Union Perspectives

Billionaires want to save the capitalism. There are and have been many people with ideas on how to fix the capitalist system so that it will work for everyone. Thomas Piketty (who wrote Capital), Bill Gates, (who created Microsoft) Thomas Paine (who wrote Common Sense Rights of Man), and Peter Barnes (who wrote With Liberty and Dividends For All). There is no silver bullet to fix capitalism. It will take many measures, such as bringing back the cash corporation and the very rich have stashed in offshore accounts. This money needs to be brought and put back into the flow of capitalism. The estate tax needs to be reinstated; the practice of inheriting extreme wealth from one generation to the next in families just allows the family’s power to grow with each generation. There is also the idea of charging payment for the use of our Commons, which some people and large corporations use freely, such as the air, water, minerals, courts, laws, protection of patents, our armed forces protect...

What do the jobs look like today compared to the past? One is very few jobs today will last until retirement. Another is jobs today will probably be lost to automation of some type. All workers should have skills in a profession and a trade of some sort. Most jobs today do not pay enough for one person to support a family, which was not true in 1950s—1980s. It was in the 1980s—the Nixon and Reagan years when unions came under attacked by the anti-union GOP and amped up in the 1990s when the corporate Democrats helped the GOP—in the Clinton years. The work available today is becoming more gig jobs or part-time jobs than full-time work. It’s only part-time jobs coming out of labor centers like the temp agencies, Labor Ready, Adecco or Professional Staffing Solutions. The temp agencies convince company owners that they will save money them by doing all the paperwork connected to employees, and, in return, the company pays the hired workers and the temp agency. If a hired workers gets $1...

Now that the $15 an hour minimum wage has legs, we should start the fight for how people have little chance to find a lucrative job that will last their entire working life and end with a pension and healthcare. The manufacturing jobs are either relocated to another country or just about to be eliminated by machines or robots. Retail is going by the wayside as the brick and mortar stores are replaced by online shopping. What’s left are tech jobs, service jobs, and the best—building trade jobs, which need to be union with their own healthcare, pensions and their own four-to-five-year paid training programs. The unions and workers who support them now need to fight for Project Labor Agreements on all government projects. The union workers also need to vote for leaders who will support unions and the unions need to organize all non-union trades. Also, we need to support non-labor incomes, like the Universal Basic Income (UBI) and get behind corporations paying rent for our Commons. Whe...

We need healthcare for everyone and Medicare single payer is the best way to go. This would relieve businesses of the burden of healthcare and make our goods more competitive overseas where labor is cheap. Think of car and truck manufacturing not having to pay for healthcare for their workers. This would cut the cost of their vehicles, which would give them more profits or make for more sales. Either way, it is a win. Then there are all the manufactured products, like televisions, washing machines and dryers, stoves or steel, plus all of the technology products we sell here and abroad. The local government employees would not have to ask the states, counties, and cities for healthcare for the law enforcement, firefighters, and maintenance workers, again saving money for the government, which could go toward healthcare taxes. There is argument that we need a healthcare safety net for all, but disagreement on the best way to achieve it.Some Democrats, including Senator Bernie Sanders ...

If you have a job that doesn’t pay enough to live on or to take care of your family would $5,000 or $20,000 extra for a family of four help if you received this once a year? This could be done in in the U.S. by charging rent for the use of our commons and for carbon taxes, financial transactions, intellectual property and technological infrastructure seeded with public money. Then there is also our natural resources, such as natural gas, oil, iron, gold, silver, copper, trees, water, clean air—all of these and more is considered sovereign wealth, which belongs to every U.S. citizen. Each citizen should have one share in America and receive each year dividends. Just like the corporations, which are using our commons for the most part free and it is time for them to pay up. This is what is done in the state of Alaska with its oil product. The citizens receive about $2,000 each a year as compensation. Most wage slave people here in the U.S. and around the world do not understand the conce...