Union Perspectives

The time is right for unions to organize and rebuild unions that will take the fight to the GOP anti-union/anti-worker machines. We should just look at how the West Virginia teachers won their fight for a wage increase. The teachers were organized, they planned every detail of their walkout in advanced to ensure the success of the walkout. The organizers worked with students’ parents and local businesses to ensure the walkout would not harm those in need. Daycare centers and meals were organized in advanced so the students who were dependent on the school lunches would not go without. This walkout was not just a single school, but the entire state. Had the organizer organized one school, the board of trustees would have beat the school employees back, but organizing the entire state, the sheer number of employees standing together against a single state entity, allowed the employees to win. If union workers follow the example of the West Virginia workers’ wildcat strike or what the o...

The world’s toilers have the same problems with work safety, like the Ukraine mine workers, Turkey’s mines and West Virginia’s mines. Then there are the oil refinery workers and the train workers hauling Bakken shale oil from the Canadian tar sand, which are wrecking at an alarming rate in the North American. So far in 2015 there have been eight so far in 2015 train wrecks, four in Oregon Illinois, West Virginia and two in Ontario. All these wrecks at a time when owners want to cut staff to one on the trains. This is just a fight to stay safe and alive on the jobs. Then we get to wage inequality and a living wage along with toiler’s rights in the work place like the West Coast dockworkers all 20,000 of them. The airport workers, who are making $8 to $10 an hour, should be making $15 just to make it. Also, Israel’s chemical workers walked out to block layoffs of about 840 workers—and the fight goes on and on. A meeting about the future of railroads’ safety, workers, community and the en...

Inequality means you get screwed. Large gaps in educational achievement and racial divides all make the reduction in inequality difficult. The poorest states in the USA are Montana, Arkansas, Mississippi and West Virginia and most of these are Red states or considered Republican non-union, but right-to-work states. The Republicans will tell you wage slaves that inequality is desirable. Inequality gives wage slaves the incentive to work harder and invest. But at some point, which is where we are now, the inequality of income and wealth becomes so wide as to harm society. When most all the economic gains go to the top; the wage slaves and everyone aspires to join the top percentage, but they no longer have the purchasing power to keep the economy going. Moreover with the small number at the top 1 percent making most of the investment decisions the economy will go up and down. Also, with the 1 percent gains more wealth they also gain more political power in a disproportionate amount, whic...