(en) US, WSA's Ideas & Actions* - The state of the union is ?unequal By Mike Harris

OK, so the ?little person? has been fighting against wage theft, low wages, and harsh 
working and living conditions for years. Sometimes alone and lonely, sometimes 
collectively and in a self-managed way. For the past year or so, mainstream labor, through 
various grass-roots and top-down efforts has tried to coordinate the fight against poverty 
wages. Through a string of events in the fall of 2013, various campaigns engaged in this 
theme of subterranean pay rates. ---- Obama has sometimes countered the demands of 
nominally left-wing critics with an admonition to ?make me do it.? As he prepares to 
deliver his State of the Union address, advance reports indicate that it will contain 
elements of mainstream labor?s issues. Perhaps the stagecraft, rather then shop floor 
organization, has acted as a ?make me? moment for Obama.

I will not argue that any gains made by poor working class folks are a bad thing. I surely 
do not subscribe to what, a century ago, was known as the ?worse, better? notion: the 
worse you are, the better the chances are of convincing you to take militant and radical 
action. A bit more milk for the kids is never a bad thing.

However, I anticipate that with a little Presidential attention, and increasing political 
action away from the shop floor, a switching of the train tracks will occur, diverting 
attention from workplace organizing. Not that a lot of effort aimed at building shop floor 
unionism or shop floor committees has been undertaken to begin with. I predict that even 
less shop floor-oriented attention and action will occur. The shift towards a different 
game will be played up by the mainstream. In this new dynamic, institutional players will 
continue their role, only this time as part of the institutional soft left and trade 
unions, with a little wind in their sails and some solid public backing on their side.

No one should starve, that?s for sure. But the cycle of militant action channeled into the 
usual institutionalized relationships, developing as well as old, will still leave 
millions unorganized or, at best, mis-organized. The fight for a living wage is a fight 
for working class organization on the shop floor and in the communities. Direct struggle 
without intermediaries allows for continual betterment and, one hopes, a recognition that 
class struggle is constant, not open for periodic negotiations. Out of such struggle, an 
understanding develops that when we build committees in the workplaces that are 
worker-run, we are more likely to make the gains that we are seeking, rather then those 
mediated by others.

The issue of class inequality that was brought to the forefront by ?Occupy Wall Street? 
and the hard work by the shop floor workers of the many early and real ?alternative labor? 
movements are more radical and more threading then legislative campaigns. Yet sometimes 
it?s harder to stick to the basics. We all sometimes want someone else to do things for 
us. Sometimes we welcome those with resources and connections. Sometimes they deliver the 
goods ?and they will always make you remember that they and not your early militancy and 
self-organization, brought the goods to the table.

Perhaps by way of legislation they have brought some good things to the table. Yet I 
suspect that a different vision, coupled with a push to organize on the shop floor and in 
the community, will win us a whole hell of a lot more than sitting back and just handing 
the keys to others and allowing them to drive us. The keys and the driver seat are there 
for the taking.
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