Union Perspectives

All workers need to have and study a book about labor history, what worked and what did not as written in the book “Rebel Voices: An IWW Anthology” by Joyce L. Kornbluh. She outlines how workers fought for the right to unionize, and safe workplaces that the GOP are working overtime to erode. When I Was going to night school on the GI Bill, a person in my class, who was a human resource worker at Point Mugu Navy Base in Oxnard, CA, told me why the antiunion people were beating labor’s ass on most fronts in the work place was because the union-busting people studied labor history and used it against workers. They knew what worked and didn’t work and acted accordingly. Most labor people don’t know their labor history. If you don’t know yourself you will lose half of your fights. If you don’t know your enemy you will most likely lose all of your fights. In Kornbluh’s book, she shows how education of the workers during the 1800 and early 1900s on the tactics unions used, like direct ac...

Extra money for low to moderate income families for use of our Commons was almost realty until the lobbyists swarmed Capitol Hill like locust on crops. This rent for our Commons was about to be voted upon as recently as 2009 with President Obama in the White House and Democrats controlling both the Senate and the House—and then the legislative process began …. California Congressman Henry Waxman joined with then Massachusetts’ Congressman Ed Markey, who is now a senator, to draft a climate bill and get it passed. Both congressmen are long-time environmentalists. In 2008, Markey introduced a carbon-capping bill that would have auctioned off 94 percent of the permits and the money made would be divided between low and moderate income families. Markey declared at the time the atmosphere—the air we breathe—is a sacred public trust that belongs to all of us. It is one of our Commons. Its use shouldn’t be used to enrich corporate polluters at citizens’ expense. One year later all that Markey...