Union Perspectives

Most of us know what we don’t like or see as wrong, but what we lack is leaders with a vision on how to fix or support new policies. So far, only the Bern man has the whole platform consisting of climate change, wage inequity, universal  healthcare, fair pensions, Social Security, union support, free education, fixing inequality, housing for all, fixing the damage caused by the Trump administration and many concerns. Adding to this list should be a universal basic income for all; state banks in the states that want them; legalization of drugs with addiction treatment instead of prisons; end the private prison industry; fix the immigration mess; implement a legislation mandating corporations pay for the use of our Commons; reform and reinvest in our public education and allow parents to pay for private or charter schools if they want their children to attend such schools; cut defense spending and use that money toward infrastructure improvement to create employment opportunities for ou...

Steps needed to revive the Have Nots and Have Littles to a middle class status include income inequality, which the movement for $15 to $18 an hour minimum wage will help with opportunity inequality. With more money and time, workers would have time to take night classes to improve their chances for a better job and will have more time when they don’t have to work two or three part-time jobs. Then the workers need childcare, vacations and some type of pension, which will follow them from job to job like a hybrid Social Security without changing the present Social Security system. The fly in the ointment is there is just not enough jobs worldwide and here in the U.S. and there will be even less after the passage of Trans Pacific Partnership. The capitalist system depends on the proletarians who need to be adequately compensated for their labor to have money to buy the products the capitalist system sales, which ironically are made by the labor of the proletarians. One way is a hybrid...

There is hope for the toilers and soon to be toilers recently a mother of a 12-year-old young lady asked how to find to my blog. Her concerns were that there is no honest history books about labor and how we how we have gotten to where we are today. They do not trust our school history books to tell the whole story. This is good for to understand history one must realize that history books at their best is just a person’s view of what happened at a given time and if you have a hundred people viewing at once you get a hundred different views. So, for any given event one must look at as many views as possibly to understand what has taken place and maybe not to do the same thing or if it had a good outcome, try it again. This is why knowing your history is so important and why we need to know it. Not knowing our history can work against us if we are blind when studying history. Maybe there will be a 12-year-old person who will use history and the lessons learned to do well for the 99 pe...

The plight of the Do-Nothing people: Edmund Burke said that “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.” So this is the mission of the Doers to get the Do-Nothings to start supporting the high wages of $15 to $18 an hour and a return to free education. One way is to never struggle without stopping to catch your breath and take inventory of where you started and how far you have come, like trying to climb up a mountain without stopping. You must first visualize there is a top, like seeing $15 to $18 an hour and free education as the top of the mountain, climb to a plateau. We have reached a plateau of $10 an hour, some even at $15 an hour, but we cannot rest on the plateau for long for if we do the opposition will have time to regroup and counter attack our efforts. At this time, the Have Nothings, Have Littles, Used to Haves, and the Want Mores are winning the wage fight, but the money people are slow walking the wage increase by dragging their fee...

There is no in between in this class warfare. You are either with the unions or against; you can’t be whatever’s convenient for your self-interest. The exploitation of the proletarians by the oligarchies, who are anti-union GOP capitalists, will lead to the proletarians’ demise. Even though some companies are slow walking the increase in minimum wage hoping that the proletarians will let down their demands for the $15 to $18 an hour. Capitalists should look at Lincoln’s statement on May 19, 1856 when he said, “Be not deceived. Revolutions do not go backward.” For the proletariats to understand their opponents better, I would suggest you read, The Prince, written by Machiavelli for the Haves on how to hold onto power. The Haves with their arrogant opulence, its police, its courts—up to the Supreme Court, and its churches, claims of morality, law and order. These all secures the Haves’ status quo. But, the power of the Have Nots rests with their numbers. It has been said that the Haves,...