Joe Biden’s signature to be law, and then the end to right-to-work, the protection of slow down actions, the ability to execute secondary boycotts as organized labor. The world becomes ours to win.

In preparation we will be building a national ad-hoc committee initiated by Workers’ Democracy formations to build our national efforts to fight for the PRO Act. We are willing to help and assist all those who want what we want - want what the workers need.
                  

All Out for May 1st! 

Let the senators know we are fighting unions! 

Fight for Workers’ Democracy!