Union Perspectives

The plight of workers the world over is getting worse each passing day with the corporations and governments fighting against unions and worker rights. The jobs have gone to countries where the workers can be easily exploited or to U.S. southern non-union or Right to Work states, where if there are unions the employees have the options to pay dues or not, which further kills off unions. To add injury to this bleakness, the Iowa legislation passed a bill, signed by its governor, Terry Branstad, to reverse the minimum wage law, which in effect will steal the raises of the lowest paid workers. The minimum wage will revert from $10.10 and $8.25 back to $7.25. The republicans say it’s just teenagers or entry level people working for minimum wage. They lie, 84 percent of the workers are 20 years of age or older; 31 percent are parents; and at least a third are 40 years or older. Then there is automation. Robots and driverless cars and trucks, which will conceivably put up to 3.5 million ...

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...