Union Perspectives

We elected a person four years ago that then pissed away four years of our lives, our treasury, our standing in the world, mishandling a pandemic costing almost 150,000 innocent lives and the soldiers who went to serve their country not realizing their commander-in-chief allowed a bounty to be placed upon their heads by Vladimir Putin. These set backs will take a decade or more to fix, the deficit probably longer. The damage done in the last four years has gained us nothing while it has made trump filthy rich by the myriad of ways he has overcharged the U.S. government through his hotels and golf courses. People are losing their homes for lack of rent or mortgage payments. Was it intentional to allow the moratorium on evictions and foreclosures a ruse by the republicans as a form of voter suppression? If you have no home address you can’t vote. Families are going hungry, food banks struggling to meet the need, and republicans are calling these people freeloaders who’d rather take free...

Tired of the inequality, people have taken to the streets. Black Lives Matter, but they need their white allies to stand beside them to win the fight against racism and discrimination. People of color need their white allies to speak up and stand up when they see injustices of any kind. We all need to fight against the system that put us into the streets and kept us down and disadvantaged. None of these inequities should one tolerated anymore. Black people began the fight, the rest of us need to support and continue to fight with them. With all these people in the streets, we are all part of the solution now. To get the people off the streets we have to hit critical mass. Then we need to reform law enforcement, the prison system, the healthcare system for profit; we need to reallocate the money that went toward militarizing the police toward social programs; a universal basic income of $1,500 to $2,000 a month for people 18 years or older; a federal government financial public works p...

The boiling pot of discontent, fear and confusion is slashing over the lid fueled by the election, Black Lives Matter, Standing Rock protests, wage inequality, and a lot of these things are the residue of Occupy Wall Street, which did not solve much, but did start the pot boiling. Most of these concerns are not just felt here in the U.S., but are concerns for the world over. Then there is the wars, which are never ending and propagate the immigrant and refugee onslaught of the world causing more discontent wherever they go. Most of this is the result of greed by the world’s 1 percent, also known as the 1/10th percent, which is destroying the democracies of the world. So, what happens when the pot boils over? Does it extinguish the fire? Or will the world’s oligarchies try to slam a lid on the pot, and if they try the pot will blow up. We already are seeing terrorists’ activities the world over. Just how long will it be until terrorism is here in the U.S. as an everyday event? The s...

Senator Bernie Sanders will be our next president and we need to start planning now for how we will get single-payer healthcare, $15 an hour minimum wage, free college, immigration reform and taking on the banks and Wall Street, Black Lives Matter, prison/justice reform, and reduce the military industrial complex by making the Middle East deal with their problems instead of relying completely on the U.S. These are just some of the things that need to be done. Also, we, union workers-retired or still working, must ensure that Sanders doesn’t forget us and will push for card check, which President Obama promised and then sold us out. In his campaign platform, Sanders also states, aside from the above items, but also passage of the Work Place Democracy Act to strengthen the role of unions, he leads the fight for $15 and a union for fast food workers and federal contract employees, and supports the Employee Free Choice Act or card check, and equal pay for women. With all of this to do,...

In this election, labor needs to get it right on whom to support. Labor supported Bill Clinton, whose chief of staff was Rahm Emanuel. Clinton opened the flood gates for union jobs to be shipped out of the country with the passage of North American Free Trade Agreement or NAFTA, and Emanuel, who is mayor of Chicago, is still union bashing. He would be back if Hillary Clinton is elected. Look at what labor spent on President Obama’s election in hopes of getting the Employee Free Choice Act, which went nowhere. It was shoved aside for healthcare. Clinton’s NAFTA is now about to get Obama’s version in the form of Trans Pacific Partnership or TPP, which is NAFTA on steroids, labor says. Labor needs people elected who will support labor’s fight for $15, free education, sick leave, family leave, single payer healthcare, the right to form a union, climate change, Black Lives Matter, immigration reform, lifestyle and income inequality and payment for Corporate use of our Commons. In order for ...

The GOP anti-union and anti-worker agenda is going to destroy their party, and if it keeps up it will destroy the capitalist system, which may not be so bad. If so, all will not be good for the way the money people are attacking us like a nice dog is in a pen, and people keep poking sticks through the pen at the dog. Eventually, the dog will become very mean and if given a chance, the dog will try to exact revenge. So, let’s us look at what the stick poking has been lately attacking unions, attacks on minimum wage; the jailing of people in prisons for profit; debtors prisons of low-wage people not being able to pay fines or post bond; plea bargaining away poor people’s rights to a good defense; and traffic fines and the loss of driver’s licenses, which the toilers cannot get to their low-wage jobs and be able to earn enough money to pay off their fines. Then there is the Black Lives Matter born out of the treatment by law enforcement, some of these officers are very bad and are gettin...