Union Perspectives

Good news, people, Fox “news” is reporting our country is so great you can work until you drop dead. Isn’t that wonderful? It didn’t report what kind of job you’ll be slaving away at, but you won’t be able to retire so don’t quit your job. Fox did not address stagnate wages, escalating housing and basic needs costs, full-time jobs being replaced by gig jobs and inequality created by the pay gap between CEOs and the workers. In the 1950s and until 1965, this gap was 20 to 1. In the 1970s through 2014, the gap began to widen and then in a steroid induced greed, CEO compensation increased 997 percent compared to the 10.9 percent growth in a typical worker’s compensation. Today, the disparity stands at 354 to 1. This doesn’t factor in the disparity between minimum and median wage workers, which is higher in the U.S. than any other industrialized country. On average, a typical median wage worker earns $905 a week versus a minimum wage worker earning $209. There are numerous posts on this ...

The biggest fear the GOP and Trump have are Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, financial and climate regulations, and social changes opening the door to people of color. Sanders and Warren will push an anti-corruption and anti-inequality programs and Medicare for All with a $15 an hour minimum wage. They should also be looking at a UBI (universal basic income). Rising the minimum wage to $15 an hour will not stop the inequality, but I UBI would help. The GOP will counter by accusing Sanders and Warren of being scary Democratic Socialists, which Sanders and Warren should wear the title as a badge of honor and point out the obvious—all the socialist-type programs the U.S, already has in place, such as Social Security (which we pay into), Medicare, Medicaid/MediCal, law enforcement, fire and rescue services, and schools. The GOP and its followers will deliberately conflate socialism with communism, which is a misnomer. Communism and socialism may have some similarities, sharing of the cou...

Labor needs to keep the revolution going if it wants to save the labor movement for they go hand in hand. Labor and its members are the only force that can defeat the 1 percent -1.1 percent and corporations. It looks like Hillary and by default Bill Clinton could possibly win the nomination and possibly the election, and there will not be much difference between the two, Bill and Hillary, because neither care about unions. They both are war hawks and both are corporatists, supporters of big banks and Wall Street people over us commoners. No one can count on what they say because it usually isn’t what they usually end up doing. Bernie has pulled Hillary to the left on subjects of Social Security, a minimum wage of $15 an hour, and anti-trade deals, but as soon as she is elected all these stances will revert back to her original, true beliefs. Who in the hell knows what Trump will actually do? Our only hope is staying with Bernie and if he doesn’t win, he can still be a leader in the re...

The Democratic Party and the Clintons are worried about Elizabeth Warren and her supporters and the threat she poses toward Wall Street and big banks. Bill and Hillary know that Warren could pose a threat to their chance for a second term if elected in 2016. Warren could take over where Bernie Sanders left off if Sanders does not win the presidency. So Clinton and the Wall Street Democratic Party have to come with a plan to rid themselves of Warren by putting her in the Supreme Court, which is supposed to be a lifetime commitment and would remove her from politics. I would hope that Warren sees this for what it is, and does run in 2020 if Sanders doesn’t win in 2016. The 47 percent need to keep the Revolution alive. We know if Bill Clinton gets a third term through Hillary they will screw it up for the 99 percent and renege on all the promises she has adopted by moving toward Sanders’ policies. The 47 percent need Warren ready to pick up the reins just in case the election is stolen a...

The workers of the U.S. and the world have been conditioned by the 1 percent, corporations and Stock Exchange for the past 30 years. It is not that hard to understand. First, the 1 percent took control of the media, newspapers, and television and radio stations. They give grants to educational institutions, which, in turn, they want their people put on the educational boards. Then the 1 percent supports or buys states’ governors who will support the 1 percent’s right wing ideology? Now with these things in place, the 1 percent uses propaganda programs to get the 99 percent to vote against their own interests and blame others for all that goes wrong. By the way, propaganda was invented here in the U.S. in 1913-’14. Then it was copied by the Nazis and refined around 1934, when Hitler and his terrorists blamed the Jews, gypsies, gays, communists, socialists, trade unionists, and Catholics, which brings us to today. We are supposed to be the poster child for democracy and honest election...

In 1932, Franklin D. Roosevelt won the presidency during the Great Depression. People were looking for bold leadership and that’s what’s happening now. Roosevelt’s New Deal was a package of reforms to rescue capitalism from collapse and thwart rising labor militancy from growing into independent working class political action. The Have Nots now have a long needed leader in Bernie Sanders, who has devoted his entire life for the betterment of the working class so it perplexes me as to why union members would support Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton. Though we can’t blame Clinton for her husband’s policies, such as NAFTA, mainly because she has enough baggage of her own. Unlike her opponent Sanders, Clinton supported the Iraq invasion, Wall Street bailout, authorizing the Patriot Act twice in 2001 and 2006, supports TPP, which is considered worse than NAFTA, offshore drilling that is killing our oceans, and Foreign U.S. Military intervention that is bankrupting our economy. Her top donor...

Our country is on the brink, balancing on the precipice of feast or famine. If we don’t fix things as they are, we will fall completelyinot an oligarchy. We need to understand what needs fixing in order to know about the wrongs and what they are. Also how we, the U.S., stacks up against the rest of the world. Do you know that 50 percent of all 25 years olds still live with their parents, and a total 47 million of our citizens and one out of five children live in poverty, which places us 36th among the 41 wealthiest nations? If you have no debt and $10 in your pocket, you are better off than 25 percent of your fellow citizens. The average family’s credit card debt is $16,000. Sixty-two percent of our citizens live from paycheck to paycheck, which 21 percent have no savings. Forty-three percent of households spend more than they earn. Median wealth of middle class households dropped 28 percent from 2000 to 2014. Today, 51 percent of workers make less than $30,000 a year. The U.S. now ran...

What has the Democratic party and the last two Democratic presidents done for labor? Bill Clinton promised labor law reform, but when elected he wasn’t at all interested. However, he did give labor North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and the union presidents were furious, but with some schmoozing and attending White House galas they soon forgot unions were thrown under the bus and all the money they donated. Then along came Barak Obama, who promised the Employee Free Choice Act, also called card check, and it never happened. Both he and Clinton had control of Congress at the beginnings of their administrations, but now it looks like Obama will give us the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP), instead. This trade agreement is even worse than NAFTA. NAFTA and TPP are perfect examples of why labor needs to hold their endorsements until there is a solid commitment from the presidential candidate. Hillary Clinton is an extension of Bill, a corporatist and beholden to Wall Street and big...

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 very rich oligarchies buy countries, states and local governments and then pass their anti-tax policies, which over time leaves the government with not enough tax revenue to pay bills or maintain infrastructure and they then often opt for pension holidays to make ends meet, skipping payments to the pension funds. Over time this has created large unfunded pension liabilities in effected countries, like Greece and cities like Detroit, and maybe Chicago is next to borrow money from pensioners to make up for revenue shortfalls after giving corporations and the wealthy tax breaks. Now austerity hawks are using these unfunded liabilities to argue slashing pensions even though it was their own anti-tax policies that caused the problem. While it is sound public policy to use debt to fund long-term capital projects, it is deeply problematic when governments are forced to borrow money to deal with revenue shortfalls. It is even more problematic when they are doing so as a result of a concert...

April 15 is the big one! This rally will be worldwide for the fight for $15 an hour minimum wage. This fight is for not only fast food workers, but for all low-wage workers, such as adjunct professors at colleges, who are now part-time and non-tenured with no pensions, home healthcare workers, airport workers, childcare workers, Walmart-Target-Kmart-Home Depot, workers, car wash workers, auto lube workers and the list goes on. Corporations have decimated the pay of workers by demeaning the jobs as only unskilled or uneducated or student work jobs as if that had anything to do with the work being done. There will be actions on 170 college campuses, as well as cities around the U.S. and abroad. There will be around 2,000 groups, including Jobs with Justice and the Center for Popular Democracy will show their support, as well. This will be the largest mobilization America has ever seen in decades. This push is being headed and supported by the Service Employees International Union. This ...

Why are the people of the world enraged when they find out the leaders they supported and gave money to get them elected to office then turn out to be just nuts and lack the leadership or knowledge to deliver the promises they made to their constituents to get elected. Maybe if the people would just take notice of the signs like why would a person want to spend $1 to $2 million for a campaign to be elected to a job/office that pays a paltry $120,000 a year. Where does this money come from? What is their track record on wage slaves? Are they good or bad? Do they support unions, higher wages, healthcare, pensions—if they don’t then you shouldn’t support them. This is one case where you do get what is paid for. It is just the wrong people paying, and we wage slaves need to know who is paying the $1 million to $2 million, we know it is not us proletarians. We need to know who we are entrusting our government to before they get entrenched in office. We need to be like a good car mechanic ...