Union Perspectives

The GOP’s plan to take the country and kill our way of government is an old plan and it has worked in Cuba, it even worked for the U.S. to win its independence from England. China also used this plan by starting in the hills and staying away from the big cities until the leaders had a solid base in the country. The GOP started its plotting in the early 1980s. They wanted to win all local governmental seats, like water and fire boards, school boards of trustees, city councils, county supervisors and all law enforcement command elections. They stayed in small towns and got all GOP people elected. Then they got elected to state positions and went after the unions by getting right to work laws passed. Every state that has implemented right to work laws has seen the standard of living for its people decline. The GOP used to not talk much about this plan, but now they are public about it and flaunt their successes. In a Shasta County, a small county in northern California, they are now thr...

If we want to stop wars and get more jobs, we have to take the profit out of wars. We do this by nationalizing the arms production. By doing this, the government, our government, would control the so-called “military industrial complex,” as Republican President Dwight D. Eisenhower called it. The U.S. Government’s military budget for 2019 is $686 billion, that is larger than the next top five countries: China at $168.2 billion, Saudi Arabia at $82.9 billion, Russia at $63.1 billion, India at $57.9 billion and the United Kingdom at $56.1 billion. The U.S. gives Israel military aid and sells armaments to Saudi Arabia. The 2020 U.S. military budget is expected to be $989 billion. Now imagine how much of this is spent on contractors, like Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Northrop Grumman, Raytheon, General Dynamics, and the others, and then add on the tax break trump has already given these corporations. How much of this money is actually going to protect us since the threats we face now aren’t...

A Universal Basic Income (UBI) and rent for our Commons are ways to provide for the working class, who are losing their jobs to automation. With robots and wage inequality, this will be a disaster for the capitalist system as we know it. There will be no cash for the spenders who support the capitalist system by around 77 percent in spending. This can be overcome by non-labor income just like the 1 percent gets their income from dividends and property. Non-labor income in the form of UBI could be paid for by charging rent for our Commons, such as air, water, wind, sun, ecosystem, and minerals. Then there are the human-made technology, legal, roads, dams and bridges. All things our taxes pay for, which makes money for corporations. Some of these are artificial or acquired property and the invention of people. Education will not cure inequality or create more jobs, in fact, it will invent things which will end jobs. Income fell 30 percent since 1970. That was the time when one person c...

Are towns with companies where most people work better off than towns with no companies? I have seen the towns with no large companies that lasted longer because they have to diversify and not depend on one or two places for people of the town to work. I came from Dresden, a little town in Ohio. It had a company at each end of the town. One was a woolen mill. The other was a paper mill. Dresden sat between two larger towns, about 15 miles apart. Slowly the two mills shut down, but then a new company came about as a result of a local man David “Popeye” Longaberger, who started the Longaberger basket company. It became a billion dollar company and most of the town’s people worked for this company or at other businesses owned by Longaberger. When Longaberger died, the company he started in a garage started to go downhill, especially after his daughter shifted manufacturing to China, destroying the uniqueness and brand of the baskets they made. Luckily, there were the two towns borderin...

If the capitalist system is dependent on 67.5 percent spending, which is provided by the habits of the proletarians then shouldn’t the proletarians have jobs or a hybrid system of work in which they are paid a living wage of $15 to $18 an hour minimum or a temporary job or some payment for non-labor to put money in the spenders’ pockets. The money hoarders do not want to invest in factories, they want to invest in bonds, stocks or extend credit line loaning money to countries that cannot repay or student loans. So what needs to be done is to tax the cash hoarders so governments worldwide can start rebuilding the crumbling infrastructure worldwide. Here in the U.S. we need to rebuild our bridges, highways, water mains, sewers, electrical grids, railroads, schools, waterways, fiber optics, clean energy and all the jobs that would be created if we invested in these areas. If the government focused on these areas, then it would create opportunities for investors to be able to maintain or s...

The $15 to $18 an hour minimum wage fight is winning with support of the United Healthcare workers #1199 SEIU. This can be effective by targeting the international corporations that pays low wages, such as McDonalds, Walmart, and clothing factories that supply U.S. stores and colleges. There are now hundreds of people and groups across the U.S. and worldwide who are speaking out for the world’s toilers. The wage slaves are showing the low-wage unsafe corporations there is no place to hide. All toilers are demanding what is their civil rights, which is a safe place to work, a living wage, dignity, vacation pay, pensions, healthcare, and a free education to the bachelor’s level, and if the world’s wage slaves can get this then maybe they can get safe drinking water, safe food, toilets, clean air—the things that make life bearable and can give hope that their children will have a better life than the present wage slaves. We, toilers, must understand it is up to us to stop the wars and t...

Where are the thousands of low-wage workers? Why are they not in the streets? This is the time—it’s spring and the weather is nice for the offense of the Have Nots or the Have Very Littles. It is hard to justify not coming together here in the USA when we have the right to do so especially when we see Vietnamese Nike and Adidas shoe workers in Ho Chi Minh City fighting for their social gains for wages and pensions. The Vietnamese workers organized 80,000 workers at the Pou Yuen Vietnam shoe factory. Why can’t we in the Free World put together that kind of number? This shoe factory is a subsidy of a Taiwan-based Pou Chen group, which employs more than 400,000 wage slaves in the countries like China, Vietnam and Indonesia. Last year 45,000 workers at its Yue Yuen Factory in Dongguan in southern China fought and won in 11 days for contributing that was owed to them. There were 300 strikes in Vietnam in 2014. These are communist countries and the workers seem to be kicking ass and holding...

Nova Scotia’s Bill 1 is an anti-democratic and union busting bill. It is a concerted attack on healthcare workers. This is on the heels of Bill 37, passed in April, striped 40,000 healthcare workers of their right to strike. The attacks on our wage slaves are never ending and they are worldwide and here in the USA. For example, at Cablevision, which hates unions, management fired a worker of 11 years with the company who was trying to form a union. This worker joined 22 others who were illegal fired for working to form a union. Also the people of Hong Kong are still in the streets, but how long before China cracks down on them? One of the protesters leaders is a courageous 17-year-old man, Joshua Wong. He knows he’s fighting for his and other young people’s futures and it’s an all or nothing situation at this point. He is the hope for the younger generation. He has been arrested, and we must all keep him in our thoughts and pressure the government to release him. World Day for Decent ...

The best vacation a working slave could go on is a protest for higher wages or a protest for the right to form a union. Consider it an educational vacation that a toiler can take their families and friends on and save money while increasing your chances of gaining more. The fight for workers’ rights and a living wage is worldwide. Some of the protests are against JetBlue fast food places, day laborers, postal workers, rail workers, teachers, nurses, car dealerships, in-home helpers, and lamp factory workers. These are just a few areas in the U.S., but Canada there is a teachers’ strike on wages and class size. In China, Apple parts plants are on strike; North London care workers are on strike regarding pay cuts; and then we have construction workers striking in Turkey. The death of ten construction workers is a result of profit driven greed and a disregard for worker safety while the toilers are still dealing with Ukraine and Russia, Poland. So if workers would like to do something goo...

Why it is so hard for the toilers to understand that capitalist system and that it is rigged against them? The system is rigged in favor of the 1 percent. Even small business owners don’t understand this. This is not to say that the toilers cannot win the war of wage and living standards inequality. In order to do this, the toilers must understand the basic rules of the capitalist system. The governor of California, Jerry Brown, explained this is a speech the other day to some labor groups. He said if the consumers are up to their eyeballs in debt, aren’t making a decent wage, how the heck are they going to buy anything? If they don’t buy anything, the economy doesn’t go forward and doesn’t work. This was well said, but he could have also said that the capitalist system is driven 67.5 percent by spending, which proves that when insufficient wages are not high enough for the toilers to have enough money left over after paying for their basic needs (rent, food, debts) to purchase some d...

There is not much the oligarchies fear or respect, but one is strong unions, who are organized. Oligarchies don’t care that unions represent the interests of hard working people who earn them their wealth. They don’t respect unions because union members know and trust each other. They have a fairly good education regarding their line of work and want a better life for themselves and their families. Also, union members will fight for their countries and jobs when called upon. Just like the miners, rail workers, and other workers in Ukraine who are pushing back the Russian-back separatists. Also, the miners in Turkey are fighting for job security, both in maintaining their jobs and in doing their jobs in the wake of the 300 miners’ deaths. The mine collapse was due to safety cuts caused by greed and indifference toward the miners. Turkey is not the only country with poor mining safety. In the U.S., mines have a lack of safety enforcement and a rise of Black Lung disease killing 10,000 mi...

Don’t forget your best defense strategy is a good offense strategy. So when the money people, who are mostly GOP anti-union people with a strategy of keeping the “have nots” in a defensive mode trying to protect what little they have. This is when a good offense toward higher wages, like $15 to $18 an hour will be the most effective way to defend what’s left and make headway toward a better wage and working conditions. This is the time for all wage slave workers to band together: union, nonunion, Democrat, GOP, independent, Green Peace or Libertarian, which all are being beaten down in life and on the job with low wages and the ones who don’t have jobs and are just trying to survive with no food stamps or unemployment checks. There is no reason why all workers and non- workers cannot work together and vote for people who will look out for your interest. People who have a proven track record and not one who say what you want to hear, but are actually working for the oligarchies, like...

The Dow Jones drops 318 and experiences the worst day since June. The Stock Market is down and people are asking why. It is very simple; you just have to go to the very bottom of the capitalist system, which is the wage slaves, who are the consumers in a capitalist consumer system. So the answer is obviously wage inequality. The greed of the oligarchies has caused the Stock Market to fall and it will continue to fall until the greedy loosen their pocket strings. China’s manufacturing has dropped, and as a result the country now uses less oil, iron, coal, which puts wage slaves out of jobs and creates a ripple effect upon other countries, such as those in Europe. These countries are also seeing a drop in consumerism. It all goes back to disposable income in the pockets of the “have nots,” who actually spend the money. U.S. workers should be making $15 to $16 an hour, which would be a huge money infusion into our capitalist consumer system. However, with no money to spend we end up w...

If capitalism, as we know it today, is to survive the oligarchies will have to stop the war against the wage slaves. Without wage slaves there will be no capitalist system. The workers make the products, they buy the products, and use the products, which make the oligarchies rich. There are two dangers to capitalism; one is oversupply, the other is shortage of buyers, which can be remedied by higher wages for the workers or new customers from low-wage countries—and—this brings us back to wages and disposal income spent on products and other basic needs. The old International Workers of the World union workers were way ahead of the times when they sought to enlist workers from around the world as one, with no country borders, which meant that they would not fight in wars for they believed that all wage slaves were brothers and sisters. The oligarchies want to keep a way to split the work force, which makes it easier to control the wage slaves, but it is changing for now all workers ca...

Nonunion employers’ feel they own their wage slaves and today it is the same as it was in the 1800s when the boss lined up the wage slaves and marched them to the polling places to cast their vote and told the employees who to vote for. If they did not vote the way the employers dictated they would be fired. Another insult that wage slaves were not paid for that day. Here it is, the 2012 election, and the employers are using this same tactic: coal miners marched out and made to stand behind a GOP presidential candidate and told to donate to the candidate’s campaign and weren’t paid for the time they had to stand behind that candidate. Companies are many who force their workers to do what they want even when the wage slaves are on their own time. The employers tell or have the slaves sign contracts that dictate what the employee can say or write on social network sites or letters to newspapers, agreeing not to join a union or dropping out of a union in order to get a job with a compan...

One thing that might help the 99ers and our countries workers get back to work is to not cut wages to keep work here. The corporations and the right say cutting wages stimulates job creation. This is a lie. Soon the 99ers will have no money to buy anything. What we can do to make our corporations more competitive in the world is have single payer-national healthcare or at least right now expand Medicare coverage (lower the eligibility age). This would take the burden off the corporations that provide healthcare which would drop the employee cost. Germany has high labor costs, but it is doing very well in the global economy. It is the most successful social democracy in the world right now. It has a large trade surplus and one reason for this is it has a whole different type of corporations with workers making up one half of the board of directions, and the workers have privileged positions in the company and real power and responsibilities. The Germans also have government sponsor...

We can create new jobs and new manufacturing right here in the USA. We could create jobs just like China did and I mean lots of jobs, and at the same time help enlarge and support the businesses that are still here. Remember when Wal*Mart went from all American made to telling their vendors that if they wanted to continue to do business with them the companies would have to send their manufacturing businesses or shops overseas - mostly to China and other countries U.S. corporations take advantage of. The Chinese government, among other countries, has a buy China products only policy; but we don’t and we continue to be subjugated -- at the mercy of others. So why can we not encourage these businesses into bringing these shops back to the USA. All Wal*Mart would have to say is if you want to sell to us your product in their stores the manufacturer’s product would need to be made or - at least for the time being - assembled in the USA. If we could persuade Wal*Mart, Home Depot, Target o...

Labor has few places where we can call attention to the needs of the workers. One of the places that unions do have control is the Longshoremen; they control the docks, the shipping out and the goods coming in from China or wherever. This is a very important high ground for labor for when being attacked, you want the high ground (Art of War). Is this why there is now dissension on the docks of Longview, WA. As I understand it, a new company took over the dock and brought in another so-called union to do the work. The Longshoremen’s union is fighting back very hard, in the tradition of the Wobblies, to keep their work. What and why did this happen? Is this a divide and conquer, antiunion, GOP-corporation-driven strategy? We do not need this at this time. If it is just union driven, our union leaders need to step in and resolve this conflict. If it is antiunion driven then labor needs to cut them off at their knees. The Wobblies would not have stood by and allowed this to happen. Do ...

Plutocracy is a form of government that is ruled by the very rich and the corporations. Those with money have the power. They can finance the election of politicians they want in office and the president they want, who in turn can appoint the judges from the federal level all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court. Once the rich and corporations get this in place, then we have a plutocracy. How close are we, the United States, now? Once plutocracy is in place, how can we change this back to a true democracy? When the tea party followers say they want to take their government back, just who do they want to take the country back from? For the courts and the GOP are running our government as a plutocracy and our democracy government is becoming less and less. The state governments are being bought and paid for by the Koch brothers, Carl Rove’s group and the chamber of commerce’s money from China and who knows what other countries. All of these entities buy our elections. Other local money ...

Just not in the U.S.A. Big box stores are told by governments that if they want to operate in their countries the stores have to allow unions to exists or form in their stores. For example, Wal*Mart had to allow its stores in South Africa, China, Brazil, Argentina, and even the England to form unions --- everywhere it seems except in the United States. Why is Wal*Mart spending millions of dollars fighting pro-union legislation, when it could be spending that money on its American workers. Why are other countries taking care of their workers, but our country isn’t? What the hell? It looks like these governments are helping their people. Are their workers more appreciated than our people? Like I’ve said before, the corporations can ship our jobs out of country, but they will then ship their goods back to this country to sell. This is when we need to organize. This is our opportunity to organize the big box stores. Our government could help us by passing the Employee Free Choice Act (...