Union Perspectives

Can workers today make more than their parents? At this time it is 50/50, but people born in 1940, the chance of children making more than their parents was at 92 percent—why? One reason for this is economic growth has slowed from 4 to 5 percent in the past decades to just 2 to 3 percent today; and almost all of the benefits of the 2 to 3 percent growth goes to the top with people in the lower income bracket are stuck with stagnant wages. The Americans at the bottom 50 percent are making an average of just $16,000 a year while the top 1 percent makes $1.3 million, and send their children to elite schools so the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. Part of the attack on the 1.7 million poor workers are employed by temporary agencies. Of these 1.7 million workers, 900,000 are on zero hour contracts. This problem is worldwide. Workers in the UK are facing the same problem, some 20 percent of the workers do not know if they will get a full week’s work. The people who are and have be...

Has the world’s 99 percent finally figured out that they need to vote for and support people who will stand by and fight for the good life they deserve? People like Jeremy Corbyn, Britain’s newly elected Labor Leader is a socialist, and Canada’s liberal candidate, Justin Trudeau, promises to work for the toilers. Now, we have a leader in the U.S. who is running for president, Bernie Sanders, an avowed socialist, wants big money out of politics, universal healthcare, free public universities, expanded Social Security and a job’s program for youth, plus a living wage beginning at $15 an hour. There is a global movement going on at this time and the toilers are electing popular leaders in countries like Greece, Spain, Ireland, Turkey, Israel and Britain. These people are anti-austerity people and they rally thousands when they speak out for the dispossessed, challenge moribund elites, they are vilified as populists, deluded and dangerous, but they are winning elections. This movement is a...

As income inequality becomes more known across the world, people are responding, tired of the disparity and not being adequately compensated for their work. Income inequality is greater now than it was in the “Roaring ‘20s” and though we went through a recession, the rich keep getting richer while the poor keep getting poorer. As Democratic candidate Bernie Sanders surges in the polls, the British just elected its version of Sanders when it elected Jeremy Corbyn as the Labor Party’s leader in a landslide victory, by almost 60 percent of the votes. Shocked by the outcome, Prime Minister Cameron resorted to fear and intimidation when he tweeted: “The Labour Party is now a threat to our national security, our economic security and your family’s security.” It’s interesting how the U.S. and Britain’s conservative leaders tanked their economies by falsely leading their countries into war with Iraq followed by deep recessions, and the wage slaves paid dearly for their poor voting decisions. T...