Union Perspectives

Just watch what is happening in France to understand what is going to happen in the U.S. France’s president, Emmanuel Macron, sold himself as a radical democrat for the people, but he is governing like a monarchy. He has culled the ranks of local authorities, slashed local budgets, and replaced the housing tax that funds local government with a promise of a block grant. French history teaches that when a monarch oppresses the people, the people revolt. France’s mayors gathered for a congress in Paris last week. They bristled at being labeled spendthrifts and set themselves in opposition to Macron. They will find allies in workers’ unions and the media, since Macron hasn’t held press conference since his inauguration. This is just some of the things that are happening in the U.S. Our people were promised things by our new occupant of the White House is now acting like a monarch. A lot of the people who voted for him are starting to see just what they really voted for and it was not jo

Yes, we, today, are smart enough to rethink our Constitution and should not be afraid to do it. To change our Constitution, 34 states must vote to hold a national convention. To amend the Constitution, it takes 38 of the states to ratify the changes. There are many things that should be looked at—good or bad. The bad things include a long obsession by the conservative movement for a so-called balanced budget amendment. This would make the government powerless to borrow its way out of a recession. The government would have to cut spending at the very moment it was most needed. The cuts would most likely be made to benefit programs instead of raising taxes on the wealthiest and eliminating the inheritance tax. The effort to change the Constitution is being funded by the Koch brothers, Coors, DeVos and the Walton families, who produce op-eds and other positive-sounding propaganda that touts the need for such a convention. At this time, 29 states have voted to a hold a Constitutional conv

Today, we are still fighting for a living wage at a minimum of $15 an hour, when, in fact, it should be $24 an hour had it kept up with inflation. This fight has been going on for a very long time, and nothing seems to change. In 1905—a 112 years ago—the International Workers of the World (IWW also known as the Wobblies) held a convention in Chicago to lay the groundwork for one big union. IWW members were the “shock troops” of labor. Their prime purpose was to make the first breaches in the entrenched industry. They fought and won the free speech fights so they could continue to educate the workers on what should be their right to a safe work place, fair pay and reasonable work hours. Some died exercising this right. These Wobblies traveled the country in search of work, as timber fallers or on farms (they were known as fruit tramps). Many worked to unionize the textile workers, long before the New York Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire in 1911. Here in 2017, we are still fighting f

How much money do people really need? Is it decided by how you fit into the Have Nots, Have Littles and Used to Have or the Have More and Have Everything? If you are one of the Have Everything, you might think you need Balenciaga’s Triple S sneakers for $850. A pair or three houses, at least a jet and yacht and a fleet of cars for a start. Then there is the Have Mores. They are making between $150,000 to $2 million a year at least. They can send their children to a private school, ensuring they get a better education and can make as much or more money than their parents. And they, too, will be able to afford big houses, lots of cars, nice vacations, healthcare, and a good retirement. What will your children have? Then there are the Used to Haves, who are the old bitter people who voted for Trump. They once had the More, but have now lost it and now blame the government, but take all they can get. Then there are the Have Littles, who are like children with their faces up against the

The dreams the old International Workers of the World (IWW) could very well come true because of the capitalist attacks against workers worldwide. At this time, the French workers’ unions are under attack by President Macron, who is out to destroy unions. Then there is the Spanish government’s all out efforts to prevent the referendum on Catalonia’s independence, but 2.3 million people braved law enforcement attacks and voted for independence. The fight was lead by dockworkers, firefighters, public workers and most of all labor groups. Then we have the Kurds, who are fighting for an independent Kurdistan. The Kurds are 30 million strong and have no country to call home. The Kurdish struggle shows that it is possible to stand up to oppression and win. Poland has been slipping into an authoritarian rule for the last two years as the country’s government is cracking down and restricting people’s human rights and ignoring the European Union’s insistence that the government refrain fr

The fight for a living wage continues. Workers are asking for a minimum wage of at least $15 an hour, but in reality it should be $24 an hour had it kept up with inflation and CEOs exorbitant incomes. When workers finally get their local leaders to support a better wage, they then have to deal with a handful of states with conservative lawmakers who get ALEC (American Legislative Exchange Council) to write wage preemption laws to block increasing the minimum wage. There are now four states with such laws. This template for states to block cities and counties from raising the minimum wage in their own communities is taking the voice and vote away from low-wage workers. In order to fight back, there needs to be unions and local lawmakers who should be incensed by what the states are doing in supporting the large food and retail corporations. The corporations don’t leave their profits in these cities, counties and even states. They just take from our coffers by forcing their employees t

Capitalist bosses standing on the shoulders of workers and pushing them into the quicksand of profits is just greed at the expense of the workers, which is just what is happening at to train engineer Tom Harding and train controller Richard Labrie in Canada. Both are union members of the United Steelworkers. They are being framed by their bosses in Ottawa for following orders, and when those orders resulted in a derailment, dumping 1.5 million gallons of crude oil, causing an explosion and fire that destroyed the town of Sherbrooke, Canada. Many in this area consider Harding a hero for risking his life to aid firefighters in moving a number of unexploded tankers thereby limiting the devastation. Transport Canada’s Minister of Transportation Denis Lebel ruled in 2012 that a train crew could be cut to just one engineer to increase profits while ignoring health and safety rules. Harding wanted to engage the breaks on each of the cars, he was overruled and told to engage them on the loco

Rural America was seceded to the GOP by the Democrats, likewise the labor trades seceded the rural counties to non-union shops. In the old days, unions, in these rural areas, got bigger and bigger until they decided they could leave the rural counties' side, and compete in the large cities, foregoing smaller populated counties, which used to be union sanctuaries. This type of strategy is not working. Retreating never works. It is just like going into a fort or a castle, which sooner or later, the fortifications will be breached. All that is happening is just buying time and the Democrats and labor unions have both run out of time. It is time now for an offense and come out of the forts and castles and take back rural America. They, the labor and Democrats, should work together with all their resources combined, such as money and people power. If used wisely, they both could become relevant again in our rural countrysides. By attending all public meetings, using the time before ea

Some times when bad things happen it is for the best in the long run. Once when working with my tools as a union sheet metal worker, my tools were stolen. My co-worker told me it was the best thing for me because my tools were so old and outdated, basically crap. Fortunately for me, my insurance covered the cost for new tools. Two back-to-back hurricanes, Irma and Maria, decimated Puerto Rico, a U.S. territory, could be a good thing in the long run. Puerto Rico’s infrastructure was crap before the hurricanes, but the wreckage gives it an opportunity to rebuild it in a stronger, more efficient way. The government owns the utilities, such as roads, electrical grid, schools, and water and sewer systems, and allowed the infrastructure to become so fragile by underfunding since 2006. The government cut spending by 12 percent, laid off one quarter of the government work force, jacked-up sales taxes ad reduced pensions. With these layoffs, there’s no one to run the sewage system, and none o

Union leaders who jumped the gun on the 2016 election thinking the Democrats and Hillary Clinton would win and take charge of the U.S. Supreme Court will now pay for their very bad decision. Also, the leaders of some of the union leaders did not understand the feelings of their members on where their support lay, which was with Bernie Sanders. Labor went to court with three cases on labor arbitration agreements, which now will lose in the right-leaning Supreme Court and end up being the law of the land. In another case, the Court will decide whether public employee unions can collect fees from non-union members. If we lose this case, we can kiss the relevancy of labor unions goodbye. The law will bankrupt the unions and the loss of union membership will be catastrophic. These Court cases will be the Justice Department vs the National Labor Relation Board, which is a federal agency, will oppose each other in Court. U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said, this will be a fi

Where have all the jobs that pay a living wage gone? We know that greed has sent a lot of jobs to countries that accept cheap wages for their workers and to the non-union southern states. Now we are seeing robots changing the employment landscape and eliminating jobs in factories. Even with all this, there were still the brick and mortar jobs selling the cheaply made products from overseas. Now these jobs are going by the wayside with Amazon and Walmart companies investing in E-commerce. This has started a retail apocalypse on thousands of mall-based stores shutting down. JC Penney’s 138 stores, Sears 150 stores, Kmart 3,500 stores. Then the Kroger company, the largest grocery store chain, sales plummeted 25 percent erasing more than $7 billion in value. These jobs will go to $7.25 an hour minimum wage and workers will be hired by Amazon for warehouse jobs. These jobs are in a cutthroat competition and is based on keeping out unions at all costs. What these workers at Walmart and Ama

Anger and distrust is destroying the workers, both unionized and non-union. Even some unions are split, and some unions are fighting each other, which then makes the non-union workers distrust our unions even more. Our anger is misdirected by intention. If the money people can keep us fighting amongst ourselves then we won't see how they are screwing us over. This distrust started in the U.S. and worldwide with the anti-union line of Great Britain’s Margaret Thatcher government along with the anti-union policies of Ronald Reagan's administration. But the assault actually began in the late 1940s, and escalated in the late 1970s, and has gotten progressively worse since 1981 until now. Polls have revealed some dissatisfaction on the part of our members and nonmembers alike with the way unions are run and governed. Unions are doing a poor job of presenting their members and giving members a say in how a union should operate and not telling union members what the unions are doing

While working, you’re selling your life one hour at a time. What is an hour of your life worth? Remember you can never get that hour back, it is gone forever. When you set a price for your hour of life, how do you do it? Are you represented by a union? Or do you just let someone else set the price for your labor? However it is done, it is not working for you or any of the other workers. Nearly one out of every five workers is in a part-time job. Two-thirds are living pay check to pay check. Most are working more hours than they worked decades ago with less vacation or sick leave days. The standard explanation for why all of this has come about is that workers are no longer worth as much as they were before the digital technology boom and globalization. So, they must now settle for lower wages and less security. But top executives of large corporations wage have gone up twenty times that of the workers to three-hundred times today. So who sets the one hour rate? Last year, Wall St

The race for single-payer healthcare or Medicare For All it will be between the Bernie Sanders people, The GOP and the corporate Democratic Party. If the GOP wants to keep their seats in the Senate and Congress, they need something big, like healthcare that the people will be pleased with. The GOP is desperate, they have a loser of a president and they have failed to achieve any meaningful legislation. The GOP has said they want to replace the Affordable Care Act aka Obamacare since it was passed with something better, but their definition of better so far was deadly for many. They just need to make healthcare for all ages and if they do this they will keep power for a long time. The U.S. pays more in healthcare than Italy, Britain, Japan, Australia, France, Canada, Sweden, Germany and Switzerland, and many others. Our politicians have sold us out to the highest bidder, the insurance companies, and we need to make them pay for putting their pockets before our health. It is imperativ

What can the young and retirees do to help themselves, their country and the world? First, they need to look at what would be good for them in their lives versus what they are told by talking heads on television, radio and the so-called free press. Some newer newspapers and magazines are still good, but one must look at who owns the media as a whole. Now, many of the young are still going to school, living in the “basement” of their parents’ home or couch surfing. Some are unpaid gamers and the workers, young and old alike, who are working for minimum wage, some at two or three jobs or at gig jobs; and then there are the retirees on Social Security. Capitalism is alive and well for those who have money. What would make life a little better for us? How about $15 to $24 an hour minimum wage, free education, healthcare for all, higher Social Security, and universal basic insurance. Are these things worth fighting for? If so, how and where do you start? Some people are working for non-p

In America today, we have the Haves and the Have Nots, which is the very rich and the poor. What is missing is the middle, which is the group that makes it all work. They are the spenders who pay taxes, raise families. They are the supporters of the very rich and the supporters of the poor. This support system has worked very well until the very rich gets greedier and begins hoarding all the cash and cutting out the middle class with inequality. Inequality is done in many ways. Some is through laws enacted that shut down unions. This defund unions, but also stops worker training apprenticeship programs the unions provide. Shutting down these programs helps to turn our country into a wasteland of poverty. With the power concentrated at the top, democracy cannot thrive. This happened in the Guilded Age at the end of the 19th century. Now it is happening today. America cannot ever be great again until there is a large middle class with good wages, healthcare, free education, and good

All workers in the U.S need to know what the American Legislative Exchange Council (A.L.E.C.) is and what it is up to. This group is funded and put together by the right wing, anti-union people, like the Koch brothers. Its mission is to write legislations so state governments can pass into law. If that wasn’t even to deal with, this same group of libertarian oligarchs and other greedy rich people have formed a new group called American City County Exchange (ACCE) to write legislation for counties and cities to pass into law. The legislation is written entities that used to be nonpartisan municipal governments. This is to counter the National League of Cities, which is the voice of cities and counties. Some of the legislation the ACCE is putting out is to end the automatic deduction of union dues from paychecks, which is a precursor to a state becoming a right to work state, and that means the right to work for less. The ACCE distributes model legislation on everything from taxpaye

Why single-payer/Medicare for all would save money and help the capitalist system. One, if no business or corporation, like the auto plants did not have to pay health insurance, they could sell their vehicles overseas cheaper. If all the people had health insurance, a person could start a business and not worry about having to provide health insurance for themselves, their families and their employees, which would put more people to work and their jobs could be backfilled by another worker. People who could retire, but must keep working until Medicare covers them could now retire without worrying about their healthcare. They could retire and open a job up for someone new.  Countries with universal healthcare are: Australia, Austria, Bahrain, Belgium, Brunei, Canada, Cyprus, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hong Kong, Iceland, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Japan, Kuwait, Luxembourg, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Portugal, Singapore, Solvenia (where Trump's current wife is f

Labor needs to pull their heads from a very dark place and look at what they are up against when going after the infrastructure jobs. One concern is there will be a hard fight to keep the jobs prevailing wage because if Donald Trump’s six people have their way, all jobs will be privatized Don’t look for help from the top Democrats, like Chuck Schumer, he received $575,000 fro Goldman-Sachs and $220,000 from Blackstone. He also voted for the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act, helped design the 2008 big bank bailout and opposed efforts in this own political party to raise taxes on private equity and hedge funds. He is no friend of labor. Democratic New York Governor Andrew Cuomo has ties to Blackstone. Nancy Pelosi says the Democrats are willing to work with Trump on infrastructure, despite knowing what Trump and his administration are planning. There is big money to be made for companies like Black-Rock, the world’s largest investment company; the Securities Industry and Financial Mar

The fight against “right to work” legislation goes back to 1968. In one of his speeches, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. said, “That in our glorious fight for civil rights, we must guard against being fooled by false slogans, as right to work. It provides no rights, and no work. Its purpose is to destroy labor unions and the freedom of collective bargaining. We demand this fraud be stopped.” It is has now been about 49 years, and the same playbook called, “Right to work” to destroy union is still being played. The GOP and corporate Democrats want to destroy unions by taking away the right to collect dues. People still fall for this self-destructive line without looking into what they are forfeiting in the process: healthcare and pensions. Fraud and who are to blame? It is the unions for not educating people, not just their workers? The attack and the fight against it has never stopped. In 1933, in his Statement on National Industrial Recovery Act, President Franklin D. Roosevelt sai

For the workers to fight and win their labor battles, they must understand what they are up against and the history of their enemy, such as the banking system and the world banking system, and numerous others. There is a good video that explains these systems in animation that a friend, Ian, told me about. The video is: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mII9NZ8MMVM . I highly recommend people take the time to watch this simply explained video on a complex topic. It’s like the video, Who Moved My Cheese, https://www.google.com #q=who+moved+my+cheese+video . Both are very educational. One must also understand big pharma and health insurance companies and how they buy our politicians in both political parties, who then kill any attempt at single payer legislation. They now are buying politician to fight the marijuana laws so they can sell their synthetic marijuana pills, and to do that they will support laws that make marijuana illegal except for what they sell. This explains why U.S. At

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

Why is there a 700 percent increase in high end bunkers from 2015 to 2016? It is not fear of a nuclear attack, but fear of a Russian-style revolution. Here, the American super rich are investing in subterranean residences at an unprecedented rate, spending as much as $100 million on fortified bunkers designed to withstand any kind of disaster. The survival-condo project quickly sold out—a dozen single family luxury apartments in a converted missile silo. Bill Gates has shelters below every one of his homes. Why is there an impending disaster gripping the very rich? Is it that they know that the inequality with the masses will not last long before the masses demand their rights as humans and the right to a living wage or a universal basic income (UBI) to compensate for the lack of jobs, healthcare, free education, pensions, childcare, vacation and the chance for a home. You know, like the rich take for granted. If the rich think they can just stick their heads in a hole like an ostr

The Art of War says when the enemy is in disarray is the time to attack, so what are our union work force doing? Are they planning for an expansion? Are they educating their members on the history of unions? Are they training their members on how to be foot soldiers in the upcoming fight to destroy their safety net—the unions? Make no mistake about it, the anti-union GOP are coming for the unions. Unions are the last bastion of defense for the workers who still have jobs. They have “right to work” laws in most states, which devastates unions. The GOP is planning to go after the Holy Grail, which is California. If they ever pull that off, it is Doom’s Day for the unions and Have Nots. We will be in the streets begging or in the streets fighting. Either way, we will probably lose. Now is the time for us to go on the offense and stop using our defense policies. Being on the defense will always get beat in the long run because all you do is buy a little time. Now there is a window of op

What type of government are we heading toward? Niccolo Machiavelli wrote that there are three kinds of governments: Principality, Aristocracy, and Democracy. He said those who organize a government must turn to one of these based on what seems most appropriate to them and their mission. Others have the opinion that there are six types of government, three of which are bad and three are good in themselves. Although they are so easily corrupted that they too can become pernicious. Those types that are good are Principality, Aristocracy, and Democracy, but the bad ones are derived from the good ones. Each of the bad types are similar to the good types and because of this one type can easily slip from one into the other. A Principality can easily become a Tyranny, an Aristocracy can become an Oligarchy with ease, and a Democracy can turn into Anarchy with no difficulty. If the founders of a republic establishes one of these three types of governments, it will be established for only a sh

We need healthcare for everyone and Medicare single payer is the best way to go. This would relieve businesses of the burden of healthcare and make our goods more competitive overseas where labor is cheap. Think of car and truck manufacturing not having to pay for healthcare for their workers. This would cut the cost of their vehicles, which would give them more profits or make for more sales. Either way, it is a win. Then there are all the manufactured products, like televisions, washing machines and dryers, stoves or steel, plus all of the technology products we sell here and abroad. The local government employees would not have to ask the states, counties, and cities for healthcare for the law enforcement, firefighters, and maintenance workers, again saving money for the government, which could go toward healthcare taxes. There is argument that we need a healthcare safety net for all, but disagreement on the best way to achieve it.Some Democrats, including Senator Bernie Sanders

Are towns with companies where most people work better off than towns with no companies? I have seen the towns with no large companies that lasted longer because they have to diversify and not depend on one or two places for people of the town to work. I came from Dresden, a little town in Ohio. It had a company at each end of the town. One was a woolen mill. The other was a paper mill. Dresden sat between two larger towns, about 15 miles apart. Slowly the two mills shut down, but then a new company came about as a result of a local man David “Popeye” Longaberger, who started the Longaberger basket company. It became a billion dollar company and most of the town’s people worked for this company or at other businesses owned by Longaberger. When Longaberger died, the company he started in a garage started to go downhill, especially after his daughter shifted manufacturing to China, destroying the uniqueness and brand of the baskets they made. Luckily, there were the two towns borderin

Joel Fox is editor of the website Fox and Hounds, and is president of the Small Business Action Committee. Fox is trying to tell workers who work for minimum wage that their hard fought win for the $15 an hour minimum wage will be hit by a 15 percent tax for single-payer healthcare if Senate Bill 562 passes in California. There will be a kind of payroll tax, like the FICA (Federal Insurance Contributions Act) that pays for Social Security and Medicare, but there is already a payroll tax and if you take the current cost of healthcare it could be a rub. This is just a scare tactic to keep single-payer healthcare from getting passed. The Fox and Hounds’ Small Business Action Committee is also trying to beat back the free college education bill, Assembly Bill 1356, which would be paid for by raising the corporation top income tax rate 1-percentage point. This is just the start of the rich vs the poor, but the poor must wake up and understand what is happening to them. We now have a Righ

The GOP anti-union people will take over California by coming through the back door. This will be done by very wealthy donors supporting high profile school choice candidates. Looking ahead to 2018, some of the most active school choice donors are already contributing to pro-charter school candidates for state school chief and even for state governor. Some of these money people are Timothy Draper, who spent $23 million; Netflix founder Reed Hastings spent $5.8 million; Donald and Doris Fisher, founders of the GAP store, spent $6 million; Jim Carr Walton and Alice Walton contributed millions to California organizations that advocate for school choice; and Michael Bloomberg, businessman and former mayor of New York, spent $2 million. Most of this money has gone to California Charter Schools Association committees. Do not expect the California Democratic party to protect you or even be on your side. The core of the Democratic elite are corporate whores. In a contested battle, the part

In 1869 to 1877, we had Grantism. In 2017, we have Trumpism. The corporatization of Grantism were Black Friday in 1869, the gold speculation ring of corruption in the departments of the Navy, Justice, war, Treasury, Interior, states and U.S. Postal Service. Does this sound like Trumpism? Also, nepotism was rampant with more than 40 family members getting government appointments. Does this sound like Trumpism? Many of Grant’s cabinet members were in continual transition and were of low standard. Trump’s cabinet members are mostly billionaires or very rich and are all white, mostly men. Grants private secretary, Orville E. Babcock, was negotiating treaties by bypassing the State Department. Sound like Trump’s son-in-law selling Visas for $500,000 a piece to wealthy Chinese people, and other questionable conflict of interests. The Babcock was accused in the Whiskey Ring Scandal of 1875, was a tax revenues conspiracy involving government agents, politicians, whiskey distillers, and

One of the best playbook to destroy a democracy was written in a new biography of Adolf Hitler by Richard J. Evans. This is the playbook that is close to what our new president is using. With only some name recognition and no political experience, Donald Trump, like Hitler, found the underbelly of disenfranchised people and the electoral college and got himself elected to office with speeches full of allegations and vile stereotypes; and they were precisely designed to gain maximum attention from the media and the reaction from the crowds who gathered to hear his rhetoric. Also, in Trump’s speeches, he flaunted vulgarities and exploited tribal hatreds, and he lied and lied his way to success. But his similarities with Hitler does not end there. Just like Hitler ensured he stayed in power, Trump ensured the Armed Forces were on his side by giving them massive increases in funding, he’s reduced the checks and balances, and provided a huge armaments program, which is supposed to make Am

Is joblessness going to be the new normal for most workers? Or will “gig job” (job of a short duration) and temporary jobs be the new order with low pay and no pensions or healthcare. This is what the capitalist rulers are telling the working people, and that they will just have to live with it. The capitalists are now attacking the pensions that workers have already earned. With a Congressional law passed in December of 2014, The Pension Reform Act, which gives permission to slash retirees payments and will effect 68 separate private sector union pension funds. This could impact about 1 million pensions, which not only effects the retirees, but their families, as well, amounting to 2 million to 3 million people or more. A person receiving a government pension of $3,500, could see a cut of $1,900 per month. Then the Government Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation, which is supposed to pick up the shortfall, is projected to run out of money in eight to ten years. There will be no m

The plight of workers the world over is getting worse each passing day with the corporations and governments fighting against unions and worker rights. The jobs have gone to countries where the workers can be easily exploited or to U.S. southern non-union or Right to Work states, where if there are unions the employees have the options to pay dues or not, which further kills off unions. To add injury to this bleakness, the Iowa legislation passed a bill, signed by its governor, Terry Branstad, to reverse the minimum wage law, which in effect will steal the raises of the lowest paid workers. The minimum wage will revert from $10.10 and $8.25 back to $7.25. The republicans say it’s just teenagers or entry level people working for minimum wage. They lie, 84 percent of the workers are 20 years of age or older; 31 percent are parents; and at least a third are 40 years or older. Then there is automation. Robots and driverless cars and trucks, which will conceivably put up to 3.5 million

Where is the AFL-CIO on things like $15 to $24 an hour minimum wage or on the universal basic income (UBI). Also, the idea that the French has on a universal robot tax to support the UBI. A robot tax because the more technology advances, the more machines take over our jobs. Then, there is the attack on the U.S. prevailing wage, the Davis-Bacon Act, which Republicans have attack and now want to end prevailing wage protections. This is not only a union matter, but a nonunion issue for all workers who now earn a living wage when working on government jobs. It is time unions and nonunion workers get together and hit the streets, and if we don’t the workers will be working for less than minimum wage and no union healthcare or pensions. The union busting GOP are turning the working class against itself, black against white, men against women, Jews against nonJews. Using hate, division, white supremacy, misogyny, religion and racism are the choice weapons in every union busting fight in

The billionaires of Silicon Valley and government people are scared and building bunkers and islands in anticipation of society’s collapse. The danger of government people and the very rich having these new 500,000 to 1.5 million bunkers is that they now think they will be safe if and when the big boom drops or the 99 percent comes after them with pitch forks. They may think nuclear war or severe climate change will not effect them and that in the event either of these should occur, they will be better off than the rest of us. These are not just a couple of fringe groups. There is real money behind this movement, hundreds of millions of dollars. These are the richest and smartest people who are probably in the “know” so what do they know that we, poor people, don’t know? Then there are all the so-called rich preppers are buying islands and land in New Zealand. If all government and the 1 percent rich are safe, then do you think they fear earth’s ruin by climate change or a nuclear

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 pay

The workers are losing while our labor leaders sleep or hide out, hoping they can hold onto their position until they retire. Our labor leaders appeared to have given up the rural areas and pulled their efforts into the big cities. This is like having a fort with a moat around it and think they are safe. We all know forts can be conquered in the long run. It’s as if labor leaders learned nothing from the Clinton era. We, at this time, are losing with the Right to Work laws being passed in 27 states, and now there is legislation in Congress for a national Right to Work law. Couple this with legislation in Congress to ban the Davis-Bacon Act on prevailing wage law, and the attacks on union pensions. These things will drive the nail into the heart of unions. This is happening in other countries, like the UK and France, who are electing leaders, such as Marine Le Pen, a far right leader. We, here, in the U.S., cannot just depend on the Bernie Sanders-types. We need new, strong unions wi

Well, the robber barons are back in charge and the unions are at their lowest numbers since the last time the robber barons were in charge. The last time they had control the workers rose up and organized even though their ranks were split. There were the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) and the American Federation of Labor (AFL), some were the coal miners, some were the Teamsters, they all seemed at times to be fighting each other, but in today’s fight there is no room for that type of bickering. We need to have a little of all types of organizations, even the ideology of the International Workers of the World (IWW) also called the Wobblies. We, at this time, just cannot afford to be split for the new government, which is antiunion will throw everything at us. They will have the attorney general, the U.S. Supreme Court, law enforcement, the National Guard and new laws that will be signed into effect to control protests and strikes, which can result in huge fines or jai

Can workers today make more than their parents? At this time it is 50/50, but people born in 1940, the chance of children making more than their parents was at 92 percent—why? One reason for this is economic growth has slowed from 4 to 5 percent in the past decades to just 2 to 3 percent today; and almost all of the benefits of the 2 to 3 percent growth goes to the top with people in the lower income bracket are stuck with stagnant wages. The Americans at the bottom 50 percent are making an average of just $16,000 a year while the top 1 percent makes $1.3 million, and send their children to elite schools so the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. Part of the attack on the 1.7 million poor workers are employed by temporary agencies. Of these 1.7 million workers, 900,000 are on zero hour contracts. This problem is worldwide. Workers in the UK are facing the same problem, some 20 percent of the workers do not know if they will get a full week’s work. The people who are and have be

Is California next on the Koch brothers’ agenda? The Republicans will have 33 governors in office, and in 25 of those states, the Republicans will also control both the governorships and the legislations. The Democrats have six governors and legislations, and the rest of the states are politically divided. Sam Lansing is chief operating officer at the Americans for Prosperity, a conservative super pac bankrolled by the Koch brothers, and he thinks now is the best opportunity to accomplish a lot of the big-ticket items in 10 to 15 states. People in these states will be steamrolled on policies, such as destroying unions, Social Security, Medicare, right to work laws, school vouchers to break the teachers’ union and private prisons, while giving tax breaks wealthy. How long will it be before the GOP and the Koch brothers start in on California and New York, which will now be considered their holy grail for destruction. They decimated the unions in the birthplace of public unions, Wisc

To keep your sanity you must drill out the humor from the absurdity and chaos all around us.