I hope that I am wrong, but what I see at this time is our unions are going to be in the fight of their existence. This is the most perilous time of our life. The life we had is threatened like never before. Unions are the largest organized group of people who can save our country if things keep going the way they are heading at this time. We need to all stand together for power, but we each must prepare and plan to take care of ourselves and our families. We can fight the big fight and not be distracted by worry about things that can and should already be taken care of. For instance, stashing at least one month’s pay and at least a month or even a year’s worth of food, whether the food is staples (pasta, rice, canned goods) and meat or chicken in the freezer. Keep your vehicles' tanks full and if possible a gas can full. It’s in your best interest to also save money for house or rent payments plus extra. This is not new thinking for us old trade workers who had to prepare when...
Robots—Pensions—Organizing Labors must organize millions more union members. At this point labor is doing nothing, but running out the clock on the very existence of our power, which is the people. The combined union assets is at $35 billion, but the total assets by collectively bargained pension pensions is trillions of dollars, according to labor writer Hamilton Nolar. We also must rethink how we invest our pension money and who is using it for union pensions. We are discovering union pensions have been and are financing labor’s own destruction when used by union/labor busting corporations. Maybe our union pensions should be used like the Southern California Service Employees International Union Local 721, which is pushing for the establishment of a Los Angeles Public Bank, which provide lower cost for affordable housing and more work. What and how is labor to deal with robots? Robots are displacing workers and their wages? One way to counter this would be to tax robots just like a h...