Union Perspectives

To change the abundance of labor in the world is to put more money in the pockets of the laborer to buy the products their fellow workers are making. Otherwise, when there are more products than money, there is slump in the economy. Austerity policies, low wages and automation (robots) were also of concern in the 1950s when Henry Ford II, CEO of Ford, took Walter Reuther, head of the United Auto Workers Union, on a tour of a new engine plant. Ford gestured to a fleet of new machines and said, “Walter, how are you going to get these robots to pay union dues?” The union leader turned to Ford and said, “Henry, how are you going to get robots to buy your cars?” This type of change in the labor has created a new type of working class that swings from task to task in order to make ends meet while enduring the loss of labor rights and bargaining rights. They are called “precariat” workers, a group of workers who live on the verge of collapse due to the instability of the nature of their jobs...

In Honduras, the people are done with graft, crooked politicians and greed. With thousands in the street, they are marching to get their president to leave office and be replaced by a new, honest government. Is this what the U.S. government is headed for? If the 1 percent oligarchies can and have bought most of the governments from the federal level to the city level. It looks and sounds not much different from Honduras, maybe under different names, but the results are the same. The 97 percent of the people have lost control of their government with the loss of their vote that is now bought by billionaires. For example, to pass the Trans Pacific Partnership, congressmen John Boehner received $5.3 million; Kevin McCarthy received $2.4 million; Paul Ryan $2.4 million; and Pat Tiberi $1.6 million for their yes votes. The fight against money in politics is now fought in the streets and when this happens the blame will be in the heads of the money people who pay lobbyists. In the long run t...

Steps needed to revive the Have Nots and Have Littles to a middle class status include income inequality, which the movement for $15 to $18 an hour minimum wage will help with opportunity inequality. With more money and time, workers would have time to take night classes to improve their chances for a better job and will have more time when they don’t have to work two or three part-time jobs. Then the workers need childcare, vacations and some type of pension, which will follow them from job to job like a hybrid Social Security without changing the present Social Security system. The fly in the ointment is there is just not enough jobs worldwide and here in the U.S. and there will be even less after the passage of Trans Pacific Partnership. The capitalist system depends on the proletarians who need to be adequately compensated for their labor to have money to buy the products the capitalist system sales, which ironically are made by the labor of the proletarians. One way is a hybrid...

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...

Labor needs a worldwide movement and now is the time for the world’s labor and the proletarians are ready. Labor needs to be unified, such as Germany, South Africa and Brazil. The U.S. unions need to have a better unified political agenda. The U.S.at this time is ranked at the bottom in workers’ rights by the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC). We rank four out of five in ITUC’s categories, and the ones who are five have no rule of law, like Somalia and Ukraine. The fours also include countries like Iraq, Peru, and Mexico. This should be a reality check for the U.S. unions. This was started when the AFL and the CIO merged in 1955 and never could agree on a common strategy for the common good of labor, but maybe labor is starting to wake up to the reality that labor needs to bring everyone into its fold. A good start is the $15 to $18 an hour minimum wage, which will probably be won by the people using Sycthanian tactics with significant structural reform in American politi...

Once again the oligarchies want to throw the old wage slaves under their greedy bus regarding the Greek pensions. This just shows the disdain the greedy money people think of the worker and this goes on all over the world--just look at Ukraine and Turkish miners. It is bad enough that the people who are working and driving the capitalist system of today are being deprived of their civil/human rights. This has always been the fight and workers understand this war, but when the world’s oligarchs start a war on the retired workers who are just barely making it on their earned pensions just like the governor of Wisconsin and mayor of Chicago, Illinois, are doing here. This type of conduct will not be tolerated much longer and when present wage slaves see there is no hope now or in the future when they get too old to work, what do the greedy money-grubbing GOP anti-union people think the wage slaves of the world will do? At this time we in the free world have enough enemies so why in the ...

There are just not enough jobs that pay a living wage in the world, which helps perpetuate the wage inequality and the opportunity inequality. If the world is to stay with the present capitalist system it will have to change to a hybrid system of capitalism and wages will have to be supplemented by non-labor cash or the equivalent of such. The non-labor cash is out there just not collected yet. It is could be called co-owned wealth, one could be rent from financial infrastructure, which financial firms pay nothing at this time, and another is air, which gets into carbon that causes the most harm in the atmosphere for carbon absorption. Then there is the intellectual property protection within the U.S and the worldwide, which corporations pay nothing. These are our Commons. There is also the electromagnetic spectrum used for radio, television and mobile phones. A 20 percent value added fee on those spectrum intensive industries would generate $84 billion for dividends to pay rent to the...