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Showing posts from September, 2013

Use History to Win

Labor needs to take a historical look at the philosophy of the industrial unionism. The fast food low-wage workers should embrace what Big Bill Haywood shouted out at a meeting in 1905 at the Brands Hall in Chicago, “I do not care a snap of my fingers whether or not the skilled workers join the industrial movement at this time. We are going down into the gutter to get at the mass of workers and bring them up to a decent plane of living.” The International Workers of the World (IWW) were way ahead in its philosophy and tactics, such as it viewed a labor/management contract as an interference with labor’s only true weapon: the strike. Contracts were also rejected because they hampered workers from declaring strikes at the most critical times for employers. Most labor contracts have done more harm in the long run than good, such as stopping strikes. Maybe labor should take another look at Fr. Thomas J. Hagerty’s 1905 scheme, considered the most comprehensive scheme of labor organizations

Union Leaders Need to Step Up

Union leaders must be leaders to the rank and file, not just to the hierarchy of the union. They need to set aside their own personal ambitions, and think of the low-level workers. The workers, who promote the union, are the rank and file and they should know the names of their leaders and their jobs. They should also understand what their jobs represent, and should also know the entire history of their union and the history of the labor movement: those who fought, some to the death, for the rights the GOP are now stripping away today. They should know the good and the bad, and the successes and failures of the union movement and labor history. The wage slaves must stop fighting among themselves and treat all workers as brothers and sisters. The International Workers of the World had it right, the problem was they were ahead of their time in their thinking, and did not have the communication tools we have today. Now, we have the tools to organize the wage slaves of the world, but we

Minimum Wage on the Rise

The magic number is $16 an hour and the wage slaves are winning. The 1 percent oligarchies are in a slow walk backward. Also, the governor of the State of California wants to kick the minimum wage to $10 an hour and already some low wage businesses have raised pay toward the magic number. You cannot rely on the government to do the work for you. They would have to vote to raise the minimum wage in order for it to become law, and the lobbyists would spend millions to stop it. So the best way is to just make corporations pay the $15 to $16 an hour and then get the government to make it a minimum wage law. This way the precedence will already be set and you will diminish the effect the lobbyists will have on the politicians, mainly the GOP. If the $16 an hour is obtained by the millions of low-wage workers, which for some workers would more than double their spendable income, the economy would boom. The 1 percent would bring back their money from the Cayman Islands to invest here. One mu

NLRA no Friend of Labor

The National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) was put in place to have a system of labor control. The NLRA, at this time, does not help labor. For about 50 years of legal decisions have consistently restricted the rights of workers to take concerted actions when the NLRA rights were violated. Most of the labor disputes were supported not by the laws of the NLRA or the facts of the cases, but, instead, were based on a set of pro-management values and assumptions, which had no basis in actual law. In order to win when we go to court or try to strike and stay within the law, we will have to challenge this pro-management bias, which is a key to reviving trade unions. This does not matter much at this time with retail and fast food workers as they cannot be controlled very much. They can use their free speech and freedom of assembly to get the $15 to $16 an hour minimum wage and to start off protest at places where you don’t work and get them to protest at your place of employment. What can the

Minimum Wage Could Stifle Corporate Welfare

The $15 to $16 an hour minimum wage that the low-wage workers are asking for has a lot of positive to it, such as helping to end corporation welfare and these large corporations like Walmart paying below living wages and then the tax payers having to supplement their workers by way of food stamps and Medicaid, school lunches. Usually the cost for a low-wage worker is about $10,000 a year so if the corporations paid a living wage like they should, that corporation welfare money could go toward other things, which would benefit all of the 99 percent, and, of course, better wages would mean more jobs and maybe some families could go back to a one-wage earner per family, which would be good for the children, in some cases. In order to get the win on wages each wage slaves must want it and be willing to make the commitment just like going on a diet, quit smoking, getting sober. Each person must do it and then find others with the same will and tenacity to stay with it until you win. But jus

Another Way to Look at Higher Fuel Costs

High fuel costs are actually turning out to help American manufacturing. Manufacturing jobs were sent overseas, but to bring the products back to this country is proving to be very costly due to the high fuel rates and the fact that countries are starting to demand better wages for their workers. These facts are proving too much for the greedy corporatists, and they are starting to move jobs back home. This gives small local businesses the financial incentive to start Made in America companies, which can now label their products made in America or even with a local brand. The consumers seem to support this. So like I have always said, “In all adversity there is a window of opportunity.” But one of the concerns is the trained workers needed to make the products or maintain the higher technical equipment. We have had the state controlled apprenticeships programs for years through the unions. You know the programs that the anti-union GOP has been destroying for the last sixty years. Now