Skip to main content

It's Do or Die Time

The sheet metal unions are losing the war against nonunion sheet metal shops: Local 36 lost five shops; Local 170 lost two; and Local 18 lost three. We should be adding union shops and members not losing them. Are sheet metal unions giving up on organizing union shops and acquiring new members? I live in northern California, specifically Shasta County, north of Marysville, in the jurisdiction of Local 104. There are now no union shops north of Marysville. The nonunion shops number about fifty to sixty shops and that is a lot of union work lost. We, in Shasta-Trinity counties, just passed a $138 million school and union college prevailing wage jobs and no union workers received any of the $138 million in jobs. I have never seen any union reps on the jobs, checking prevailing wages or talking to the nonunion workers about unionizing. It appears like sheet metal unions have just given up the entire northern section of California, where the nonunion shops will just get stronger and keep edging toward the big cities, and start taking work from unions in the Sacramento, San Francisco and Los Angeles areas. We will always lose in a defense battle so we must go on the offense in order to win. We are now dying little by little, day by day, and then we have unions raiding each other, which weakens unions as a whole for a short-term gain. This must stop. We cannot simultaneously go to war with the nonunion and ourselves and expect to win or even just stay alive. The future of our unions are in our hands and it is do or die. It’s open season the unions and we’re letting it happen. This is happening as the young people are fighting to unionize shops in the retail, fast food, ride-share, coffee shops and everything in-between. These young workers understand that in order improve overall working conditions, they have to work together and organize. The kids are making us look bad.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

May Day 2028 or Sooner

Unions’ long game is to get all union contracts to expire on the same day nationwide. The United Auto Workers combines contracts ends on April 28, 2028. This could then result in a mass national strike starting on May Day beeginning that year. This could then put enormous pressure on employers, but also on lawmakers. It’s the muscle and sweat of the workers that keeps this country great, not the individual company or corporations. This May Day strike would be the time to change the workers’ world for the better by negotiating for a 32-hour week with the same pay, and the U.S. adopts a healthcare for all with no out of pocket costs. This would also help the employers as they would no longer have to provide healthcare. By striking, the UAW won same pay for new workers, all UAW contracts will end on the same date, a 25-percent pay increase, a cost of living adjustments, a guaranteed right to strike over potential plant closures, and also the right to vote to unionize through the card che
Post a Comment
Read more

Standing At The Precipice

Unions do not do well in a dictatorship because unions are the first thing dictators destroy, and rest assured the workers won’t be allowed to hit the streets in protest. If Trump is elected he will invoke the Insurrection Act and send troops into the cities to crush them and send a message that he will terminate and dissent. They will eliminate unions and unionized workers. We are standing at the precipice and it's up to us to fight the fall into a dictatorship. By voting for the GOP, maga people and anyone else will be able to keep their guns until Trump says, “No.” By then, he will have already amassed an Army of foot soldiers in place to take over the government jobs. They will be Trump’s people and they will do whatever he tells them to do. The only way this can be stopped is for all unions and their members to put aside their political and social differences and stand strong for democracy, unions, workers rights and workers safety. This is not a drill. It will happen just loo
Post a Comment
Read more

“Workampers” are the New IWW Wobblies

We now have another organization that will enhance the wage pollution for the wage slaves. Walmart started the wage pollution and then temporary agencies, which offer no healthcare or pensions, just temporary low wages. Now we have the online U.S. retail business, which did $197 billion in 2011. The workforce that does the work in these hundreds of warehouses are called “workampers.” Amalgamated advertises positions on websites that workampers frequent. This is just a modern version of what the old Wobblies had to do in the 1920s and ‘30s; only then, instead, of traveling from place to place living in trailers and motorhomes they rode railroad freight cars and camped in hobo camps called the Jungle, which we still have. The reason that the warehouse owners like workampers is they are temporary and will not stay year round that way by not staying in one place the workers do not have time to make friends, which could start unions. This is an old way to keep unions out for if people w
Post a Comment
Read more