United Auto Workers President Shawn Fain testified before the Senate Thursday, highlighting the progress our country has made over the past century and the unequal benefits of that progress for working-class Americans. Speaking to the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor & Pensions, he agreed there was “an epidemic of people in this country of people who don't want to work,” but he said it wasn’t the working class as “many in this room might say.”
It is “the Wall Street freeloaders,” he said.
Fain spoke to the many physical, mental, and emotional drawbacks of working-class folks working long hours, and finished his opening remarks to the committee by slamming the very small minority of people greedily absorbing so much of labor’s fruits.
I know what people and many in this room will say. They'll say, “People just don't want to work” or “Working-class people are lazy.” But the truth is, working-class people aren't lazy. They're fed up. They're fed up with being left behind and stripped of dignity as wealth inequality in this nation, in this world, spirals out of control.
They're fed up that in America—in America—three families have as much wealth as the bottom 50% of citizens in this nation. That is criminal. America is better than this.
So I want to close with this. I agree there is an epidemic in this country of people who don't want to work, people who can't be bothered to get up every day and contribute to our society, but instead want to freeload off the labor of others.
But those aren't blue-collar people. Those aren't working-class people.
It's a group of people who are never talked about for how little they actually work and produce, and how little they contribute to humanity.
The people I'm talking about are the Wall Street freeloaders, the masters of passive income. Those who profit off the labor of others have all the time in the world, while those who make this country run, the people who build the products and contribute to labor have less and less time for themselves, for their families, and for their lives.
Fain has made headlines successfully running a massive strike, achieving serious gains for the 400,000 U.S. autoworkers his union represents. In September, while the strike was ongoing, President Joe Biden made history when he walked the UAW’s picket line and spoke with a bullhorn to striking workers in Detroit. More recently, Fain was invited to be a guest of Biden’s during the State of the Union address this year, a move that earned the ire of an unhinged Donald Trump.
Thursday’s hearing, titled “Workers Should Benefit from New Technology and Increased Productivity: The Need for a 32-Hour Work Week with No Loss in Pay,” and chaired by Sen. Bernie Sanders, included labor experts as well as other labor-rights advocates. It coincided with the Vermont senator releasing a bill that would “amend the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 to reduce the standard workweek from 40 hours per week to 32 hours per week.”
Getting much of anything passed with a Republican-led House that seems unable to chew gum and … chew gum is a tall order. But after decades of neglect, labor is making a comeback, and the Democratic Party has a chance to earn them back.
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