Union Perspectives

The sheet metal unions are losing the war against nonunion sheet metal shops: Local 36 lost five shops; Local 170 lost two; and Local 18 lost three. We should be adding union shops and members not losing them. Are sheet metal unions giving up on organizing union shops and acquiring new members? I live in northern California, specifically Shasta County, north of Marysville, in the jurisdiction of Local 104. There are now no union shops north of Marysville. The nonunion shops number about fifty to sixty shops and that is a lot of union work lost. We, in Shasta-Trinity counties, just passed a $138 million school and union college prevailing wage jobs and no union workers received any of the $138 million in jobs. I have never seen any union reps on the jobs, checking prevailing wages or talking to the nonunion workers about unionizing. It appears like sheet metal unions have just given up the entire northern section of California, where the nonunion shops will just get stronger and keep e...

Finally the Building Trades have taken a look back at union history and have seen how union shops have started, which was mostly by union members who wanted to be their own boss. These people already knew what the union was about and knew the trade, and if treated properly, they’d become good union shops. One way to get a union sheet metal shop in their area is for workers to start their own shop. It’s not as hard as it might seem. I started out as a so-call shop boy and then I became a journeyman sheet metal worker. After gaining some experience a friend and I opened our own sheet metal shop. We did stripe malls, custom houses, housing tracts, and multi-story apartments. We were and stayed union and had good union workers. It’s not as complicated as it might seem. The person who hired me as a shop boy was a sheet metal worker and started his shop, True Temp in Ventura County. Then there was a shop started by a worker in Oxnard-Ventura County, and there were four shops started by sh...

Money is the fuel of the capitalist system, but if money is loaded into a boat and most of it is loaded to one side, the boat will capsize and sink. For the boat to float the money must be at least a little evenly spread out just to keep it afloat and if it does not even out then the boat will list to one side and just go in circles. Wage inequality is a perfect example of a listing boating ready to sink the economy. Wage inequality promotes austerity that sinks the boat even quicker. The $15 to $18 an hour minimum wage along with a free education to the bachelor’s level could rectify and keep the capitalist system afloat. If this would come about we then could start training our workers like our union construction trades have done. Each trade has their own four-to-five-year apprenticeship training programs. Then they become a journeyman worker, such as sheet metal, plumber, carpenters, iron workers, electricians, heavy equipment and construction, among others. This should start in hig...

For unions to be strong, they must be prepared and protect the one power they have over the 1 percent anti-union oligarchies. That is the strike. In the past, strikes always ended with losses on the wage slaves’ side because the unions never have enough resources to keep their workers fed or housed and money enough to keep the workers’ bills paid. This is a ploy the money people have used against wage slaves. They make it easy for anyone to get credit and credit cards, which the oligarchies control all aspects of credit cards from the limits to the interest rates, and when the average person needs more money they are encouraged them to tap into the equity in their homes. With no savings, large debts, it does not take long to break a worker and the strike ends. The oligarchies literally starve workers back to work. The unions must make a concerted effort to educate their union members on money management and how to survive a strike long enough to prevail in the strike. One thing that...