Union Perspectives

As Trump sniffs around for a war to start, I thought it would be a good idea to remind people of one of the best speeches against war given by Eugene V Debs, who was imprisoned for speaking our against World War I. During one of his recent rallies, Trump encouraged his followers to join the military and show their patriotism … In part, here is Debs’ speech: “War throughout history have been waged for conquest and plunder. In the Middle Ages, when feudal lords, who inhabited the castles and whose towers may still be seen along the Rhine, colluded to enlarge their domains, to increase their power, their prestige and their wealth. They declared war upon one another. But, they, themselves, did not go to war any more than the modern feudal lords. The barons of Wall Street go to war. The fuels barons of the Middle Age, the economic predecessors of the capitalists of our day, declared all wars. And their miserable serfs fought all the battles. The poor, ignorant serfs had been taught to ...

While working, you’re selling your life one hour at a time. What is an hour of your life worth? Remember you can never get that hour back, it is gone forever. When you set a price for your hour of life, how do you do it? Are you represented by a union? Or do you just let someone else set the price for your labor? However it is done, it is not working for you or any of the other workers. Nearly one out of every five workers is in a part-time job. Two-thirds are living pay check to pay check. Most are working more hours than they worked decades ago with less vacation or sick leave days. The standard explanation for why all of this has come about is that workers are no longer worth as much as they were before the digital technology boom and globalization. So, they must now settle for lower wages and less security. But top executives of large corporations wage have gone up twenty times that of the workers to three-hundred times today. So who sets the one hour rate? Last year, Wall St...

In America today, we have the Haves and the Have Nots, which is the very rich and the poor. What is missing is the middle, which is the group that makes it all work. They are the spenders who pay taxes, raise families. They are the supporters of the very rich and the supporters of the poor. This support system has worked very well until the very rich gets greedier and begins hoarding all the cash and cutting out the middle class with inequality. Inequality is done in many ways. Some is through laws enacted that shut down unions. This defund unions, but also stops worker training apprenticeship programs the unions provide. Shutting down these programs helps to turn our country into a wasteland of poverty. With the power concentrated at the top, democracy cannot thrive. This happened in the Guilded Age at the end of the 19th century. Now it is happening today. America cannot ever be great again until there is a large middle class with good wages, healthcare, free education, and good ...

The boiling pot of discontent, fear and confusion is slashing over the lid fueled by the election, Black Lives Matter, Standing Rock protests, wage inequality, and a lot of these things are the residue of Occupy Wall Street, which did not solve much, but did start the pot boiling. Most of these concerns are not just felt here in the U.S., but are concerns for the world over. Then there is the wars, which are never ending and propagate the immigrant and refugee onslaught of the world causing more discontent wherever they go. Most of this is the result of greed by the world’s 1 percent, also known as the 1/10th percent, which is destroying the democracies of the world. So, what happens when the pot boils over? Does it extinguish the fire? Or will the world’s oligarchies try to slam a lid on the pot, and if they try the pot will blow up. We already are seeing terrorists’ activities the world over. Just how long will it be until terrorism is here in the U.S. as an everyday event? The s...

Laborers of the world over must stop depending on governments to look out for their interests. At this time no political party is working for or defending workers. Government policies now are pitting people against each other by promoting and establishing wars resulting in millions of refugees. The refugees flood host countries for safety, but end up being used as cheap labor by those benefitting from the wars the refugees are fleeing. This cheap labor is used to break the unions and labor laws and drives wages and benefits down. Nothing can stop this but the people. The governments and the oligarchies make their profits off the misery of others. Labor has always won when they were in charge. Labor laws were not put into place to help the workers, they were established by President Franklin Roosevelt to stop strikes, which were beating back the nonunion workers. The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) rules were to replace the decisions that were being made from fighting for rights...

On a night in February 1933, Frances Perkins sat in front of the newly elected 32nd president of the United States as he told her that he wanted her to be the new Secretary of Labor. Perkins told President Franklin Roosevelt she would take the job if she could do it her way. Perkins wanted: a 40-hour work week, minimum wage, work compensation, unemployment compensation, a federal law banning child labor, direct federal aid for unemployment relief, Social Security, a revitalized public employment service, and health insurance. The opposition to Perkins demands came from courts, businesses, labor unions--yes, labor unions, conservatives, and the chamber of commerce. Even with all this opposition against Perkins, a lot was accomplished. Today, we are trying to protect our Social Security, which we pay into, and even to expand it. We also want to go back to providing free college, like we used to have before politicians, like California Governor Ronald Reagan, redirected the money for f...

All labor unions must support the members of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Union (IBEU) fight against Verizon’s attack on its members. The union must win its strike for this fight is all about union busting. These measures by Verizon effects some 39,000 workers. Verizon had profits in the billions, but wants to outsource jobs and cut benefits to the U.S. workers. Verizon is not in financial trouble so the only reason it would be doing this to its workers is to bust the union. Labor cannot let Verizon win this union busting fight as it would embolden other corporations to try to bust the unions representing their workers. When President Ronald Reagan fired the air traffic controllers, the other unions did not support the air traffic controllers. For many reasons, the lack of support opened the flood gates and most all corporations saw a chance to bust unions when the anti-union people saw an opportunity to say unions were not important anymore because they do not support...

Labor needs to keep the revolution going if it wants to save the labor movement for they go hand in hand. Labor and its members are the only force that can defeat the 1 percent -1.1 percent and corporations. It looks like Hillary and by default Bill Clinton could possibly win the nomination and possibly the election, and there will not be much difference between the two, Bill and Hillary, because neither care about unions. They both are war hawks and both are corporatists, supporters of big banks and Wall Street people over us commoners. No one can count on what they say because it usually isn’t what they usually end up doing. Bernie has pulled Hillary to the left on subjects of Social Security, a minimum wage of $15 an hour, and anti-trade deals, but as soon as she is elected all these stances will revert back to her original, true beliefs. Who in the hell knows what Trump will actually do? Our only hope is staying with Bernie and if he doesn’t win, he can still be a leader in the re...

Wall Street wants the clients to keep Wall Street just as it is and for that is Bill Clinton will get another four years as president even though Hillary would be the elected president, assuming she is elected president. She cannot and will not be able to control Bill, and the establishment knows this. They all at Wall Street, corporations and big banks remember what Bill did for them at the detriment of the wage slaves. So why do the wage slaves want Hillary? This includes some of the leadership of the unions. Don’t the union leadership remember NAFTA, and Bill never helped the unions with card check or tightening up the National Labor Relations Board to help keep unions strong. Maybe it was because Hillary set on Walmart’s board of directors. Should we not expect Hillary to support a $15 an hour minimum wage? Also there is the incarceration of black Americans at a higher rate than others. This prison population exploded under Bill’s presidency and now Hillary was getting large sums ...

In 1932, Franklin D. Roosevelt won the presidency during the Great Depression. People were looking for bold leadership and that’s what’s happening now. Roosevelt’s New Deal was a package of reforms to rescue capitalism from collapse and thwart rising labor militancy from growing into independent working class political action. The Have Nots now have a long needed leader in Bernie Sanders, who has devoted his entire life for the betterment of the working class so it perplexes me as to why union members would support Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton. Though we can’t blame Clinton for her husband’s policies, such as NAFTA, mainly because she has enough baggage of her own. Unlike her opponent Sanders, Clinton supported the Iraq invasion, Wall Street bailout, authorizing the Patriot Act twice in 2001 and 2006, supports TPP, which is considered worse than NAFTA, offshore drilling that is killing our oceans, and Foreign U.S. Military intervention that is bankrupting our economy. Her top donor...

Senator Bernie Sanders will be our next president and we need to start planning now for how we will get single-payer healthcare, $15 an hour minimum wage, free college, immigration reform and taking on the banks and Wall Street, Black Lives Matter, prison/justice reform, and reduce the military industrial complex by making the Middle East deal with their problems instead of relying completely on the U.S. These are just some of the things that need to be done. Also, we, union workers-retired or still working, must ensure that Sanders doesn’t forget us and will push for card check, which President Obama promised and then sold us out. In his campaign platform, Sanders also states, aside from the above items, but also passage of the Work Place Democracy Act to strengthen the role of unions, he leads the fight for $15 and a union for fast food workers and federal contract employees, and supports the Employee Free Choice Act or card check, and equal pay for women. With all of this to do,...

When did unions lose the support and backing of the Democrats? It was after Reagan dismantled the air traffic controllers, who by the way voted for Reagan for president and donated to his campaign. After Reagan got into office it was open war against unions by the GOP, whose followers cared more about guns than their paychecks, unions or pensions. They voted against their own best interest. With the decline in money to support unions, candidates (mostly Democratic) and even the ones who said before elections they would support unions, such as passing card check, when they were elected, but then reneged once elected. This really took off under Bill Clinton, who dragged the party to a centrist position to better serve his new contributors. He dumped the unions for Wall Street money and became a front man for Wall Street, big banks and corporations, such as Walmart. DNC chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz would never have gotten away with the biased and corrupt handling of the DNC that she ha...

Wage inequality, which has led to flat family incomes and has led to $115 billion in federal loans for college. These college loans equal $7 million in student loan defaults and this in turn had led to a new industry which feeds off student loan debt. The companies are debt collectors who make calls for government contracted debt collectors. The companies making these calls are just one part of a system feeding on federal student loans. There are also debt services, refinance lender firms that help former students avoid defaulting on their loans and for profit schools that makes money as borrowers try to repay more than $1.2 trillion in government backed education debts. The beneficiaries of the loan programs are for the most part not the students, they are companies like debt services like Affiliated Computer Services Inc. Now part of Xerox Corporation and Education Management Corporation, which operates for for-profit colleges and whose largest shareholder is Goldman Sachs Group In...

Why do wins and gains for the wage slaves turn into losses? To understand this one only has to look back to the old International Workers of the World (IWW) and the Occupy Wall Street (OWS) and countries like Ukraine and the Arab Spring. The old IWW used the soapbox approach on street corners to arouse exploited workers to a spectacular and sudden fight for free speech, higher wages. And for ten years they had wins, but then failed to hold their membership. Just like the IWW, OWS also had wins in getting the 99 percent fired up over wages, Wall Street greed and they had cell phones all over the U.S. to motivate people, but again OWS failed to hold the people together. Even countries like Ukraine who fought a hell of a fight and changed its government, and now it is in trouble as it careens toward a civil war. The Arab Spring, which again changed its government, but now are in trouble. Why is it these groups didn’t plan or ever think about what they will do when or if they win, like put...

Instead of cities blaming unions and their union pensions for cities going broke, the cities should take a lesson from unions on how to negotiate with Wall Street who are the ones who, with their financial fees, are sucking U.S. cities dry. In 2014, the labor unions found that Los Angeles city had spent twice as much on bank fees in 2013 as it had on street repairs, which resulted in a campaign slogan: “Invest in our streets not Wall Street.” It was a call to the big banks and Wall Street, thugs who gamble with our pension money and are not willing to help on fees charged, which keeps going up. This is where the cities should take a page from the labor movement and bargain collectively on interest rates and other financial deals. This needs to be done now because during the last 20 to 30 years banking industry has shifted its profits schemes to now rely heavily on fees—the money charged for creating loans and packaging them into securities, selling them and servicing them. They charge...

What happened and is happening in countries like Greece, Spain, Italy, and Portugal has already happened here in the U.S. The blatant facts are it is not the fault of the borrowing people or countries; it is the reckless lending by German, U.S. and other banks or lending institutions, like Goldman Sachs. Greece should have never been let into the Euro and only met the membership criteria by working with Goldman Sachs to cook its books much to the detriment of the Greek people. The books were cooked to hide Greece’s debt with currency swaps after the 2008 crisis. The banks that lent so recklessly were bailed out and Greece was left holding the bag. The idea that Greece is to blame for its woes and should do like Ireland did is wrong. If this all sounds like we here in the U.S. have heard and seen this financial criminal behavior before, we have and again the banks and Wall Street were bailed out and the people were thrown out of their homes. At this time in Spain, nearly 350,000 Spani...

Is democratic socialism coming back, and can it pull us all together? Here in the U.S., all is divided between the Democrats and the Republicans (GOP for Grand Ol’ Party), the unions and the money people. So the winners are the people who can settle their differences the quickest. On the Democratic side, who depend upon unions for boots on the ground and money at this time probably will not happen for unions are not happy with the trade agreement and the lack of support from Democrats. The unions used to blame the Blue Dog Democrats, but now it seems that there are a lot more of the Blue Dogs-types of anti-union politicians in office. If the Democrats are going to depend on union help, they must give the unions the tools to work with because the GOP has just about emptied the union tool box with passage of Right to Work laws and attack on the right to form unions and collect dues. The GOP has kept the unions on defense, which has slowed the unions’ offence, such as with organizing new...

The very rich oligarchies buy countries, states and local governments and then pass their anti-tax policies, which over time leaves the government with not enough tax revenue to pay bills or maintain infrastructure and they then often opt for pension holidays to make ends meet, skipping payments to the pension funds. Over time this has created large unfunded pension liabilities in effected countries, like Greece and cities like Detroit, and maybe Chicago is next to borrow money from pensioners to make up for revenue shortfalls after giving corporations and the wealthy tax breaks. Now austerity hawks are using these unfunded liabilities to argue slashing pensions even though it was their own anti-tax policies that caused the problem. While it is sound public policy to use debt to fund long-term capital projects, it is deeply problematic when governments are forced to borrow money to deal with revenue shortfalls. It is even more problematic when they are doing so as a result of a concert...

We are adding thousands to the rolls of “pauperdom,” by the greedy, which should inspire labor unrest and all manners of social upheaval. Of the two—broken cities and low-wage jobs due to manufacturing being sent overseas—the only thing happening so far is the social upheaval being perpetuated by law enforcement killing black men, and labor is reacting very timid at this point. We must get people working again at living wages because unrest always follows loss of jobs, which increases inequality and lifestyle changes. When this happens, wage slaves or used to be wage slaves will do desperate things, and rather than look to the root of the problem the blame is laid at the feet of the people at the bottom of the economic ladder. In order to fix the wrongs we must follow the dots backward all the way to the money people: the oligarchies, bankers, Wall Street, and hedge funders. These greedy law breakers started the economic downfall with total disregard for the workers and their families....

The workers of the U.S. and the world are fighting, but steadily losing the fight. We now have no help from any type of government. The government and its elected officials are bought and paid for by Wall Street, Big Banks, corporations and the 1 percent. Neither party in the U.S. will now help the workers or unions. The unions are now seen as impotent in the eyes of the GOP and now a large part of the Democrats. With the loss of members comes the loss of money, which makes the unions irrelevant. At this time, the way things are going it is looking like the only thing left for the wage slaves of the U.S. and the rest of world is the streets with pitchforks. Art of War says you should never push your enemy into a corner with no option but to fight to the death. This is what is being done worldwide, in places like Ukraine, Hong Kong, Turkey, Greece, Mexico, South American countries and even in Canada. Maybe this is what the wage slaves needed to get motivated, to awake them to the fact t...