Union Perspectives

May 1st traditionally celebrated the transition into spring, but the day became a union rallying call when a major strike took place with more than 300,000 workers leaving their jobs in 13,000 businesses across the U.S. It began in Chicago when 40,000 workers went out on an eight-hour strike on May 1, 1886 at the Haymarket Square. May 1 became International Workers’ Day to commemorate the loss of life and injuries sustained by protestors when a bomb went off and law enforcement used gun fire to squash the peaceful protest. Tomorrow, May 1, workers from Amazon, Walmart, Target, Whole Foods, Instacart, and FedEx, tired of feeling invisible and taken for granted by the corporations and the public at large, are set to go on strike. Many of these companies have not offered the best working conditions, but now with a deadly virus underway workers are being treated as if they are expendable. Suddenly deemed essential workers for a fraction of the wages, these workers’ health is being jeop...

April 15 is the big one! This rally will be worldwide for the fight for $15 an hour minimum wage. This fight is for not only fast food workers, but for all low-wage workers, such as adjunct professors at colleges, who are now part-time and non-tenured with no pensions, home healthcare workers, airport workers, childcare workers, Walmart-Target-Kmart-Home Depot, workers, car wash workers, auto lube workers and the list goes on. Corporations have decimated the pay of workers by demeaning the jobs as only unskilled or uneducated or student work jobs as if that had anything to do with the work being done. There will be actions on 170 college campuses, as well as cities around the U.S. and abroad. There will be around 2,000 groups, including Jobs with Justice and the Center for Popular Democracy will show their support, as well. This will be the largest mobilization America has ever seen in decades. This push is being headed and supported by the Service Employees International Union. This ...

In the1920s, the corporations representing capital (money) mobilized for war of the extermination on all labor organizations in the United States, and they never stopped. They have just changed tactics and leaders overtime. Today, the one who is leading this charge is back by the Koch brothers is Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker, who recently signed the right to work legislation into law. This means workers in a union do not have to pay union dues, but still get the same union benefits as dues paying workers. How the hell does this work? When they take away union funds it is like tying one hand behind your back, and then trying to fight a two-handed bully. The anti-union money people have never given up on breaking unions or breaking up the New Deal. The other tactic union busters use is the old divide and conquer—pitting working people against working people so they will tear down their neighbors, who are lucky enough to have union jobs—and this seems to be working. Labor was warned ...

Joe Hill wrote in 1914 about how to make work for the unemployed, which was about, “How to use new ways and tactics of carrying on the class struggle to emancipate the workers from wage slavery. The best way to strike is to strike on the job. First, present your needs or demands to the bosses. If they should refuse to grant them, don’t walk out and give the scabs a chance to take your place. “No, just go back to work as though nothing had happened and a new method of warfare, which is to slow down things [like accidently unplugging a refrigerator or copier, its passive sabotage] every way possible as not to give the bosses a good reason to fire you, and when things begin to happen be careful not to fix blame on any certain individual unless that individual is an undesirable from a working class point of view. “The bosses will soon find the cheapest way out of it (the slowdown) is to grant your demands. This is not a mere threat; it has been successfully tried more than once. Striking o...

Unions must show what they can do for their membership at this time—not what they have done before. People have a short memory. You are always judged by your last win or loss and unions cannot at this time survive on past laurels. Should labor at the AFL open the ranks, sort of like the old Minneapolis Teamsters Local 74, like a worker assistance program where you ask the workers to pay a small amount each month to belong? In return they would receive information on which labor union needs workers or apprentices, provide news on labor rights, such as federal and state laws, maybe even an electronic labor newspaper and an Internet resource center for information. The non-union workers would have support in their working place protests such as people, law advice, and maybe even representation by an attorney. This would be a wage slaves’ club for all non-union workers who would like to make their lives better. In the old days, this type of organization even offered cheap life insurance ...

Stand with Walmart workers this BLACK FRIDAY! All across the country the UFCW and Walmart employees are scheduling Black Friday protests to bring attention to the unfair and inhumane treatment Walmart workers receive from this company. Walmart rakes in more than $16 billion in annual profits yet the most of its workers earn less than $25,000 a year, forcing them to either work more jobs or to receive government assistance. The dream of a national strike or protest about wages and workers’ rights, like France and other countries do, has always been thought of as impossible here in the U.S. Now with large mass corporations like Walmart, Target, Home Depot, McDonalds, Taco Bell, and Burger King, which are all across the U.S., it’s now feasible to have a national protests on the Black Friday. So far this year at least 27 Walmarts across the U.S. are scheduled to have Black Friday protests and we can only hope there will be more at other corporations that are exposed for paying slave wag...

Why do the wage slaves of the world continue to stand still for the way corporations like WalMart treat their workers? When they pay “starvation wages,” work their employees part time to keep from paying benefits and now cutting part-time workers’ health coverage. This latest move affects 30,000 employees or about 5 percent of their workers. This follows on the decisions by Target, Home Depot and others to completely eliminate health benefits for part-time workers, which also pay “starvation wages.” These corporations could not stay in business without the work of the Have Nots, Have Littles and Have Nothing. As long as we shop at these businesses they have no reason to change their business practices of screwing over the lowly workers. Instead, they’re letting the public, the Have Littles and the Not Have Much foot the bill for the low-wage workers to receive food stamps and other government assistance that the workers wouldn’t need if they were paid a living wage. When we subsidize ...

The Art of War says that you must know your enemy and, yes, there is a war between the 1 percent’s very rich and the corporate chief executive officers against the toilers. The toilers do not know just who their enemies truly are because the anti-union, anti-worker corporations spend our money (from buying their products) to pound us with misinformation The inequality keeps the toilers heads bent low trying to just trying to scrap by with minimum wage jobs that they don’t have the time of energy to stand up, look around and compare notes with other toilers and understand what they, the 1 percent, are doing to us. The worst part is we give them the bullets (our money) to use against. When we do business with a store that belongs to the Chamber of Commerce, which is just a union by a different name. They use their dues to lobby against unions and higher wages for the workers, safety laws and benefits. They look out for themselves, not the workers who will eventually be their customers. ...

All countries are only as good as their people. They are the engines of any country. The engines should be as powerful as possible in order to do this we need the best educational system, which should be free up to the bachelor’s degree, or an apprenticeship of four to five years for a trade, and a free healthcare system. The workers must have the wages to be able to save for a good pension when they retire, which would mean they would be productive on a volunteer basis. The workers must be paid a good living wage, starting at $15 to $18 an hour. Paying people well for their work would release funds for government assets, which could be used for the cost of free education and healthcare. Also, the workers would be tax payers, instead of being like the Walmart stores in Minnesota with its 20,997 employees, which creates a public burden of $92.7 million a year in government assistance for these employees. Most workers are 35 years old and 88 percent are 20 years or older. This is just wh...

The oligarchies do control the world with money. They have bought and paid for our elected politicians and entire governments. What we usually see is the one person at the top who we then direct all our attention to, but we should look at this oligarch control as an iceberg, as the really destructive danger is not seen. The unseen, larger portion of the iceberg is under the water and this is why we, the 99 percent, get blindsided by people who we think are running our country, like presidents Ronald Reagan, George W. Bush, and Wisconsin governor Scott Walker and in Russia Putin. They are all just figureheads controlled by the 1 percent oligarchies and their corporate money, which is all part of the underwater part of the iceberg. The oligarchies formed organizations, such as American Legislative Exchange Council or ALEC to usurp our country’s political process. The ownership of countries by the oligarchies has never worked out or lasted long. After they have all the money and power th...

The parasites of the economy and the capitalist system are people like Sheldon Adelson, who makes nothing, but just sucks money out of the economy. The people who lose money in his casinos are really just taking money out of circulation and the consumer market. The gamblers get nothing for their money and Adelson banks it away because the House always wins. Adelson makes nothing and gamblers buy nothing, which is a net zero gain for jobs and the economy. Adelson has nothing to spend his profits on so he buys Republican politicians, instead. Adelson, like the Koch brothers, wants to control our government so he can change our laws to benefit him, which would remove even more money out of our consumer-driven economy, and eventually destroy our economy and our democracy as we know it. These types of parasites are like leeches sucking the life blood from all working wage slaves. What do we do? First, each person must understand what they are involved in or purchasing with their money and t...

There is hope for the wage slaves and it is coming from the low-wage workers, who have very little. These are the people who will raise the ship of wages and produce jobs. For they will force the oligarchies and corporations, who are sitting on trillions of dollars either in the U.S. or in offshore bank accounts to pay their workers a living wage. These greedy elitists should be made to stop receiving corporate welfare, which is when the 99 percent pays taxes to support their en slavers while workers are trying to live on minimum wage or part-time work. The workers must be supplemented by at least by at least $8 to $10 per hour just to survive so when we (not me) shop at Walmart and think we are getting a good deal on something made in China you’re not. For you are helping Walmart pay its workers through your taxes, which could be used for something benefitting our country and not billionaires because the states, counties and cities have to make up the difference of low wages in food ...

Why do local small businesses support the International Chamber of Commerce when they support low wages for the 99% wage slaves? They are also one of the oldest enemies of labor unions and the 99%. This never made sense to me for the wage slaves are the ones who buy the goods from the businesses who support the Chamber, when the Chamber ultimately doesn’t not support them. You would think the local businesses would want the slave wages to have more money to spend on the businesses goods and which would mean more jobs to make goods to sell and also pay more taxes to support local government. With this in mind, what sense does it make when businesses think they win when they can defeat a prevailing wage job, such as the Turtle Bay Sheraton Hotel in Redding, CA? Their win took $1.1 million in wages out of the pockets of the local wage slaves and therefore the local economy. You would think that the local businesses would be up in arms. One-point-one million dollars would have been a n...

There can be no doubt that we, the 99%, are in a class war and the oligarchies are draining the treasury of the 99% and the unions, which a classic way to win a war (Art of War). When we, the 99%, have to defend our labor rights, voting rights with a court system that is slanted toward the corporations - Citizens United - (which only supports the 1%) then the oligarchies can, with unlimited money, buy lawmakers, governors, judges and presidents of the United States, which creates a plutocracy-type government. We are very close to a plutocracy government and getting closer with each election. The Koch brothers and Karl Rove’s GPS Crossroads are dedicated to this end. One of the things that can turn this around is the 99%, OWS movement, with the help from labor. Right now labor is working at a disadvantage because of some labor contracts that labor has entered into, such as no strikes, but they might just Wobble like in the old days of IWW movement or when a state or other entity votes...

If we depend on courts and lawyers we will lose the battle on union rights. Wisconsin Supreme Court recently handed Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker a sledgehammer to further destroy union rights. I was told a long time ago by a union organizer that when we left the streets and picket lines and turned over our fight to the lawyers and court system is when we started to losing the battle against the GOP. Long strikes won’t work nowadays for most working families because they do not have the resources to withstand a long battle and the unions don’t have the resources to back our people. What will work is timing our moves like hit and run, old gorilla tactics. One or two days at a time pick targets where we can get the most support, most media and be able to drive our point home on what we want. Timing, planning, good communication and being well-organized is done through people all supporting each other. Even if it does not at the time affect you, but if we work together, we will bui...