Paul Jay: “[I]n this pandemic moment, there is the most obvious thing public sector workers, private sector worker unions should be doing, and that’s organizing the unemployed. You don’t get any dues out of it. You do it for the class. And it’s it’s I think maybe the most important thing right now that would change the dynamic of the relationship of what has been seen as privileged workers versus unprivileged workers and the growing numbers in the millions of unemployed workers. It’s like the 1930s. And there’s no short term fix to that. You know, they can try reopening the economy. There’s going to be significantly high unemployment for years to come. Now is the time for mass organizing of the unemployed. And that gets at … the link between the organized workers and the community because unemployed workers in their millions, it’s their families. It’s their cousins, their relatives. … [T]he whole working class community now is affected by unemployment.” (Support the Australian Unemployed Workers Union.)
16 September 2020