Breakers part two

It has always been the case that the world is a struggle between the haves and the have-nots. When the guilds emerged with strength in Europe and in England the power had shifted to some degree towards the little guys standing together to form the guilds and what not. But fast forward a few hundred years to the point where people were emigrating en masse to the New World and the balance shifted back to the haves. I have always found it interesting that the more money and hence power that a person has the less work that they are likely to do themselves and the more they want to protect their capital and right to do less. Capital is the key. If you have capital and invest it successfully in capital equipment (the thing that actually make money) then one is likely (time permitting) to get someone else to run that business or product while the owner of the capital starts other capital projects to make even more money. Tack on 50 years or a generation of family and the 'owner' is usually removed from the process at least in the hands on level. There are exceptions. It the fact is the 'hunger' that drove that first generation of capital often doesn't exist for the following generations and so you get what my Dad used to call the 'rags to riches to rags in 3 generations' syndrome. But I am getting a little off topic... In the new world there were millions of people who arrived with nothing in their pockets but their hands. Those people who did have capital were the rich and those who did the work were the poor. There was a middle class (doctors, merchants and the like) but for the most parts the pendulum had swung back to the haves versus the have nots. Railways and building were built and erected with terrible working conditions, inhumane hours and horrific death tolls. We had seen this before hadn't we? People with everything to gain and everything to lose. The perfect time for a revolution in the labour market. It also is an example of that ongoing struggle between those with the capital and those that the capitalists hired to actually do the work. The unfair power balance led to unfair work conditions for the workers and as a result motivated a change at the grassroots (in this case the workers). This was the genesis of the union movement in North America. The fight to get 'a fair day's pay for a fair day's work'. The key to its success was getting all the workforce, or most of it, organized to work together. If labour stood together they outnumbered the capitalists by so much that they could stand at the table as equals and work out a fair deal. The success of this negotiating moved the union labourers up from lower to middle class. It arranged fair hours and fair benefits for its members. It educated them, watched out for their safety, and took care of them when they were injured. But all this costs money and money comes out of the 'capital gains' of the corporation and so the companies that were big enough thought to themselves "how can we scrape some of this back?". The solution was to divide and conquer. This idea is where CLAC comes from. Cheaper labour by flying people in from outpost and out of province locations a lot of which had a lower cost of living. Pay all of their flights always so that they can go home to these far off places with their whole paycheck in their pocket. Etc. now you have created a labor pool that is hard for the unions to organize. This is called division. And with this division in place the corporations can slowly pull the unions apart piece by piece. If a strike happens they are back stopped and backfilled by CLAC. That extends the strike and leads to union guys going CLAC in order to not lose their homes. Presto chango and the union is gutted. I'll have to finish up tomorrow with some ideas on what things might be done to shore things up. That said I am not an expert so these are my own observations. I also admit that my look at history here is pretty brief and uses a huge amount out. But it helps set the table for understanding why things are happening and why my suggestions may work. Have a great day. :)