Union Perspectives

Why aren't the army of retired union workers used in the fight to unionize today’s workers? Why aren’t the unions using their retired members? Is it because the union bosses do not know how or is it that they just don’t know how to organize retired workers or get these older union members fired up to join the new workers wanting union protraction? There is a lot of bias out there against retirees or ‘geezers’ as we’re known, but including them in this fight just might benefit all involved because a lot of us have been where today’s workers are now. The unions are wasting of experience and talent by not including us in today’s union resurgence. Retirees could be at every local public government meeting—city councils, board of supervisors, fire boards, school board and many others—and during the public comment section of the speaking about the needs of workers and retirees. During this section of the meetings, speakers are usually given two minutes to speak about anything not on the ...

When will the American people wake up and accept that all wars are engaged and fought to make money so a select few can become even richer? These unconscionable money grubbing warmongers do not care about the deaths of our young people or the innocent people considered collateral damage. President Woodrow Wilson admitted that the war to end all wars, the war to make the world safe for democracy had, in fact, been an industrial and commercial war, which earned the United States $30 billion in World War I. The workers of the old International Workers the World (IWW), seeing it for what it is, had little desire to enter into the war. They tried to educate the working class, even Thomas Paine and Michael Bakunin, who is considered is one of the key anarchist thinkers and activists of the 19th century, tried to warn citizens. The IWW viewed ignorance as an essential collaborator in the continued smooth functioning of governments. In his “Rights of Man” Paine proclaims reason and ignoranc...

Has the proletarian class finally found a leader? Could Bernie Sanders be the next Eugene Debs or Franklin Roosevelt? At this time, it looks like he very well could the person that the 99 percent were waiting for. He is not only saying the right things, but he has lived these principles, and he has always advocated for these things his entire life even when some thought he what he was saying was crazy. In fact, when he was younger he started every day by saying his ideas are not crazy, and it seems to be he is right if the numbers gathering to see him are any indication. Single payer healthcare for everyone, a living wage, jobs for all, a good retirement, pensions, taxing the rich and removing the Social Security cap where the rich do not pay into the program. These are the things that resonate with the young, the unions, and the old—and these not crazy, especially since people are awakening to the fact that system is stacked against them courtesy of the rich and GOP. Bernie Sanders...

Will labor ever have modern day leaders like William D. Haywood, Eugene Debs, Mother Jones, Daniel De Leon, Father Thomas J. Hagerty, Frank Little, Gurley Flynn or Joe Hill? Some of these people were members of the International Workers of the World also known as “Wobblies.” Some were also called “soapboxers” because they were the people who fought for freedom of speech and won the right to stand on a street corner and just talk about whatever they wanted. Most of these people were the voices of labor and talking about all workers in all industries the world over. So, today we should be using these hard earned rights to point out that the rich are getting richer and refusing to understand or respond to the growing disaster that they are creating. Today’s low-wage workers working full time earn a combined$14 billion while Wall Street took in $28.5 billion in just bonuses. We must take a page from history and look at the Gilded Ages of the oligarchies, which was turned around by the wag...

One way union leaders are failing their members is that the leaders don’t know who their members are. To stop union busters, one must first understand union workers or even non-union workers’ view of unions. It is imperative that union leaders first understand the factors that influence a worker’s view regarding unions, which include the worker’s family background, including their parents’ occupation and any experience that their parents or other close relatives have had with unions, which may affect the attitude of a young or frustrated worker. How do you know what the worker is thinking if you don’t know who the members are and you speak with them? As a union rep, you should know the workers’ employment experiences, their pay and working conditions, their treatment by supervisors, the degree of security they feel, their advancement opportunities or failures for advancement because these can all profoundly influence how a worker perceives their employer and their reaction to unions....

The right wing governments of the world are pushing the wage slaves from the ballot box to the streets because the oligarchies have bought the ballot box. This forces the toilers to go to the streets to protest the wrongs of the right wing governments, like in Belgium, Brussels, where 100,000 workers had to take to the streets to demonstrate against planned reforms against public transport, schools, post office and other services. The government wants to cut staffing, services along with companies across the country. This is worldwide and here in the USA workers will be even more under assault by the right wing GOP for they now control 27 states, which will finish devastating the unions, and the oligarchies own the ballot boxes here also and the courts. So all that is left is the streets, which will probably be closed soon by Sedition Laws being passed by cities, counties and states, such as what was done in Ferguson, Missouri, where protestors were not able to stop walking, standing ...

The low-wage, fast-food workers put up a good fight in their two-day protests. Now they just need to keep it up with well-timed events, which hurt the pockets of the money people, like on Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year’s. The low-wage inequality of living standards is just not here in the USA, it is worldwide. Some countries have made great strides in dealing with the needs of their workers. What the wage slaves need to do is cherry pick the best ideas from all over the world and develop a strategy that will make the odds in their favor for winning against the greedy. Look at the Denmark’s wages in fast food, which is $21 per hour versus the U.S.’s $7.25 federally and $8 in California. The cost of a Big Mac in Denmark is only $5.18 versus a Big Mac in the U.S. is $4. Denmark’s fast food workers are unionized. Could this be the reason they receive a living wage when our fast food workers don’t? Then there is Germany, where the corporate leaders sit with the workers and decide what...

Where is the wage slaves’ leadership or leaders? Or will there be a leaderless movement, like the Wobblies used? Has the time passed for a leader, such as Martin Luther King, Eugene Debs, Bill Hayward, Reuther brothers, Mother Jones, Joe Hill, John L. Lewis, or Cesar Chavez, among so many others. Is it even possible for these types of leaders to serve in positions of leadership against the corporations that have bought and paid for law enforcement? Knowing this, wage slaves will have to depend on Anonymous and WikiLeaks types of guerilla warfare with a type of underground and Occupy movement that has no assets or set home base. A type of organization that is very mobile with very good intelligence and tactics, such as the four used in Art of War: #1) when the enemy advances, we retreat; #2) when the enemy halts, we harass; #3) when the enemy seeks to avoid a battle, we attack; #4) when the enemy retreats, we pursue. We need to train our fighters in Art of War strategy. If one woman st...

During the years of 1905-1908, IWW’s Big Bill Haywood wanted to organize the forgotten unskilled workers (think fast food workers of today), those without votes – without unions. Haywood once said at a meeting, “I do not care a snap of my fingers whether or not skilled workers join the IWW movement at this time.” He shouted at the meeting, “We are going down into the gutters to get at the mass of workers and bring them up to a decent plane of living (think minimum wage $15 to $16 per hour). It is these ‘have nothings’ who will be the shock troops of labor who will establish the first beach head in the resistance of the entrenched industry so that later labor organizations can win what is rightfully theirs for the masses. Eugene Debs, labor leader, said the industrial workers are organized not conciliate, but to fight the 1% oligarchy class. The oligarchies own the tools they do not use. The workers use the tools they do not own. So you can see there is power with the wage slaves. They...

Things are starting to look up for wage slaves. The economy is slowly recovering. Manufacturing is starting to return to the USA. Construction is starting to build again and most of all the workers are starting to understand how to organize themselves for workers’ rights and not just here, but all over the world. Soon there will not be a country where the anti-union companies can threaten workers with moving their factories to and this is evidenced by the companies that are returning to the USA. So 2013 could be the tipping point for the workers. Hell, we have already won the people’s election of our president, which showed the power of people over moneyed people so what’s to stop us from getting good wages and benefits from the Walmarts of this world. The fact is there is nothing to stop us except fear, apathy, and ignorance of how it was done before, and what worked and what did not and for this knowledge we can use the secret weapon, which are our labor histories. Everything we ...

Wisconsin will be the turning point in which workers will either prosper or decline on the issues of pay, pensions, healthcare, vacations and all the other worker gains over the last 100 years. The GOP and wage slaves are at a crossroads and if the GOP wins then the dominoes will start falling state by state, which will put the workers in the position, the only option, of having to fight in the streets. We have already lost the U.S. Supreme Court, which is where all appealed cases end up, and they will and have already ruled against the workers. The only thing left will be the streets, which will not be good because the GOP/oligarchies will be able to identify the leaders and jail or, like in the 1800s-1930s, just kill them by trumped-up charges or by mob violence. Some of our labor leaders who were eliminated this way were Joe Hill, Big Bill Haywood, Walter Reuther, Eugene Debbs and Martin Luther King Jr., just to name a few. This is the old anti-union playbook and this worked time...

The 99% think the 1% is in control or is about to control our country’s government and the work place. In reality the people who are in control are 1/10th of the 1%. The true oligarchies with their minions engaging in anti-union organizations, such as the Koch brothers’ Limbaugh, ALEC’s Club for Growth, and Dick Armory as puppet master of the Tea Party’s Americans for Prosperity. Labor has boxed themselves into a corner with labor agreements, which binds labor to no walking off the job site while there is an agreement in place. The strike was labor’s best weapon against the anti-union corporations. If labor could partner up with the 99% maybe we could help each other and labor would not be in breach of contract. The 99% could picket in front of businesses or job sites where labor has a no walk off stipulation in its contract. In the long run we all want the same things: healthcare, jobs, good pay, a home, good schools, pensions, end to the war, and rebuilding our infrastructure. We...