Working every day in this factory for long hours making shoes that we can barely afford,
I think it is time to voice our issues.
In order to understand how we ended up here we need to know how we got here in the
first place. It all started with the industrial revolution bringing new challenges that
people are just not used to, it produced wealth and power for some and suffer for
others, the factory owners were looking for ways to maximize profit by lowering cost of
production, this led to the extensive use of machinery over human, up to a point the
workers lost their individual character, they become a tool that can be easily replaced.
As a consequence of the factory owners greed the workers were exploited, as Karl Marx
explains “Differences of age and sex have no longer any distinctive social validity for the
working class “(pg165),with all the struggle the workers had to fight for better working
conditions, low pay, reasonable hours, child labor and more. We need to learn from
history and clearly understand that it's about time to fight back for better wages, health
benefit, work safety and reasonable hours, we are being exploited by working long
hours barely making any money, it's getting worst day by day , without a doubt the only
way to be heard is to unite, it is very important to come together and fight for common
goal , forming a union is the ultimate solution as Marx mentioned in his manifesto "this
union is helped on by the improved means of communication that are created by
modern industry and that place the workers of different localities in contact with one
another “(pg166), he state the role of union in helping workers to come together, the
only way to go forward is to keep the factory accountable to what is happening , union
is needed to have a negotiation power to improve working conditions and fair pay, it
protect and promote members interests by creating a collective bargaining ,a voice in
the work place that we do not have, we need to work together to make sure we all
taken care of, we all deserve a good wage, health benefit and a form of retirement plan
, at the end of the day the owners only care about money and how to make more they
are willing to take more from us to maximize profit , throughout history these at the top
always fought against unions, but you must remember we are the one who do the work,
so the real power is in our hand we just need to recognize it .
We have the power to overcome the struggles, my fellow co-workers I hate to say it but
if we don’t stand up for ourselves no one will, if you want a better life for you and your
children join a union, as an individual my voice is limited but there is power in numbers,
enough is enough we are being treated unfairly, Marx was right when he said “the
proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win” (pg186),
we also have nothing to lose.