40,000 UC Workers Are About to Strike Over Race, Class, and Gender

1. I think we just need to bring in more immigrants that want better paying jobs than they have in Central America and are fleeing crime they care more about having a paying job in a safe crime free environment than minimum wages and job benefits. If the new immigrants can replace these strikers then we can end the strike and get better workers that make less demands. MORE IMMIGRANTS!!

2. Marc Steiner seems more concerned to discuss these union struggles through a prism of identity politics rather than through a prism of class politics by repeatedly playing the racial/identity cards? Instead of workers struggling against it's common class enemy, Steiner promotes struggle of worker against worker dividing workers along identity ("race", gender) and "income" lines. Marc Steiner doesn't have an issue with capitalism but with how capital divides up the work among the workers and their varying pay rates. This is reformism. But, in the end, in spite of all of Steiner's goading, guest, worker/union member Joaquin Chavez brings the discussion back to class struggle and the "larger sort of fight between workers and capitalists".

   0:27…"the union struggles are about wages and job security but they're about more than that they're about income, gender and racial disparities"…

   8:43…"one of the things that I find really interesting about this union push for both your unions is that this is beyond just wages this has to do with gender discrimination racial discrimination inside the system in terms of who gets advanced who doesn't get advanced how much people are paid who are white men for the most part white men and how much other people are being paid and the whole role of kind of racial and gender discrimination where black women are literally at the bottom of the totem pole"…

   11:37…"you're talking about serious discrimination around class, racial and gender issues which I think set this apart and what do you think that means about the future of unions and where this strike may be taking your union and the entire union struggle"…

   13:46.."or whether we're talking about the larger sort of fight between workers and capitalists as a class this is all a struggle for to try and fight for the kind of society that we wanna live in"…

3. Under funding workers pensions…California will look like Argentina's public sector workers striking for the same reasons.
   In the minds of the California and Argentina's public sector employers, workers are dispensable. Tools not meaningful human beings.
   The right of a worker to retire after 40 years of employment is attacked.
   The workers struggle is about dignity and that is an indignity if I ever heard one.
   Its about time American workers recognize an indignity when it hits them on the head.
   I was getting concerned that the abused are permanently damaged people.
   But their militancy and organization can be stronger and more robust if they all wear Yellow Vests.
   Far more effective, yellow is the color that signifies the workers struggle for dignity and visibility.
   Though I find the American labor force is the least class conscious in the world.
   A private sector worker employed in the oil industry works 70 hours straight and two weeks off. A relay system of oil workers produces oil non-stop.
   Individually, an oil worker is paid high but is the most exploited worker in the private sector relative to the quantity of riches in oil they produce for their employer.
   This worker must earn enough for old age while young, expected to save.
   The coal miner workers follow the oil workers in their exploitation by the coal mine owners.
   Even worse, the mine owners do nothing to protect workers from cancer whereas this risk of black lung for the coal miner is not a threat to the worker in China.
   Transit workers are also treated like SHIT!
   Women in the work force of which they comprise 58% of the workforce are under attack.
   Very alarming that the attacks on the labor-force in the US is not commonly understood by the American worker as attacks.

4. U ppl shud put on yellow vests n good for u!

5. Protests and strikes popping up all over the world. Maybe we'll see a global revolt against neoliberal Capitalism.

6. I dunno. Union reps arguments fail with me. If his workers could make more in private jobs, let them go.
   His workers sacrifice a lot of income blah blah, well what workers aren"t sacrificing et al. The main cause of
   wage disparities, is percentage wage increases, which unions are also culpable of. Race, class, gender…
   sexual harassment, ugh. March 20th walkout. These unions have had political protection since 1972, when
   Dems abandoned Labor, but kept on the privileged AFL-CIO, which is happy with min. wage workers changing
   the grandpa's diapers. It's about rights of humanity blah blah, well I dunno, sounds like Little Brother & Big Brother.

7. May Union Action at last lead to General Strikes against Capitalism and Nationalism.

8. Typical liberal institutions not practicing what they preach and teach.

9. The Union is right to fight against Title 9 Kangaroo Courts.

10. I thought everything is great in America… what happened deplorables?

11. The students certainly won't mind the extra millions in students loans required to pay for the benefits and wage increases this will require. Right?

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