Union Perspectives

This new government administration has a lot of big and little things it can and must do to keep the voters on their side. First among them is that they must beat the virus and at the same time keep people sheltered and fed. This can be done by executive orders and pumping money into where it’s needed most. Yes, the Biden administration is doing a lot of good, but to reach the masses, it must go further. Start with helping unions by tightening up the National Labor Relations Board and its members and rules; and pass card check for unions, which would take the place of union elections and make it easier for workers to unionize. We need President Biden to declare a state of emergency and begin to address climate change to help save the planet while also creating new jobs in green energy, rebuilding our infrastructure with more eco-friendly products. There are a lot of products out there that can replace the old, more damaging products, like these few types recycled steel, using bamboo,...

Wonder why the GOP is so afraid of the words, “Class Warfare”? Could it be because the class in “working class” out number the rich class and this explains why the rich has always done its best to split the working class into two groups, one being those who vote against their own best interests and those who see through the efforts. This practice started in the 1600s when the rich used First Nations and African hostages against the white settlers to build this country. As new people came from around the world immigrated to this country, such as people from Poland, Ireland, Italy, Asia, and so on, the rich tried to get them to fight amongst each other. The smart workers, like the International Workers of the World (IWW), saw through this ploy and how well it was working for the rich. The answer to this practice was a single word, “Solidarity,” which became the battle cry of the IWW and other unions. Soon, the very rich started to devise plans to split the unions and get them fighting...

While working, you’re selling your life one hour at a time. What is an hour of your life worth? Remember you can never get that hour back, it is gone forever. When you set a price for your hour of life, how do you do it? Are you represented by a union? Or do you just let someone else set the price for your labor? However it is done, it is not working for you or any of the other workers. Nearly one out of every five workers is in a part-time job. Two-thirds are living pay check to pay check. Most are working more hours than they worked decades ago with less vacation or sick leave days. The standard explanation for why all of this has come about is that workers are no longer worth as much as they were before the digital technology boom and globalization. So, they must now settle for lower wages and less security. But top executives of large corporations wage have gone up twenty times that of the workers to three-hundred times today. So who sets the one hour rate? Last year, Wall St...

The race for single-payer healthcare or Medicare For All it will be between the Bernie Sanders people, The GOP and the corporate Democratic Party. If the GOP wants to keep their seats in the Senate and Congress, they need something big, like healthcare that the people will be pleased with. The GOP is desperate, they have a loser of a president and they have failed to achieve any meaningful legislation. The GOP has said they want to replace the Affordable Care Act aka Obamacare since it was passed with something better, but their definition of better so far was deadly for many. They just need to make healthcare for all ages and if they do this they will keep power for a long time. The U.S. pays more in healthcare than Italy, Britain, Japan, Australia, France, Canada, Sweden, Germany and Switzerland, and many others. Our politicians have sold us out to the highest bidder, the insurance companies, and we need to make them pay for putting their pockets before our health. It is imperativ...

Why single-payer/Medicare for all would save money and help the capitalist system. One, if no business or corporation, like the auto plants did not have to pay health insurance, they could sell their vehicles overseas cheaper. If all the people had health insurance, a person could start a business and not worry about having to provide health insurance for themselves, their families and their employees, which would put more people to work and their jobs could be backfilled by another worker. People who could retire, but must keep working until Medicare covers them could now retire without worrying about their healthcare. They could retire and open a job up for someone new.  Countries with universal healthcare are: Australia, Austria, Bahrain, Belgium, Brunei, Canada, Cyprus, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hong Kong, Iceland, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Japan, Kuwait, Luxembourg, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Portugal, Singapore, Solvenia (where Trump's current wife is f...

The workers are losing while our labor leaders sleep or hide out, hoping they can hold onto their position until they retire. Our labor leaders appeared to have given up the rural areas and pulled their efforts into the big cities. This is like having a fort with a moat around it and think they are safe. We all know forts can be conquered in the long run. It’s as if labor leaders learned nothing from the Clinton era. We, at this time, are losing with the Right to Work laws being passed in 27 states, and now there is legislation in Congress for a national Right to Work law. Couple this with legislation in Congress to ban the Davis-Bacon Act on prevailing wage law, and the attacks on union pensions. These things will drive the nail into the heart of unions. This is happening in other countries, like the UK and France, who are electing leaders, such as Marine Le Pen, a far right leader. We, here, in the U.S., cannot just depend on the Bernie Sanders-types. We need new, strong unions wi...

Laborers of the world over must stop depending on governments to look out for their interests. At this time no political party is working for or defending workers. Government policies now are pitting people against each other by promoting and establishing wars resulting in millions of refugees. The refugees flood host countries for safety, but end up being used as cheap labor by those benefitting from the wars the refugees are fleeing. This cheap labor is used to break the unions and labor laws and drives wages and benefits down. Nothing can stop this but the people. The governments and the oligarchies make their profits off the misery of others. Labor has always won when they were in charge. Labor laws were not put into place to help the workers, they were established by President Franklin Roosevelt to stop strikes, which were beating back the nonunion workers. The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) rules were to replace the decisions that were being made from fighting for rights...

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...

Low wages and debt go together to make the 1 percent very, very rich. To begin with, the rich pay the wage slaves very little, which then promotes the toilers to use debt to survive. Case in point, with no extra cash for repairs and a broken washing machine, for example, the cost to repair the machine is a one-time large cost that seems greater than buying a new machine for a low monthly payment. This way, the 1 percent makes more money in two ways and makes the toilers actual wage slaves. This enslavement starts very early with school debt so that young workers start out in debt with an average of $31,000 to $100,000 and higher depending on the field of study, which, without a very good paying job, leaves them as wage slaves for many years. We are nearing the end of economic/industrial growth, primarily, but not only for ecological reasons. When growth stalls, lending opportunities disappear. Since money is essentially lent for existence, debt levels increase faster than the supply ...

The new attack on unions is Verizon’s move to cut pensions and healthcare, which Verizon says it needs to do to keep up with its competitors. If it wins, its cuts will be a death spiral to the bottom for union workers. There are two ways for unions to win: one is to stand fast; the other is to put pressure on the nonunion competitors or a combination of both. Workers must know that these attacks on them come from the GOP’s call for austerity and that ideology imported from Europe, mainly Angela Merkle’s Germany, and big banks, which is being forced upon countries like Ireland, Greece, Portugal, and Italy. These banks and corporations would very much like to import austerity here into the U.S. to break unions. This is or should be the tipping point for workers to go on the offensive instead of always playing the defensive game. A good offense will always defeat a defense. And at this time it looks like workers and labor unions have retreated to large cities and abandoned the rural count...

One only has to look at Europe to see what is in store for the proletariats in the U.S. Look at the similarities of the proletariats of Europe and here. The GOP wants to eliminate minimum wage completely along with labor unions while cutting funding for all social programs. Also, in Europe there are countries like Greece, Portugal, Ireland, Italy and Spain that are now being black mailed by an international group of corporate chief executive officers who are not even elected and they are not accountable to anyone except to the banks and their own interests. The people in these countries now have no rights or hope for a better life or even a job. When this is done then these people have no country. They’re just living in a place with no rights or future. If the capitalist system of the world hopes to exist the oligarchies must change their money making ways and invest in jobs and quit using their money in loans or getting rich off the interest, paying no taxes and making poor people wo...

What happened and is happening in countries like Greece, Spain, Italy, and Portugal has already happened here in the U.S. The blatant facts are it is not the fault of the borrowing people or countries; it is the reckless lending by German, U.S. and other banks or lending institutions, like Goldman Sachs. Greece should have never been let into the Euro and only met the membership criteria by working with Goldman Sachs to cook its books much to the detriment of the Greek people. The books were cooked to hide Greece’s debt with currency swaps after the 2008 crisis. The banks that lent so recklessly were bailed out and Greece was left holding the bag. The idea that Greece is to blame for its woes and should do like Ireland did is wrong. If this all sounds like we here in the U.S. have heard and seen this financial criminal behavior before, we have and again the banks and Wall Street were bailed out and the people were thrown out of their homes. At this time in Spain, nearly 350,000 Spani...

The world labor market is changing. We are running out of jobs and the people who will be displaced from the workforce will devote their freedom to simple leisure, some will seek to build productive communities outside the workplace, others will fight, passionately, to reclaim their productivity by piecing together jobs in an informal economy. These are the futures of consumption, communal creativity and contingency in any combination it is certain there would be a radical new role for government. The world will be watching Greece now that it has voted no on austerity. The Greeks are done with years of harsh economic conditions inflicted upon them by financial institutions, not for anything they did. One, they will probably take a hard look at the present capitalist system and the Eurozone nations and do they even want to keep the Euro as their currency. Hell, they might even go to Bitcoins or back to the Drachmas. There will be changes in the labor and probably an upswing in the pre...

Is it time to rethink our union? At this time union cannot support each other on strikes. In a lot of union companies with many different unions within them with most of these different unions expiring at different time, which means they cannot support each other in a strike because they would be breaching their contract and opening themselves up to being sued. In some cases they are held responsible for lost profits, court costs and other possible damages. The other thing is most unions with apprenticeship trainings are so good that a union worker can leave the union and become a foreman or start their own nonunion business. Some have even stolen tools to start their businesses. This is prevalent in all construction trades and it usually happens when we, unions, cannot keep our workers employed and when we can’t is when they, the nonunion, take over our training and use it against us. It's pretty pathetic when the U.S. ranks 21st out of 21 countries for union membership and cove...

Nonunion employers’ feel they own their wage slaves and today it is the same as it was in the 1800s when the boss lined up the wage slaves and marched them to the polling places to cast their vote and told the employees who to vote for. If they did not vote the way the employers dictated they would be fired. Another insult that wage slaves were not paid for that day. Here it is, the 2012 election, and the employers are using this same tactic: coal miners marched out and made to stand behind a GOP presidential candidate and told to donate to the candidate’s campaign and weren’t paid for the time they had to stand behind that candidate. Companies are many who force their workers to do what they want even when the wage slaves are on their own time. The employers tell or have the slaves sign contracts that dictate what the employee can say or write on social network sites or letters to newspapers, agreeing not to join a union or dropping out of a union in order to get a job with a compan...