Union Perspectives

How did the USA lose so much ground in the economical struggle, which has destroyed the middle class? The fight between oligarchies and the commoners began when President Roosevelt started the New Deal, which came on the heels of the 1929 Great Depression. The Great Depression was caused by the Robber Barons, the old oligarchies who destroyed the trade unions and the International Workers of the World (IWW) unions. With the IWW and the New Deal, the 99 percent came back, but forgot that in every war when one side loses they sometimes just go underground to harass and rebuild. This is what the Koch brothers did and what the billionaire party has been doing and their Holy Grail was getting control of the U.S. Supreme Court. Remember, the U.S. Supreme Court gives and takes away the Citizens United decision took the election process away from the workers and gave it to the one-tenth of the 1 percent. They have all the money and can buy or defeat any candidate. Their long-term economic goa...

What is the commonality between the old Nazi Brown Shirts of Germany, the Greek Golden Dawn Party and the USA Tea Party? One is they were funded by the oligarchies; two is they all started out as laughable, but soon became more powerful, more racist and more fascist than anyone thought possible. They are antiunion, against immigrants and will crucify anyone not willing to go along with their agenda. The Greek Golden Dawn traces their roots back to the Metaxas dictatorship in the late 1930s to the Nazi collaboration during the occupation in WWII. Now, it looks like the USA’s Tea Party is starting to use the Brown Shirts and Golden Dawn playbook and even the conservative party of England is getting on the bandwagon. It is the whole oligarchies against the proletarian class. It’s warfare: the money against the workers. The stupid people who think they belong with the rich are just bought and brainwashed. This is where the oligarchies find their troops. If these wannabe rich people woul...

It is past time for all unions and want-to-be unions to quit shooting each other in the foot. All we have to do is look back in history and see what we did wrong and what our leaders at that time did some of which still haunt us to this day. For example, one of the leaders was George Meany, head of the AFL/CIO at the time, gained control over the unions. Looking back we should have embraced Walter Reuther of the UAW. Reuther saw that we had to bring all wage slaves up to a living standard whether or not they were unionized, and we workers had a good chance with Eugene McCarthy when he ran for president. McCarthy was pro union, more than any other candidate except for maybe Roosevelt. But the unions decided to support the GOP. How did this work out for us? Hell, we even had labor unions vote for Ronald Reagan and then Reagan busted the Air Traffic Controllers Union's contract even after they voted and spent money on his election. Still the unions have not learned for the postal work...

Why doesn’t President Obama have a labor secretary like Frances Perkins in his Cabinet? Perkins was the first female Cabinet member under President Franklin Roosevelt, and there has never been a better labor secretary since. If the Obama administration does not start working for labor, then why will labor work for them, the Democrats, then why should labor spend its money on federal elections? At this time the trend seems to be spending and working on carpeting the state legislation and government offices. This is working well for the GOP, and the labor people are seeing the results, which is detrimental to union labor. By working the states it can be more grassroots, which can more easily show our dues paying members results in their towns where the jobs are and could result in more union jobs and dues paying members. With this success then it could be transferred to the federal level of government. Frances Perkins understood what the working wage slaves needed, which was federal lab...

The thirty-two GOP governors were elected and then they got together with ALEC (American Legislative Exchange Council), the Chamber of Commerce and the Koch brothers to come up with a strategy to destroy their only competition -- organized labor. We can put people on the ground and raise some money to get people elected that will protect workers. Our question should be: Why in the hell we did not know or see what they were planning? Or did some of us know and thought it was too implausible? If we had paid attention to or remembered our labor history, specifically the air traffic controllers, we would have known the GOP eats their own. The air traffic controllers union supported Ronald Reagan and he fired the lot of them. Since President Roosevelt implemented the Social Security Act, the GOP has wanted to kill it. Today, they are making their hardest push to destroy it. Remember, the GOP symbol is an elephant and elephants never forget. Just look at what the GOP corporations have ...