Skip to main content

Fight for Prevailing Wage

The fight to keep the prevailing wage in a little city has been ongoing for three years. The fight is between a supposed nonprofit corporation and the City of Redding against the unions in northern California. The so-called nonprofit, Turtle Bay Museum, wants to build a 5-star Sheraton hotel as a funding source for its enterprises. The case went to the courts and labor won. Now the Turtle Bay wants to go back to court, but this time labor is in for the long hall. This win for labor or loss will affect all of California, and could even set a precedent for the rest of the nation. For this reason alone labor must win, and in this case Turtle Bay needs the hotel more than the labor needs the jobs for labor will not miss out on a thing if this hotel is not build. They have nothing now so if the hotel isn’t built they won’t be out of work, but if the prevailing wage is overturned, unions will lose a lot more than this one job. We can kiss the prevailing wage jobs goodbye, and construction jobs will truly be slave wages. The irony is that the prevailing wage was written by GOP-elected representatives: Davis and Bacon. The GOP seems to have forgotten this part of its history. Maybe a history lesson is in order. I am sure the Tea party faction of the GOP of today would have invited Davis and Bacon for dinner without the two men knowing they were on the menu. The GOP does eat its own. I wonder when the GOP members will figure this out and start to support their own best interest. The hotel, if prevailing wage is in place, would put $1 million to $3 million in the pockets of our local workers, which would be spent in Redding and the taxes would go to Shasta County and sales taxes to the City of Redding. So it this going to be another dumb, stupid T-party shoot yourself in the foot tactic that we tend to do up here most of the time?
Labels:

Popular posts from this blog

Post Workists and What it Means

To change the abundance of labor in the world is to put more money in the pockets of the laborer to buy the products their fellow workers are making. Otherwise, when there are more products than money, there is slump in the economy. Austerity policies, low wages and automation (robots) were also of concern in the 1950s when Henry Ford II, CEO of Ford, took Walter Reuther, head of the United Auto Workers Union, on a tour of a new engine plant. Ford gestured to a fleet of new machines and said, “Walter, how are you going to get these robots to pay union dues?” The union leader turned to Ford and said, “Henry, how are you going to get robots to buy your cars?” This type of change in the labor has created a new type of working class that swings from task to task in order to make ends meet while enduring the loss of labor rights and bargaining rights. They are called “precariat” workers, a group of workers who live on the verge of collapse due to the instability of the nature of their job…
Read more

GOP To Pick-off Remainder of Unions

The last bastion of organize labor is now on the west and east coasts, like New York City, Seattle, and Los Angeles. Labor has mostly given up on the south and the middle of the U.S., is that because unions aren’t up to the fight? We have lost Detroit, Michigan and Wisconsin, which was the start of public unions. These GOP government control states, like govenors Synder and Pence have kicked our union butts. In California, labor has lost all of the rural counties, Orange and San Diego counties; and now San Francisco, Sacramento and Los Angeles counties are our last strong holds. It would not take a lot to lose California. California has elected GOP governors before and with our new federal government now in place and with the Koch brothers, et al, and their money it could be done again. We, union workers, could lose it all. They have started on teachers’ union and they are still trying to break the postal workers union by forcing the pension funds to be funded 75 years ahead of pa…
Read more

Gig Economy

The Gig con, which sells people on a more flexible job without fixed hours. This sounds enticing to workers fed up with their 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. jobs. Also, to people without jobs, and to people who have part-time jobs, and need more money. Gig jobs fill in many needs, but the rub is that these jobs or most of these jobs don’t pay into Social Security or Social Disability Insurance so when someone hits retirement age there is nothing to fall back on. Most have been told that Social Security will not have money for them because Social Security will be broke. This is a lie and a con job on the workers. Social Security will be OK if the federal government will keep its hands off the money we paid into it. They think it is their piggy bank. Then what if you get sick or injured on the Gig job, there is no healthcare. We know that we are running out of jobs here and worldwide. This is why we need the universal basic income and unions for all. At this time, the federal government estimates…
Read more