1. A short thread on why a reinvigorated labor movement - of factory workers & front-line workers is essential - essential to the future of the economy.
2. Read this closely: The workers are demanding masks, PPE, sanitation stations, & temperature checks. The workers. Not the managers. Not the capitalists.
3. It's like a scene from Upton Sinclair's Jungle. Like a scene from Blake's Satanic Mills ...
4. And not just the factory workers. Front-line service workers - warehouse workers, delivery workers, grocery clerks - all demanding the same protections, and decent living wages of course.
5. THE WORKERS DEMANDED …
This is right thing to do, it is the just thing to do. But it is also required to keep the economy functioning and up and running.
This is right thing to do, it is the just thing to do. But it is also required to keep the economy functioning and up and running.
6. THE WORKERS DEMANDED …
This is not just about social justice or even safe working conditions. This is required to keep the economy up and running.
This is not just about social justice or even safe working conditions. This is required to keep the economy up and running.
7. Our capitalists are so short-term oriented that they don’t think about their own most important asset, their workers. They continue to treat workers as disposable. But they're not.
8. This may be an additional reason why Japan, Tokyo & Asian nations mobilized more effectively initially ...
9. Yes mask-wearing is more common. But early on in my academic career I studied so-called Japanese manufacturing management.
10. A big difference with the West, so-called Fordism, is that the Japanese social compact and its manufacturing model evolved to view workers as a key asset to be protected & invested in.
11. It is workers' knowledge & intelligence at the point of production that powers the system. Workers design work & innovation on the production process.
12. Now it is frontline workers telling American management they need PPE & other things to do their jobs & for their factories, delivery systems, & grocery stores to operate safely.
13. Capitalists shirk their responsibility: workers tell us exactly what is needed for the system to function.
14. A broader, revitalized labor movement - around health, safety, better working conditions, & family-supporting wages for all service & manufacturing workers - is in the interest of a more resilient economy, and something we all need to get behind.
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