Union Perspectives

Roosevelt said if the private sector could or would not hire 11 million of America’s workers while corporations sat on millions of dollars, then he would and make the wealthy in this country pay for it by implementing higher taxes on corporations and the 1%. It’s the same as today. Roosevelt made it clear how they, the corporations and rich, would ultimately benefit from workers having money to buy products the companies made. He also pointed out that the workers might otherwise take over. Same as the OWS are thinking about doing today. Also the unions were demanding that something be done about unemployment and the suffering of the working people. Same as today. In 1956, President Eisenhower said, “Only a fool would try to deprive working men and women of joining a union of their choice.” Isn’t it ironic that he was a Republican? There was enough fear of the 99% taking over at the time that the rich and corporations agreed to pay a far more in taxes then they pay now. Roosev...

You know when you’re winning when you get the attention of your opposition and especially when the opposition starts recognizing your organization after first trying to ignore you and then treating you with distain. The message of the 99% is now resonating with increasingly more “Have Nothing,” “Have Little” and “Want Mores.” The win is when the 1% starts to see themselves being boxed into a corner in which there seems no way out other than alienating the 99% of the working people. They are failing to recognize that in the 99%, 70.2% are registered as Independents and 2.4% are registered as Republicans. It is time for the 99% and unions to go for a full-court press for now 99% have the best time for our message to be heard by the lawmakers of our government. They will have to pick a side: the 1% or the 99%. If they do not recognize us, the 99%, there is no doubt the 1% will lose - this by the 1%’s own admission. We must come together and keep up the pressure. We have the 1% on th...

~ Piranhas are prehistoric flesh-eating fish. ~ OWS are still doing the right thing by not giving in to what other people think they should be doing, such as specifying a leader, declaring who they are or what they want, which can then be attacked by the Right. Any little concession by OWS, will be looked upon with disdain. What the OWS 99% care about -- no one party nor one person -- will ever accomplish because no party or group of people will ever be in total agreement 100 percent of the time with what the 99 percent want, need or believe in. This is just a fact of human nature. What is needed to help alleviate the needs and wishes of the 99% is for all members of our law makers to take bites of what they believe in. If they could develop a piranha-type attack on the things which are detrimental to the 99% we can win. I’m not advocating that Democrats or OWS engage in behavior typical of Republicans, which is to eat their own, but to be more assertive or aggressive in some situa...

The oligarchies, 1%, with ALEC (American Legislative Exchange Council) buys governments and with ALEC’s help buys new laws to have the advantage over the wage slaves, 99%. With the new anti-union slave wage laws, they can take away the bargaining rights of workers to even have a union rep. With a plutocracy form of government that oligarchy have put in place so that only they can benefit as they cut funding for education for the 99% wage slaves, which keeps the wage slaves at the bottom of the economic ladder. Also, a dumb worker won’t cause much trouble. The wage slaves will probably have to work until they die for the oligarchies. The slave wages provided by employers will not allow the wage slaves to have a pension, and the wage slaves do not make enough money to save for retirement and if they do save, the oligarchies will find a way to take it away (Wall Street) so the wage slaves will have to work until they die. The oligarchies, corporations, and GOP have figured out that ...

There can be no doubt that we, the 99%, are in a class war and the oligarchies are draining the treasury of the 99% and the unions, which a classic way to win a war (Art of War). When we, the 99%, have to defend our labor rights, voting rights with a court system that is slanted toward the corporations - Citizens United - (which only supports the 1%) then the oligarchies can, with unlimited money, buy lawmakers, governors, judges and presidents of the United States, which creates a plutocracy-type government. We are very close to a plutocracy government and getting closer with each election. The Koch brothers and Karl Rove’s GPS Crossroads are dedicated to this end. One of the things that can turn this around is the 99%, OWS movement, with the help from labor. Right now labor is working at a disadvantage because of some labor contracts that labor has entered into, such as no strikes, but they might just Wobble like in the old days of IWW movement or when a state or other entity votes...

The 99ers have mostly got it right. They stand for about everyone, the 99%, and put anonymity to good use. On the other hand, Labor Unions have fallen into the trap of dividing themselves against each other. There is a horrible example of an army divided against itself in 1904 at the Chicago Meat Packing houses and a perfect example of Art of War’s Divide and Conquer. They split into 56 different unions and still more in 14 different national trade unions of the American Federation of Labor. This is still going on today with state, county and city unions, instead of one union there are hundreds. This has got to change for the employer can and do pit the one little union against the other to the point if one union goes out on strike, the other union will keep working so no one but the employer wins. This is not the way the 99% envisions winning. A change in the wage disparity between corporate CEOs and the workers, the 99%. The wages of some of the CEOs are unprecedented and to chan...

Is it time we retired union workers with our nice pensions start paying back? Our union workers of old fought and died for our rights today so today’s retirees could live in comfort. Most of our retirees today did not have to spill blood to protect their jobs; hell, most of us only had to show up for work and pay our dues. Now our unions have just about vanished and on our watch. We might think hard about parking our golf carts, motor homes, and our boats and think about how we can pay our unions back and help rebuild the working class - the 99%. We need to support the OWS, who are there for the 99% by being on the streets, sacrificing at all costs and creature comforts for a better America. When things finally turn around and the unions go to the workers and ask them to join the unions, the workers will ask, ‘Where in the hell were the unions when we, OWS - the 99% - were in the streets?’ They have a right to ask that question. OWS - the 99% - are fighting for our members, our chi...

Remember all of the 9/11 grants that were available to protect us from the terrorists? Billions of dollars that were granted to government agencies, such as fire departments, and city and count law enforcement. We, the workers, paid for all that equipment to fight terrorism -- or so we thought. It now seems that a lot of that money was and has been used against us, the 99% who paid for it. I don’t think we, the 99%, understood that it would be used against us and that this has been planned for a long time. It stands to reason that the GOP knew that their control over this country would come to an end and that that 99% would awaken to what the GOP had done to this country by their insatiable greed and to the destruction of the American Dream. The GOP and well-equipped law enforcement were ready for us except for one thing -- they can’t find the leaders of the 99%. So, instead, they spew barrels of pepper spray on the protesters and for that they will lose. This is the Patriot Act ...

Finding biographical material about IWW (Industrial Workers of the World) writers is a difficult task for most Wobblies, the movement was more important than recording the lives of individual members. There was a cult of anonymity extended to the manner in which many Wobblies signed their own names, such as JBH, The Rambler, Card No. 34528, Denver Dan, Red, or Just Wob. Does this look familiar? Today’s young ‘Internet’ people are using made up names to maintain their anonymity, and this maybe one reason why OWS is still going strong. Its detractors have no one person they can vilify and use as an escape goat. With this in mind, how long will it be before states deploy laws against the Occupiers, as they did during the Wobblies’ heyday? Wobblies were prosecuted under the Syndicalism Laws. Syndicalism, in this case, refers to the practice of organizing workers into unions to protect their rights and interests as workers. Today, we call Syndicalism Laws the Patriot Act. Under the S...

Missed Opportunity Labor has missed many chances to enhance the labor movement over the last 66 years. One was when the AFL and the CIO merged - this was a great opportunity to start a nationwide organization drive. Our membership was high and labor had money to do the work but the AFL-CIO President George Meany, instead, chose to sit on his hands. This was a lost opportunity to educate and welcome the young diversified work force. Another missed opportunity was the Vietnam antiwar protesters. Half of the labor organization was against the war and half supported it. We fought against each other and labor should have supported our youth and the student movement. Remember Kent State, Jackson State and Chicago? Once again, we lost a chance to support our then 99%ers. Now we have another chance to support our young and our military personnel returning home from the wars: Iraq and Afghanistan. Our present 99%ers are protesting for what labor has been advocating forever: a better life ...

The Declaration of Independence says that government is not sacred, that it is set up to give people an equal right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, and that if it fails to do this, we have a right to “alter or abolish it.” It wasn’t long before the Declaration of Independence became an embarrassment to the Founders. Soon after the signing soldiers under George Washington spoke out about how the rich were profiting from the war. Then to exasperate things further, the Continental Congress, in 1781, voted to give half pay for life to the officers of the Revolution, and nothing to the enlisted men (the original 99%ers). There was a protest and Washington ordered two young soldiers shot as an example to the other protesters. Barely five years old, the Declaration’s statement that all men are created equal was already being ignored and poor people, who thought they were fighting for themselves and their new country, found out that the war was not fought to benefit them, b...

With our labor force mostly out of work in the construction industry, we should not let our members unity just melt away for if we stay together we are still a force to be reckoned with. Construction will eventually rebound so we must be trained and educated when the times come. The things we can do to with our out-of-work members is to have them help out Wall Street protesters. If nothing else they can just stay stand with them for we must stay in touch with what is going on in the world of workers as we all are 99%ers. We should also be planning our strategy, such as organizing new members, because one new large group is going to be our returning veterans, who are coming home with no prospects of employment. We, the unions, should be the people who will meet and support them. Our veterans are going to need us, as a whole, to be there for them for the sacrifices they have made and endured. The least we can do is give them genuine support and not a magnet yellow ribbon. We, the uni...