Union movement revival?
The labor union movement was in decline for six decades.
It experienced a tremendous upsurge during the Great Depression and the momentum continued into the 1960s. At its peak, almost 35 percent of the American workforce was unionized.
Contracts with higher pay and better benefits resulted.
Then, with more of corporate revenues going to labor, profits declined during the 1970s. Capital went on an offensive and unionization started to decline. By the 2010s only seven percent of the private-sector workforce was unionized (much of the public-sector workforce remains unionized).
Lower pay (in real terms, adjusted for inflation) and benefit give-backs resulted.
Maybe the tide is now turning:
https://www.jacobinmag.com/2022/04/amazon-labor-union-staten-island-ldj5-rally
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Of course we should support Labor in it contention with Capital.
Workers should get much higher compensation and better benefits.
Working for the institutions of the Leviathan sucks (whether enterprises are owned privately or publicly).
The bottom line is that this kind of labor, in general, can never be satisfactory. See how Fredy Perlman talked about the role of zeks in Against His-story, Against Leviathan:
https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/fredy-perlman-against-his-story-against-leviathan
Rigid 8-hour days, five days a week, doing pretty much the same thing all the time, pretty much forever.
That’s unsatisfactory.
Right livelihood is doing the work of sustaining Our Community with neighbors. Working together, seeing directly what really needs to be done, on an as-needed basis, not for profit, not for wages, directly affecting the lives of familiar others, directly appreciating what gets accomplished together, allocating tasks together. Like what’s done in the family to sustain the household, only extended to a humanly-scaled local community. Real work for real people within a real community.
Sustaining the household and sustaining the community. That’s plenty of work.
Work for Us . . . not for Them.
