The Sad Truth- Labor Strikes & Reforms

 The New Gilded Age for Workers

The older you grow, the more and more you notice the fewer and fewer people that genuinely try to mask how little they care about you. While the once voluminous circle of your social relations is slowly etched down into a spiral that ultimately ellipses nothing but the starkly narrow stretch of land spanning from the tips of your toes to the scales of your heels, you start to notice a few paradoxes in life. The world is adamant to hurdle itself into war after war to end all wars to bring about peace to hopefully just get along with one another, and then instantaneously claims that getting along with one another is a feat to exigent to even fathom pursuing and then hurdles itself back into another war to end all wars. Freedom of speech is exercised so extensively that the ends of its charter are beginning to corrode, yet people state that we need more and more of it. The strong assert that others are too weak, while the weak asseverate that others are too strong, and people get nowhere.

Yet perhaps one of the most economically belligerent paradoxes today that is sweeping the media off their feet and has the fate of corporate America contingent on its heels goes as follows: workers have been standing up for their rights and proliferating the establishment of labor unions through a described "war with employers". Short term, this could lead to benefits, but long term, something will have to give in order for wages to rise significantly. It is possible that that "something" could be the very foundation of companies themselves. If that is so, then yes, everyone may get their rights and feel as though the world is perfect. But with nobody to run and restrict the economic state of those companies like as is done presently, industry may fall completely in the naive hands of laborers who were never meant to have them in the first place, and America’s beloved democracy may potentially topple into the dreaded socialist state of our sworn enemy nations.

However, many others don’t seem to care or put faith in this logical paradox. Ignorance and bloodthirsty selfishness to just manifest one’s own destiny may lead to the downfall of our societal groups as a whole, but for far too many, this reality isn’t irksome.

“We’re working two, three jobs just to make ends meet. That’s not right to work at a job and still get the same pay for fifteen years,” Orlando Ramsey, a United Auto Worker, cries. 

“You guys saved the automobile industry,” President Joe Biden echoes the concerns of workers like Ramsey and joins in support of their cause.

But this makes sense. At the end of the day, the pivotal driving factor for Presidents and frankly any member of the executive, legislative, or judicial branch in this country is to garner support for their campaign, which is especially true now that election season has hit home. So of course, Biden would rally in support of the majority group as the tides shift from the hands of the powerful to those of the powerless. But that still doesn’t answer our question; is an economy where workers get equitably compensated, as mouth-watering of an ideal as it may sound, really going to impel down a successful free market as we think?

Well, sort of. At the end of the day, like almost always, the key is balance. Of course, it is lucid as ever that businesses have been abusing their power and cutting costs for self-preservation and veneration in a Carnegie and Rockefeller-esque style for as long as ever. Moreover, it is no doubt a good thing that “Today’s striking workers may have a stronger hand in their negotiations than they would have had in the past given today’s elevated public support for unions.” But as the scarily low mere 39% of Americans have thoughtfully noted, labor unions can’t fix the economy in one fair sweep. And until people can settle on that extraordinarily fine equilibrium between tug and war, it appears the world may be headed back and forth on a seemingly endless quest rooted in futility to salvage their rights, make ends meet, and achieve the oh so coveted “perfect” economy that has been voided whole heartedly since its very conspiration.