Union Perspectives

We are seeing the highest labor unionization since 1965. Business owners and workers have nothing in common. Owners want profits and political clout and workers want respect for their work and proper compensation for that work that makes the owner rich. The rich, like the Charles Koch Foundation, the Bradley Foundation, the Freedom Foundation, the Heritage Foundation and the State Policy Network are antiunion organizations that fund GOP conservative think tanks. The people behind these foundations are motivated by one thing and that is to destroy unions and weaken workers’ rights. Every time Republicans get into office, they have the same strategy to cut safety nets for the rest of the population while giving tax breaks to the wealthy and then threaten to shut down the government in a tantrum like a three-year-old child. It is estimated that the wealthy American evaded almost $66 billion in federal taxes. The top 2,000 highest earning tax dodgers owe $923 million in taxes so that expla...

The Art of War says when the enemy is in disarray is the time to attack, so what are our union work force doing? Are they planning for an expansion? Are they educating their members on the history of unions? Are they training their members on how to be foot soldiers in the upcoming fight to destroy their safety net—the unions? Make no mistake about it, the anti-union GOP are coming for the unions. Unions are the last bastion of defense for the workers who still have jobs. They have “right to work” laws in most states, which devastates unions. The GOP is planning to go after the Holy Grail, which is California. If they ever pull that off, it is Doom’s Day for the unions and Have Nots. We will be in the streets begging or in the streets fighting. Either way, we will probably lose. Now is the time for us to go on the offense and stop using our defense policies. Being on the defense will always get beat in the long run because all you do is buy a little time. Now there is a window of op...

Labor, unions, $15 an hour minimum wage, pensions, and safe working conditions are all under attack here in the U.S. and around the world. In the U.S., the Republicans have put out a bill to gut Social Security and raise the retirement age to 69 years old. The anti-worker people are coming for everything President Franklin D. Roosevelt accomplished. They want to destroy Social Security and Medicare. This is what Newt Gingrich, former speaker of the House, told an audience at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank. Donald Trump, who was handed the presidency by the electoral collage, is lining his cabinet with other like-minded people as himself. Trump has recruited corporate individuals that he promised his followers he would banish from Capitol Hill. Trump filled the Secretary of State position with an Exxon Mobil executive; for the head of the Treasury; Trump chose an executive from Goldman Sachs; Secretary of Labor is a fast food executive; he chose an anti-gay person ...

Why do the American people let our policies be determined by think tanks, instead of the people who we elect and pay to make our policies? Just who are the people in the think tanks and who do they represent? Most are conservative who represent the largest defense companies and are now pushing our nuclear weapons and U.S. security policies of strategy. This was being pushed by Michaela Dodge, who works for the Heritage Foundation think tank, but just who in the hell is she? Who is she to be deciding that the U.S. needs more nuclear weapons and to modernize the nukes that we have, and yet we and our elected officials look at the ideology of the think tanks as gospel. Most of the time the think tank participants are just carrying the water for the large corporations that fund the think tanks, which is in the multimillions of dollars. So, do you think we get unbiased and information in which to support or not support their findings? Think tanks should be looked at as no more than a ...

When the Heritage Foundation’s think tank starts attacking the minimum wage, and telling the unsuspecting public how a $15 an hour minimum wage will hurt only them, the public should question who is funding the think tank. The Heritage Foundation’s think tank tries to come across as a concerned, parental figure wanting you to believe that they are looking out for you when they tell that an increase in the minimum wage is actually bad for the workers, will cause business to shutter and hurt the economy. These pearls of wisdom are not only wrong, but are financed by the Charles and David Koch. The brothers who would like to eliminate the minimum wage, and control local, state and federal governments with their American City Council Exchange and the American Legislative Exchange Council, which writes bills that politicians, who have aligned themselves with the brothers, pass that makes legislation benefitting the Koch dynasty. Think tanks started around the 1900s by people, like ste...

How the nonunion, Rand Paul supportering groups and the American Legislative Exchange Council, the Heritage Foundation and a newly former nonprofit, Protect My PayCheck, are working together to influence local governments at the city and county levels the same way it was done by state legislatures with Right to Work. Today in Kentucky, Fulton, Simpson and Warren counties, have voted to implement the Right to Work laws. This could be the way California workers could be beaten and see our unions destroyed. Supporters of the these worker-harmful laws say, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, are next and that Protect My PayCheck is promising to pay for the legal battles of any local government that tries to implement this legislation. There are numerous counties in California that have bought into the "State of Jefferson" mentality thinking they could control their own local governments, but this short-sighted vision doesn't take into account how to fund their independence an...