Union Perspectives

Is democratic socialism coming back, and can it pull us all together? Here in the U.S., all is divided between the Democrats and the Republicans (GOP for Grand Ol’ Party), the unions and the money people. So the winners are the people who can settle their differences the quickest. On the Democratic side, who depend upon unions for boots on the ground and money at this time probably will not happen for unions are not happy with the trade agreement and the lack of support from Democrats. The unions used to blame the Blue Dog Democrats, but now it seems that there are a lot more of the Blue Dogs-types of anti-union politicians in office. If the Democrats are going to depend on union help, they must give the unions the tools to work with because the GOP has just about emptied the union tool box with passage of Right to Work laws and attack on the right to form unions and collect dues. The GOP has kept the unions on defense, which has slowed the unions’ offence, such as with organizing new...

The wage slaves and the spenders are the backbone of the capitalist system. The spending is about 67 percent of it; but the money is the cartilage for the system. What is happening with income inequality and austerity is like osteoporosis of the bones, they’re depleting the economy of its strength. Money is now in the hands of just a few families, the 1 percent, while the 99 percent, who are the actual spenders by virtue of their numbers, have less and less money to keep the capitalist system functioning. Karl Marx pointed out some problems with the capitalist system, which, for one, is the hording of cash and the second, is more products made than are purchased. Both of these problems can be solved by raising the minimum wage to no less than $15 to $18 an hour, which will give the spenders the disposable income to buy durable goods and enhance their living standards. Now where do we find jobs that we are losing to robots? One way is to look at our work history for ways we did before....

“Trade unions must convince the world at large that their efforts far from being narrow and selfish, aim at the emancipation of the downtrodden millions,” Karl Marx. Union steelworkers in Greece fight being framed-up by the Ellimiki Halivourgia steel mill where the workers are fighting a 40 percent wage cut. The riot police stormed the picket line and arrested six people at the gate. This was inspired by the dogma of the law and order of the government of the anti-union oligarchies who own the government of the employers. They are using back to work orders with threats of jail. The threats are also used against all union that try to support their fellow union members, like public transportation workers, longshoremen, and farmers. This is not new to the world for on May 26, 1937, ten strikers fell dead under police bullets at the Republic Steel’s south Chicago plant in the USA and scores of their fellow strikers were wounded. They had come, 300 of them in a peaceful parade to demonstra...

In order to make fire or to put fire out you need the fire triangle: oxygen, fuel and heat. Take one away and the fire goes out. For the capitalists’ consumer system to thrive like fire it needs: money, demand and product, if you take one of these away and capitalism dies. Let’s look at what happens when 400 individuals accumulates more than $2 trillion and keeps it in their pockets year after year. This is the start of inequality, which causes poverty. The USA now is at the highest level of inequality in our history. We sit between Venezuela and Uruguay. We are even higher than every major European or East Asian nation in our inequality, which causes poverty through economic mismanagement. The corporations don’t spend their money; they just sit on it, which drains money from the economy and the “fire” goes out. With no corporations spending there will be no jobs, which means no workers spending, which means no demand for products (the fire is snuffed out). With fewer jobs and with t...

The old International Workers of the World would be proud of the way wage slaves today are standing up for their rights in countries, such as Bangladesh, most of Europe, Israel, Palestine, and now South American countries, such as Ecuador, Colombia, Cuba, Venezuela, Bolivia, Brazil, Argentina and Chile, who are now fighting for the rights of day laborers, back pay, who work on the ports. They are being supported by the Longshoremen’s union. This is world solidarity among the wage slaves. The way it is supposed to be, and we should not forget the Ukrainians’ fight for the right to protest. Yes, the tide is turning slowly in favor of the wage slaves, but we must remember what Karl Marx and Frederick Engles said in 1848: That now and then the workers are victorious, but only for a time. The real fruit of their battles lies not in the immediate result, but in the ever expanding union of the workers. The fight must keep moving forward to even up the disparity of a few with so much and so m...

The wage inequality of 1870 was less than the wage inequality of today, 2014. The gap between the capitalists and the poor proletarians is much wider and getting wider each year and eventually will spawn a proletarian worldwide revolution unless the gap closes. This isn’t the first time a revolution was waged to end the tyranny of the rich. Wages must be raised from subsistence to a living wage with some disposal income. There was a proletarian revolution about to happen in the 1800s, between 1867 to 1870 in England, western Europe and North America, but was averted by real wages being paid; however, there were some small declines in wages from time to time. Then we had the rise of the so-called third world countries, which some of these countries had just gotten their independence from European colonialism and with this the inequality began to spread because the third world countries were draining jobs from the rich countries so the 1 percent could keep even more of the money made o...