Union Perspectives

Workers here in the U.S. and around the world have had enough of low pay, bad working conditions, bad healthcare and not enough working hours or too many with no overtime pay. Employers forcing employees to work faster create a safety issue, like what occurs at the Amazon warehouses, which employees report accidents, such as getting shocked by touching metal railings, and even deaths occurring. In Chile, there are 1,700 workers are on strike at Walmart due to low wages and job safety issues from forced to work faster and job cuts. This strike has closed 130 stores. In California, the grocery outlets of Albertsons, Ralphs, Vons and Pavilions, workers are rallying for higher wages and more hours. The local union is United Food and Commercial Workers, one worker said when they asked for more hours, their hours were reduced. “We are not even making minimum wage,” the person said. The London Train Cleaners joined a 48-hour work stoppage over the accelerated shift schedules and pay cuts.

We now live in a wannabe principality, but it is really an autocracy run by an oligarchies under the guise of what we think is a democracy. It is all about the money and how it buys power through government, which can make laws or can get rid of laws and so they can gain more money and power. For people who still will need to work and are lucky to have a union, they need to understand that the GOP government is hellbent to destroy the unions for they still have some power in membership and money. At this time the government wants to get new laws that prohibit unions and street protests. If the GOP can neuter the unions, they will control the people. There will only be gig jobs with no living wage, no benefits, such as healthcare, or pensions. The workers will be a wage slave working and living hand to mouth and just one job away from the street or one sickness away from bankruptcy. Even people with pensions and healthcare are seeing their pensions stay the same amount while the cost

Good news, people, Fox “news” is reporting our country is so great you can work until you drop dead. Isn’t that wonderful? It didn’t report what kind of job you’ll be slaving away at, but you won’t be able to retire so don’t quit your job. Fox did not address stagnate wages, escalating housing and basic needs costs, full-time jobs being replaced by gig jobs and inequality created by the pay gap between CEOs and the workers. In the 1950s and until 1965, this gap was 20 to 1. In the 1970s through 2014, the gap began to widen and then in a steroid induced greed, CEO compensation increased 997 percent compared to the 10.9 percent growth in a typical worker’s compensation. Today, the disparity stands at 354 to 1. This doesn’t factor in the disparity between minimum and median wage workers, which is higher in the U.S. than any other industrialized country. On average, a typical median wage worker earns $905 a week versus a minimum wage worker earning $209. There are numerous posts on this

Sitting at me desk, trying to think if something to write is very hard with all the purpose-driven chaos caused by our government and the lack of appropriate media coverage of the damage being done by this corrupt government. It’s hard to stay positive, but I keep reminding myself, “This too shall pass.” I am looking at my books by authors like Jack London (The Iron Heel), Eugene V. Debs (The Bending Cross), Peter Barnes (Liberty and Dividends for All), Thomas Paine (Common Sense Rights of Man), Samuel B. Griffith (edition of Suntzu’s The Art of War), Niccolo Machiavelli (The Prince) and wonder how many people have read these great works, and had our educational system taught the truths within the covers of these books would our country be in the mess we are in now? We have a belligerent, insecure, devious, unintelligent, deadbeat conman in the White House bankrupting our country and throwing parades for himself like despots of other regimes, while our feckless executive branch of