Union Perspectives

What would Mother Jones think or say about the states, Iowa, Missouri, Ohio and Arkansas, that have changed the labor laws regarding children? Many other states are working to roll back child labor laws so children can work in meatpacking plants, auto factories, logging, construction sites and bars, which would leave children to open to be exploited or injured like in the days that Mother Jones fought most of her life to get children out of these dangerous jobs and into school. At this time, sixteen year olds can serve alcoholic drinks, fourteen year olds can work in meat packing factories and it’s all being pushed by corporations. The U.S. Department of Labor says there has been a 69 percent increase in companies illegally employing children since 2018. Some blame the child labor trend on the 3.5 percent unemployment rate and the lack of workers so naturally children should forego their futures for the sake of corporate greed and claim children can get valuable work experience and he...

What happened to our celebration of May Day? The celebration of workers’ pride. I know when I worked, we all wore our hard hats with union stickers indicating our locals. We never took them off when we went to get a drink or take a break or had lunch. It was a symbol of pride. I remember in school during the 1950s, we celebrated May Day, but from I’ve seen, it’s not celebrated or explained in school. Some teachers might have the young students make spring hats, but that has nothing to do with why May Day was established. May Day or Workers’ Day or International Workers’ Day is a celebration of the historic struggles gains made by workers. In the U.S., May Day became a day to celebrate workers/laborers in 1889 to commemorate the Chicago Haymarket Riot of 1886. Today, celebrating May Day is done all over the world except, apparently, here in the U.S. If seems as if workers are looked down upon with disdain, like losers for not working harder to become rich like others have achieved. ...

The right wing governments of the world are pushing the wage slaves from the ballot box to the streets because the oligarchies have bought the ballot box. This forces the toilers to go to the streets to protest the wrongs of the right wing governments, like in Belgium, Brussels, where 100,000 workers had to take to the streets to demonstrate against planned reforms against public transport, schools, post office and other services. The government wants to cut staffing, services along with companies across the country. This is worldwide and here in the USA workers will be even more under assault by the right wing GOP for they now control 27 states, which will finish devastating the unions, and the oligarchies own the ballot boxes here also and the courts. So all that is left is the streets, which will probably be closed soon by Sedition Laws being passed by cities, counties and states, such as what was done in Ferguson, Missouri, where protestors were not able to stop walking, standing ...

There is hope for the toilers and soon to be toilers recently a mother of a 12-year-old young lady asked how to find to my blog. Her concerns were that there is no honest history books about labor and how we how we have gotten to where we are today. They do not trust our school history books to tell the whole story. This is good for to understand history one must realize that history books at their best is just a person’s view of what happened at a given time and if you have a hundred people viewing at once you get a hundred different views. So, for any given event one must look at as many views as possibly to understand what has taken place and maybe not to do the same thing or if it had a good outcome, try it again. This is why knowing your history is so important and why we need to know it. Not knowing our history can work against us if we are blind when studying history. Maybe there will be a 12-year-old person who will use history and the lessons learned to do well for the 99 pe...

Where are the Anonymous and Occupy Wall Street people have they been driven underground? Have they lost support? Lost interest? Are they in jail? Are they still alive? Or are they just beaten and scared of what the 1 percent can do to them? Of all these things I could understand, but if they have been bought off by the 1 percent, that would be the cardinal sin and I would hope for all the world’s 99 percent that being bought off is not the case. They must be given credit of starting the conversation about wage and life style inequality between the 1 percent and 99 percent. And even with other distractions, such as the revolutions in Arab Spring, Ukraine, Liberia, and Afghanistan. Of course, the USA’s local problems, plus Palestine and Israel, are distractions, but even with these distractions the main cause of the problems for 99 percent people are all the levels of inequality between the 99 percent and the 1 percent. The 1 percent with all its money and power hording will continue to...

Old anti-union and protesters’ tactics still work and are used by the corporations and large and small governments, cities, counties, state and federal. A tactic from the old days was to keep workers and workers’ families from getting together and comparing notes. The bosses worked people sun up to sun down six to seven days a week. Today, workers work two to three jobs at a time. They also used people’s ethnicity to keep people apart, such as the Irish, Asians, blacks and browns. The idea was to keep the workers from forming relationships so the bosses thought if they could keep the workers overworked, uneducated and suspicious of each other. They, the 1 percent, control the masses. The only place toilers could go and be together was church, which was again split into different religions and should be taken with a grain of salt for many were controlled by the rich. Today’s protests we see the Wall Street protesters and the police tactics, which are getting closer and closer to our m...

The true wage slave is a good union worker who usually serves a four to five year apprenticeship then begins his or her career in the building trades or other type of specialty work, such as a machinist. Once they finished their apprenticeship they are invested in their pensions, and, in most cases, with a retirement at around the age of 52 to 55 years old. If they leave the trade they cannot draw their pension until they reach 65, which keeps stability in the work force. Part of the unions’ responsibility is to ensure workers’ keep current with their training, keeps them healthy with healthcare, and even providing substance abuse care for members—so in essence unions create the perfect wage slaves. With these benefits in place, it makes it very hard to leave a union job hence unions create dedicated wage slaves and a stable work force. So why do corporations think destroying the unions is good for business? When the very people who support businesses are the ones who are getting thei...