Union Perspectives

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...

So, we let the GOP have a tax bill that gave the very rich at the top billions and us at the bottom very little. The tax gives away to the rich was a win-win for the GOP to pay back their large donors, and now they can say there is no money for safety net programs or returning the money to Social Security that Congress and presidents Lyndon B. Johnson, Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush “borrowed” or used as a piggy bank to fund their bad policies: Johnson and Bush the war, Reagan tax breaks for the wealthy who didn’t need it. They raided the program we paid for, and Medicare/Medicaid. Congress needs to pay the people back and with interest and then keep their hands off our money. The GOP likes to call Social Security and Medicare entitlement spending, but if you check your pay stub you’ll see the deductions for these programs and that we pay taxes on the Social Security as we receive it. The GOP also lie and say that these programs are the root of the worsening federal fiscal problems...

In America today, we have the Haves and the Have Nots, which is the very rich and the poor. What is missing is the middle, which is the group that makes it all work. They are the spenders who pay taxes, raise families. They are the supporters of the very rich and the supporters of the poor. This support system has worked very well until the very rich gets greedier and begins hoarding all the cash and cutting out the middle class with inequality. Inequality is done in many ways. Some is through laws enacted that shut down unions. This defund unions, but also stops worker training apprenticeship programs the unions provide. Shutting down these programs helps to turn our country into a wasteland of poverty. With the power concentrated at the top, democracy cannot thrive. This happened in the Guilded Age at the end of the 19th century. Now it is happening today. America cannot ever be great again until there is a large middle class with good wages, healthcare, free education, and good ...

The fight against “right to work” legislation goes back to 1968. In one of his speeches, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. said, “That in our glorious fight for civil rights, we must guard against being fooled by false slogans, as right to work. It provides no rights, and no work. Its purpose is to destroy labor unions and the freedom of collective bargaining. We demand this fraud be stopped.” It is has now been about 49 years, and the same playbook called, “Right to work” to destroy union is still being played. The GOP and corporate Democrats want to destroy unions by taking away the right to collect dues. People still fall for this self-destructive line without looking into what they are forfeiting in the process: healthcare and pensions. Fraud and who are to blame? It is the unions for not educating people, not just their workers? The attack and the fight against it has never stopped. In 1933, in his Statement on National Industrial Recovery Act, President Franklin D. Roosevelt sai...

On a night in February 1933, Frances Perkins sat in front of the newly elected 32nd president of the United States as he told her that he wanted her to be the new Secretary of Labor. Perkins told President Franklin Roosevelt she would take the job if she could do it her way. Perkins wanted: a 40-hour work week, minimum wage, work compensation, unemployment compensation, a federal law banning child labor, direct federal aid for unemployment relief, Social Security, a revitalized public employment service, and health insurance. The opposition to Perkins demands came from courts, businesses, labor unions--yes, labor unions, conservatives, and the chamber of commerce. Even with all this opposition against Perkins, a lot was accomplished. Today, we are trying to protect our Social Security, which we pay into, and even to expand it. We also want to go back to providing free college, like we used to have before politicians, like California Governor Ronald Reagan, redirected the money for f...

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...

Will Donald Trump be the leader the right wing GOP has been waiting for to lead toady’s version of the America’s Silver Shirts? Silver shirts was based on Nazi Germany’s Brown Shirts. Trump has already gotten the support of the White Supremacists and the Ku Klux Klan and all the closeted angry racists of the GOP party. Remember, people laughed at Adolph Hitler and Benito Mussolini and said the two would never come to power. We all know the horror and terror they wreaked upon the world. If the U.S. doesn’t wake up this country could very well see the same thing happen here. The Silver Shirts were America’s answer to the Brown Shirts, same kind of ideology, same kind of entitlement over others and same kind of twisted propaganda that unsuspecting people fell for. There could be small revolutions fighting against terrorism—in all its forms, ethnic-type of discrimination, or even the young, disenchanted low-wage college people who have huge debts but low-wage jobs. The young who bought int...

Minimum wage should be called a living wage. Some employers say $15 an hour is too high and that people won’t buy their goods if they have to pay their workers $15 an hour minimum wage. If this is true then maybe this is a business that should not have employees and maybe that business should just be an owner-based company and no employees. I’m sure the owners would soon figure out a way to not have to work and figure out how to pay someone to do the work for $15 an hour and still make a profit, just a little less than the large amounts made by screwing the workers over. Businesses always find ways to stay in business when fuel and increase costs in goods needed for production, but it is just the wages that seems to put them out of business. It is like President Roosevelt said if a business can only afford to pay starvation wages they should not be in business. I think the $15 an hour minimum wage Genie is out of the bottle ad there is no stopping the movement unless the workers becom...

It’s time for payback. Now is the time for President Obama to repay the wage slaves for the money and support given to him when he ran for election and re-election. All the unions were asking was just the tools to work with, such as card check. For the federal contract workers at the U.S. Capital and other high profile locations in Washington, like the parks, museum and zoo workers, have the right to fight for collective bargaining rights and to obtain higher wages. President Obama should use his executive power for a higher minimum wage than $10.10 an hour, more like $15 to $18 an hour. Also, the President should change the classification of Federal employees who fight wildland fire to wildland firefighters with the pay that is fitting, such as California Department of Forestry firefighters receive. Then the President should make good on his promise to the people who have come here for work or a better, safer life, and quit deporting them and splitting up their families. These people...