Union Perspectives

Labor should cut spending on politicians and put the money every last dime into organizing the ninety percent who have no union. This is the only way we, the unions, will ever be relevant again. And then, the politicians will come calling on us again. If we do support a politician, we can demand more tools for the ninety percent to get a union. Can anyone list how the union money contributed to politicians has actually helped unions as a whole? At this time, the AFL-CIO’s budget for new organizing is but a sliver of its budget in comparison for political contributions. This will not get us new members or more union jobs. The politicians will not do our work for us. We need to realize that we have to help ourselves. To have ninety percent of non union people pool to work for is a good thing to take advantage of. There will not be a better time than in the next two years. We have to force the Democrats to fund and rebuild the National Labor Relations Board, that has been starved of resou...

Now is time for all unions, AFL-CIO, to step up and put their differences aside just like former president of the United Automobile Workers (UAW) and the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) Walter Reuther dreamed of. It’s time for unions to do something bold, like Medicare for all and free education. Unions were the leaders in all these areas, consider child labor laws, free speech laws, pensions, and unemployment benefits when people were out of work; and the Social Security we have today. All of these things will go away if we do not come together and fight. At this time, it is workers’ unions against the corporations and the very, very rich, who would like to break our unions and even take away the minimum wage. We even know what their play book is on how the GOP is going to do this. The tax breaks Trump gave the rich has put us into debt is step one, step two is Trump and the GOP spends as much money as they can on the military complex, making many of the rich even richer...

The question is do we want war and low wages and no pension, no healthcare and high debt or do we want safe and well-built infrastructure and less inequality? The workers are now fighting over things that take the attention off of what the workers really need and the GOP cult is very good at distraction and they own or have control of most of the media. They control most of the think tanks whose jobs are to crank out anti-union, anti-worker propaganda daily, which are talking and print points. There is only the unions who can counter this, but we have been splintered by the anti-union propaganda. Our unions, the AFL, which are mainly building trades, and the CIO, which are mainly some types of government unions, need to put their petty differences aside and work together. All unions need to organize all the workers from blue collar to white. To show the power all workers have they need to just not show up for one day and then start making demands for better worker rights. This show ...

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...

To save capitalism as we know it today we must not get to the point where the world has an unconsumed surplus of products. What has kept this from happening so far is that we and others have been unloading the surplus on other countries, and to this we help develop the resources by shipping our jobs to these countries. We then extend this process to all countries on the planet until every country is producing every year and every day and an unconsumed surplus builds up, which corporations cannot dispose of in other countries. The reason for this is that corporations have raped and pillaged every country on earth of its cheap labor. Now you may ask, how do you dispose of the surpluses to keep the capitalist consumer system working? We’re already seeing signs that in the profits of some of the big box stores the profits are going down. One reason is that the ‘have nothings’ or ’have very little,’ the proletarians, have no purchasing power because of very low wages. Here in the USA, the s...

We have to know where we have been in order to know where we want to go, and how to get there. So, why do we still have to explain to our union members who they should support in elections? I think we need to adhere to what an old union leader once said: “We now have them organized so now we need to unionize them.” This is where we union leaders have failed our wage slaves and I think it should start from the top and the bottom in order to do it fast and then hopefully we’ll meet in the middle with knowledgeable union people. We should all be studying the Art of War by Sun Tzu and the Prince by Machiavelli. These books will get you solitary confinement in some prisons; but they are required reading in large corporations and all military schools. There must be a benefit in learning strategy of war and business. This is exactly what we wage slaves are involved in. In fact, it will be do or die in the next few years. We must organize and rebuild our labor influence and power. Our labor fo...

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 ...

What the Hell Happened? We need the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA) and we were very close in 2009. President Obama and Vice President Biden co-authored the bill and it had passed the Congress. Organized labor invested $450 million in the Obama campaign, and the Democrats had or were very close to a 60 filibuster-proof vote in support of the Act. The AFL-CIO had a war chest of $14 million dedicated to the passage of the Act. What’s more, the Democrats and organized labor, and the media did an excellent job of keeping it very quiet, and most businesses were unaware of the campaign. This was to be passed in 2009 so what the hell happened? 
 We know that a union busting organization by the name of “People Works International” was on this like a dog on a bone. Check these people out: http://www.peopleworkslabor.com?EFCA.html They are a piece of work. We need to get to know them to know our enemy (Art of War). We have a chance to beat them. What did the AFL-CIO get for its money...

If we depend on courts and lawyers we will lose the battle on union rights. Wisconsin Supreme Court recently handed Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker a sledgehammer to further destroy union rights. I was told a long time ago by a union organizer that when we left the streets and picket lines and turned over our fight to the lawyers and court system is when we started to losing the battle against the GOP. Long strikes won’t work nowadays for most working families because they do not have the resources to withstand a long battle and the unions don’t have the resources to back our people. What will work is timing our moves like hit and run, old gorilla tactics. One or two days at a time pick targets where we can get the most support, most media and be able to drive our point home on what we want. Timing, planning, good communication and being well-organized is done through people all supporting each other. Even if it does not at the time affect you, but if we work together, we will bui...