Union Perspectives

Wonder why the GOP is so afraid of the words, “Class Warfare”? Could it be because the class in “working class” out number the rich class and this explains why the rich has always done its best to split the working class into two groups, one being those who vote against their own best interests and those who see through the efforts. This practice started in the 1600s when the rich used First Nations and African hostages against the white settlers to build this country. As new people came from around the world immigrated to this country, such as people from Poland, Ireland, Italy, Asia, and so on, the rich tried to get them to fight amongst each other. The smart workers, like the International Workers of the World (IWW), saw through this ploy and how well it was working for the rich. The answer to this practice was a single word, “Solidarity,” which became the battle cry of the IWW and other unions. Soon, the very rich started to devise plans to split the unions and get them fighting...

Why do the wage slaves of the world continue to stand still for the way corporations like WalMart treat their workers? When they pay “starvation wages,” work their employees part time to keep from paying benefits and now cutting part-time workers’ health coverage. This latest move affects 30,000 employees or about 5 percent of their workers. This follows on the decisions by Target, Home Depot and others to completely eliminate health benefits for part-time workers, which also pay “starvation wages.” These corporations could not stay in business without the work of the Have Nots, Have Littles and Have Nothing. As long as we shop at these businesses they have no reason to change their business practices of screwing over the lowly workers. Instead, they’re letting the public, the Have Littles and the Not Have Much foot the bill for the low-wage workers to receive food stamps and other government assistance that the workers wouldn’t need if they were paid a living wage. When we subsidize ...

Fifty-five years ago President Johnson declared his war on poverty. At this time there are 47 million Americans living beneath the poverty level. Does that number sound familiar, think Mitt Romney and his infamous talk with some of the 1 percent during his failed campaign for president. Billionaire Warren Buffet said there is a class warfare all right, but it’s my class that is winning. He is calling for higher taxes on the rich and the money to be spent on our crumbling infrastructure, free education, and higher wages. The tax on the rich under Johnson was 91 percent. It is now 39.6 percent for those who pay, but most of the rich pay nothing, in fact. There are many corporations that the poor end up paying for their subsidies and who do you think makes up the difference in these tax rate that is less than half of what it used to be? We also voted in GOP people who retooled our war on poverty to a cynical war on crime and privatized a lot of our prisons. The term criminal came to mean...