Union Perspectives

California is first in labor again. Unions are back and have been driven by the low wage fast food worker. They fought hard for $15 an hour and it looks like, with the new California fast food law. They could be looking at $22 an hour, and a chance to unionize the enter fast food industry. Next step would be healthcare, pensions and vacation. If this happens California, the next states are Florida, Texas, New York and Idaho. In California, there are a half million fast food workers. This law targets bonafide abuses, but also furthers unions’ goals of collective bargaining with the entire industry instead of trying to organize fast food restaurants one at a time. Workers are now thinking about what is best for their families and are willing to fight for them and joining or forming a union is the best way, and the more that do the more will join for all like to be on the side of the winning team. But California unions now need to go out into the country. We have the large cities, but hav...

California minimum wage is going to $10-$12 is just enough to move workers off of government assistance, such as food stamps, but still does not give the workers disposal income, which will boost the economy with more jobs and more taxes for local and state coffers. It would be a step in the right direction to stop the taxpayers subsidizing corporations that pay low wages to their workers. Millionaire Representative Ron Unz, of Silicon Valley California, wants to raise the California minimum wage to $12 an hour. Governor Brown wants to raise the state’s minimum wage to $10 an hour; Seattle, WA., mayor wants the minimum wage to be $15 and this is where it should be, $15 to $16 at this time. The increase is being slow walked, but it is going to happen. Whichever state does it first will be the winner. Their jobs and their economy will be a huge success for the state, and if California voters would do the $15 an hour minimum and the legalization of marijuana, California workers and the g...

Why would a company that has work for 100 wage slaves at 40 hours a week hire 200 part-time workers at 20 hours a week? One is to stay away from them getting full-time status. Another reason is to have another trained work force in case half of their workers go on strike for higher wages and benefits. In the days of the 1920s and ‘30s there were companies which provided replacement or strike breaking workers at a price and some of these companies’ owners become very rich and famous, think Papa John’s Pizza. Today this is harder to do so the next best thing is for the Walmarts and low wage fast food companies to have another work force already in house either part time or temporary workers. Wage slaves must keep this in mind when there is the same amount of work and the companies are cutting your hours and if this happening then they are preparing for a strike. So when you see this happening workers should make their move before the replacement workers are trained, which the present wo...

The $15 to $16 an hour minimum wage that the low-wage workers are asking for has a lot of positive to it, such as helping to end corporation welfare and these large corporations like Walmart paying below living wages and then the tax payers having to supplement their workers by way of food stamps and Medicaid, school lunches. Usually the cost for a low-wage worker is about $10,000 a year so if the corporations paid a living wage like they should, that corporation welfare money could go toward other things, which would benefit all of the 99 percent, and, of course, better wages would mean more jobs and maybe some families could go back to a one-wage earner per family, which would be good for the children, in some cases. In order to get the win on wages each wage slaves must want it and be willing to make the commitment just like going on a diet, quit smoking, getting sober. Each person must do it and then find others with the same will and tenacity to stay with it until you win. But jus...

The Tooth Fairy recipients will get a 23 percent increase in payouts for each tooth, which is now worth $5 a piece, and some people are thinking fast-food or low-wage workers should work for minimum wage. In some states, low earners are getting just a little above what a kid gets for a tooth. Now the owners and bosses should be the only tight asses against the $15 to $16 living wage, but I am appalled at the stupidity of some low-wage workers, who think the $15 to $16 an hour would be too much. You would think these ignorant people owned the companies. The naysayers don’t understand that the world is made up of the 99 percent and the 1 percent, and they sure as hell are not, or probably will never be, the 1 percent. The 1 percent does not need any help fighting to keep the minimum wage as it is. In fact, they would like to have it lower or none at all where you become a true wage slave. The only reason I can think of for why a ‘have very little’ would not want a $15 to $16 wage is if ...

During the years of 1905-1908, IWW’s Big Bill Haywood wanted to organize the forgotten unskilled workers (think fast food workers of today), those without votes – without unions. Haywood once said at a meeting, “I do not care a snap of my fingers whether or not skilled workers join the IWW movement at this time.” He shouted at the meeting, “We are going down into the gutters to get at the mass of workers and bring them up to a decent plane of living (think minimum wage $15 to $16 per hour). It is these ‘have nothings’ who will be the shock troops of labor who will establish the first beach head in the resistance of the entrenched industry so that later labor organizations can win what is rightfully theirs for the masses. Eugene Debs, labor leader, said the industrial workers are organized not conciliate, but to fight the 1% oligarchy class. The oligarchies own the tools they do not use. The workers use the tools they do not own. So you can see there is power with the wage slaves. They...

The oligarchies are on the run. We need to keep the pressure on all fronts and it looks like with the election win for the wage slaves that there is an awakening and some of the tactics are of the old revised IWW tactics, which is power of the people, such as the Black Friday Walmart wage slave walkout and a big surprise of the 50,000 fast food workers in New York City. This could not only be an awakening, but the tipping point for organizing wage slaves in all retail jobs for a worker should be able to buy what they sell or be able to buy food they sell to others. If you don’t make enough money then you must depend on food stamps. We worker wage slaves are subsidizing the money people we work for by the low wages that we accept for our labor. We sell our lives one hour at a time for not even substitute wages just to make the 1% richer and richer. I think the tide is about to change and we all 99% must put aside all native thinking and support each other for 99% will beat the 1%. Jus...