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Showing posts from October, 2012

Employer Voter Intimidation

Nonunion employers’ feel they own their wage slaves and today it is the same as it was in the 1800s when the boss lined up the wage slaves and marched them to the polling places to cast their vote and told the employees who to vote for. If they did not vote the way the employers dictated they would be fired. Another insult that wage slaves were not paid for that day. Here it is, the 2012 election, and the employers are using this same tactic: coal miners marched out and made to stand behind a GOP presidential candidate and told to donate to the candidate’s campaign and weren’t paid for the time they had to stand behind that candidate. Companies are many who force their workers to do what they want even when the wage slaves are on their own time. The employers tell or have the slaves sign contracts that dictate what the employee can say or write on social network sites or letters to newspapers, agreeing not to join a union or dropping out of a union in order to get a job with a compan

National Chamber Legislation Center

National Chamber Legislation Center (NCLC) has brought cases to the U.S. Supreme Court and won 68 percent of the time. The U.S. Supreme Court traditionally agrees to hear fewer than 2 percent of the cases it receives for review. In the 2010/11 term, the NCLC urges the Court to review 30 cases and won 21 of these cases. A stunning 70 percent and this term they are eight for eight so far. There is no way that labor will ever win a case at the U.S. Supreme Court level – not until the wage slaves elect a president who will change the Court. We need at least one justice who will level the Court. With a labor push against the Walmarts, there will be court cases headed to the Supreme Court and the cases will be represented by the NCLC for the corporations, and labor at this time will not win before this Court. However, if the cases take one to two years to get to the Supreme Court and if we win in November this could all change for us wage slaves. If the Courts do change for labor, we need to

Fight for Walmart Workers

Unions have begun organizing Walmart and this is a fight worth fighting, and if it is won all others will fall like dominos. It looks like the Walmart organizing effort was well planned. The Art of War says the Army who attacks can pick their time, in this case right before the holidays and the presidential election, and the places, stores, where workers are needed for the holiday hours. Other companies will not help, but will be happy to take Walmart’s customers and business. Knowing this, Walmart corporate leaders, threatened with a strike on Black Friday, are talking to themselves about whether to raise wages or bring in more part-time workers. The workers have nothing to lose. They are already at the bottom of the economic ladder: no healthcare, no pension, no job security and the only power they have are their feet, and the solidarity of other wage slaves and unions. Now is the time for a full court press from all wage slaves to support the Walmart workers in the streets and with

1935 Workers & U.S. Congress

We need today a Congress like the one we had in 1935, which was a worker-type of Congress that guaranteed the rights of workers to form unions. Their rational for setting forth the National Labor Relations Board Act was that inequality of bargaining power between employees who do not possess full freedom of association … and employers. The money people who are organized in corporate or other forms of ownership association tends to aggravate recurrent business depressions by depressing wage rates and the purchasing power of wage earners in industry and this is the same today. The workers have shown productivity gains for the last 30-40 years and yet the wages have dropped and the money gains have gone to the 1%. Today what workers’ rights we still have are now in extreme jeopardy by restricting most of what the 1935 Congress set forth: (1) by restricting the rights of workers to learn about unions; (2) the right of workers to organize and choose union representation; (3) the right of

35-hour Work Week

We need a 35-hour work week and get rid of the temporary jobs. These types of jobs exploit the work force by not paying good wages, health insurance or pensions. This means that the workers with good wages and benefits must subsidize the Walmart-type workers, and the large box stores get a free ride off the backs of taxpayers. The people who hire temp workers get the same free ride. If the government set the rules so unions could organize retail workers, which would put them on par with the union retail and food stores we would have a much better economy. The stores, which are union, have an unfair fight when trying to compete with stores like Walmart, and it is all on the workers’ backs to stop these unfair practices. We need all retail stores with a work force of 20 or more employees to be unionized and not be bale to take advantage of the 19-20 hour work week. One way to do this is to have all retail workers be in a retail union so if they have to work two or three jobs the time wo

Labor Built It

Nothing gets built if not for labor so labor must be able to have a slice of the pie one way or the other. It would be nice if all large corporations, like Costco, which is non-union, would pay and treat their employees like they’re worth something. Safeway and most Raley’s supermarkets are unionized and treat their employees worthwhile. I hope there are more, but when you shop at these stores you know it is a good place to work. You can just feel it and tell by the employees and the employees can probably afford to buy the things they sell. This is how it should be. The carpenter should be able to buy the house he builds, the autoworker should be able to buy the car she builds, and the food worker should not go hungry. This is the way it should work out. A working person must think of themselves as a business, and the asset they have is their body so the worker must be healthy, educated, and have all the tools in which to make money. The worker will have to sale their lives and bod