Union Perspectives

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...

It is past time to shut off the money tap to the Democratic National Committee and also bring in our foot soldiers for the people we are helping to elect are giving us nothing in return. In fact, they are supporting the antiunion people by just doing nothing while our rights are expiring. You hear nothing about the loss of our National Labor Relations Board. The Democrats are now calling themselves “Centrists” (Blue Dogs) and as they chase the GOP, the GOP moves further to the extreme right then our Democrats move more toward the center right. Now is the time to draw a new line and it needs to be brought back to the early ‘90s at least and restore all the rights that we wage slaves have lost since then. We cannot keep throwing our money and manpower into the blackhole that we are digging. We must stop digging and start over with new or old tactics that have worked or will work. Our membership is falling fast and with that money in which to support us and fight. This money must be spen...

The gap between the 1% oligarchies and the wage slaves gets wider by the day. The Stock Market just hit 1,500. It has never been this high and the corporations are making record profits than ever and yet the workers are paying for this as the wage gap just keeps widening so what are we to do? The elected politicians won’t help. They are in the pockets of the money people, but some of the world leaders are starting to get nervous about the level of anxiety of the poor 99%. There is no jobs and what there is pays very little and no health or pensions. When people have no hope, the masses can be very dangerous. All that is missing is a leader or leaders, such as Abraham Lincoln, Martin Luther King Jr., Walter Reuther, John F. and Bobby Kennedy, Malcolm X or Gandhi. When the leaders do appear we had better hope they are good ones and if they are we had better protect them from being killed like our old friends “Abraham, Martin and John.” Now will the new leader or leaders be something l...

Minimum Wage for temp agencies should be $19-$20 per hour. The minimum wage should be at least $ 15 per hour and if the companies keep workers’ jobs at part time to get around paying benefits then the minimum wage for those jobs should be $19-$20 per hour. Maybe the companies would see that hiring workers part time is not paying off for them. More wage slaves would get more full-time jobs with benefits. This would be very good for our consumer-driven economy. For the wage slaves make the more they spend, which then the workers have to make more products to for wage slaves to buy, which means there will be more taxes paid and less government assistance needed. An NLRB judge once said in rendering a decision, “Wages can be increased without increases in prices. Increased production must be supported by increased consumption, which is possible through increased wages.” He also said, “Unions should not be tricked into a position where it would appear that the wage increases are in direct ...

We know why and when the National Guard was started. It was to break labor unrest. The corporations forced the states to fund the Guard to foil labor strikes, but do you know why police departments were started? Well, once again it was to control the wage slaves and protect the people with the money, the corporations. When labor becomes unhappy with their status in life, unhappy with low wages, unhappy with job security and safety, unhappy with the lack of pensions, lack of healthcare and unhappy with job discrimination, they find ways to come together to fix the discrepancies. But, there are people who are always there unseen, the puppet masters who are the old foes of labor. It’s always been that way since the 17th and 18th centuries. In those days it was called the enforcement of vagabondage laws against working people. This was the predecessor of modern prisons or workhouses where convicts were put to labor. The first prisons in the U.S. began in the 1800. They were modeled after ...

I find that it is not quite as painful if I understand how and why the 1% do and how they do it to us 99%, such as how do the 1% control the 99% of the wage slaves in a country that is a democracy. The people elect their leaders, which then always supports the wishes of the 1%. This goes back to the founding of this country. Well, the 1% has had control since the beginning of our country. Our Constitution was originally written for the 1%, the rich white men, and little rights were given to the 99%. Rights that included the 99% were written only after the 99% fought back and got the Bill of Rights. Then the 1% started to devise ways to weaken the 99%, which was a two party system and for the GOP money people, and one for the leftovers, the Democrats. But when the leftovers were getting too strong the 1% figured out how to split the leftovers into smaller groups by divisive issues, such as race, gender, religion, abortion, sexual orientation and so on. Always something new like gu...

The labor movement had two important wins, which were largely responsible for the creation of the Middle Class. They were the organizations of the Ford Motor Company and the United Auto Workers union and the government unions: state, federal, county and city. These wins mean that the workers now had good wages, healthcare and a pension when they retired. Now what happened? Did the state workers forget who was their enemy and then elected people who voted against them? The GOP and the federal workers, Post Office mostly, did the same thing—elected the wrong people. Whose fault is this; well mostly the workers and also their leaders for not educating their members. Now we workers have another chance at rebuilding our Middle Class by organizing Walmart, which is the new equivalent of the old Ford Company, and the fast food workers. The advantage the wage slaves have are the corporations can make the product out of the company, but the corporations must sell the product here and this ...

We need today a Congress like the one we had in 1935, which was a worker-type of Congress that guaranteed the rights of workers to form unions. Their rational for setting forth the National Labor Relations Board Act was that inequality of bargaining power between employees who do not possess full freedom of association … and employers. The money people who are organized in corporate or other forms of ownership association tends to aggravate recurrent business depressions by depressing wage rates and the purchasing power of wage earners in industry and this is the same today. The workers have shown productivity gains for the last 30-40 years and yet the wages have dropped and the money gains have gone to the 1%. Today what workers’ rights we still have are now in extreme jeopardy by restricting most of what the 1935 Congress set forth: (1) by restricting the rights of workers to learn about unions; (2) the right of workers to organize and choose union representation; (3) the right of...

The corporate oligarchies’ plan is to turn the American worker into an uneducated, underclass, subsistent wage slaves, which will put the American Dream out of reach. Even at this time the Dream is a lie still being told to our young people today. The money hogs’ worship of profits has brought a plague upon our country, the environment, and our cities. While the oligarchies are doing this to us, the Wall Street speculators loot and pillage to the point we now know their plan and whether they know it or not it is a self-destructive plan. We will have to help them self-destruct for the oligarchies are working out of the old play book where they want to feed us 24-hour television and run up our credit card debt, work to pay off our loans and be grateful for the scrapes the corporations GOP toss us. That is their old short-term strategy, but we, the 99%, and unions have a grand strategy that is nonviolent shift in power by attacking the columns that hold up the power structure. Those colu...

Wage slaves want and need their share of the obscene profits that they have made for the 1%. The 1% may be the ones with the bank accounts, but the 1% would not have their wealth if not for the wage slaves who made the products that were sold to fill the 1%s’ coffers. We wage slaves are the ones who buy most of the goods being made or grown as food with this said we need to remind ourselves that wages have slipped or remained flat for four decades. One of the reasons unions have been slipping is because of a large fragmentation in the character of American liberalism. Labor must make progress with our wage-slave community and not at the expense of our non-union wage slaves. When union workers get a large wage increase we are blamed for inflation and high prices, which is in itself wrong for the more money made the more we spend and the more products must be made so more jobs and overtime, but we union must be able to explain and define this or we will become but an island of well-bein...

When does the labor start looking at building the party of labor to represent all wage slaves who want to join? We start with the assets we have on hand our dues paying members then when we have the members and money we started electing people who will defend labor wage slaves and see if the Democrats want to join us if so then we would build a 50/50 partnership with one side having 51 percent one year or two and then the other side having the 51 percent for an equal amount of time if they want. If we win this November we need for the Democrats to show us what they can and are willing to do to educate and grow our labor movement. If they, the Democratic Party, do not back the wage slaves and 99 percent, then we need to promote our unions and tell the wage slaves what we have done and what we can and will do for our fellow working families. If we have to start a new party so be it, but if the Democratic Party wants to partner with us then good. But, either way labor has to start rebuil...

Why are the unions finding themselves alone in the fight for survival, and hated by both the oligarchies and the lower class? The reason is that the unions are the only organization standing in the way of total domination of the wage slaves by the 1%. Once unions are completely eliminated, the 1% will own the courts and government for years to come. The low wage workers were left behind in the earning power and resent those of us who have benefitted from union representation. Where is the help for the unions? For sure not the 1%, so what is left? The nonunion workers, who are not usually friendly toward union workers, perceive union workers as part of the 1% because, in their eyes, we union workers receive good wages, pensions, healthcare and paid vacations. We unions must fight for them, the low wage, nonunion slaves, and help float the ship up for all proletarian workers. They, the nonunion low-wage slaves, are the only resource left for the unions. Auto union president Walter Reu...

If they can bring together all of the 99%, which includes among others the OWS, the employed, the unemployed and the unions – all the types of unions, both private and public, then the battle can be won. One of the problems that could derail this effort is that unions have a large number of republican-voting members in their ranks who apparently don’t understand who the wage slaves are. A union person once told me that a union member who votes for a republican is like a chicken voting for Colonel Sanders. The unions need to teach their republican members that when they vote republican they are voting to break their unions, lose their pensions, healthcare and good wages, which feeds and takes care of their families. If they vote against their union, which is a slap to their brothers and sisters, they should be banished from the union. They are just Trojan Horses in their unions. The rejuvenated unions should join the 99% in protesting anything that adversely affects workers, and we ...