Union Perspectives

Are unions paying attention to the eroding child labor laws? I think all union members should be watching and pushing back against this. We, union people, should not allow all the work of Mother Jones to be lost just because we don’t care or understand what will be lost and how it will effect the labor market, jobs, wages, health and safety for all workers. The child labor laws were hard to win because the big corporations were making a lot of money from children doing very hard and dangerous jobs when they should be in school, and maybe just having a fun summer like children should have during their break from school instead of making a rich corporation richer. If the GOP succeeds in destroying most of the child labor laws, then unions must get these young workers into unions where they will have some protections from being exploited by these corporations and take advantage of the children and their parents. But that should not be unions first priority—that should be protecting child...

Our Social Security is now at risk thanks to the Republicans. As France has now had their retirement age increased from 62 years to 64 years of age. The people of France fought and are fighting hard, but not hard enough or in the right way, it appears. Their leader circumvented protocol to ram this retirement age higher. Is there anything else they can do? We, here in the U.S., must look hard at how the French lost because if the Democrats lose the next presidential election, the oligarch’s control of the Republicans will use the French’s playbook to raise our retirement age to 72 and possibly cut our Social Security pensions. We need to get ready for the fight to save our Social Security and retirement age as we have them right now. The Republicans have been trying to to destroy Social Security since we started receiving it. It was our old age safety net. They will never stop just like they didn’t stop trying to overturn Roe v Wade, which no one thought could ever happen. At least n...

The U.S. Labor Movement … “Workers of the world awaken. Break your chains. Demand your rights. All the wealth you make is taken, by exploiting parasites. Shall you kneel in deep submission from your cradle to your grave? Is the height of your ambition to be a good and willing slave?” Joe Hill Workers of the world, 1910 “When silence isn’t golden. It is we who plowed the prairies, built the cities where They trade, dug the mines and built the work shops; endless miles of railroad land. Now we stand outcast and starving, midst the wonders we have made; but the union makes us strong.” Ralph Chaplin Solidarity Forever, 1915 “The Revolution will not be televised. when you get too old to produce anymore, they hand you your hat and they show you the door. Too old to work, too old to work, when you’re too old to work and you’re too young to die. Who will take care of you, how will you get by when you’re too old to work and you’re too young to die?” Joe Glazer Too Old To Work, 1956 These a...

Why are the building trades not organizing? At this time when there are and will be lots of prevailing wage jobs starting. This is the time to go after non-union trade workers to get new members, which will turn into more union shops or out non-union shops out of business since they will not have trades people, who will work for them. We need to keep our money for organizing, and tell the politicians we will give you votes but not our money until you are elected and do something, like better fund the National Labor Relations Board and vote for the Protecting the Right to Organize Act or PRO Act. The trades people need to stop giving up on the rural part of the country, like the Democrats have done, retreating and holding up in cities with larger populations, which turned out not to be as effective a strategy as they thought it would be. All it did or does is slow the bleeding. So we, labor and labor friendly political people need to go back to the counties, like in far northern and eas...

Labor should cut spending on politicians and put the money every last dime into organizing the ninety percent who have no union. This is the only way we, the unions, will ever be relevant again. And then, the politicians will come calling on us again. If we do support a politician, we can demand more tools for the ninety percent to get a union. Can anyone list how the union money contributed to politicians has actually helped unions as a whole? At this time, the AFL-CIO’s budget for new organizing is but a sliver of its budget in comparison for political contributions. This will not get us new members or more union jobs. The politicians will not do our work for us. We need to realize that we have to help ourselves. To have ninety percent of non union people pool to work for is a good thing to take advantage of. There will not be a better time than in the next two years. We have to force the Democrats to fund and rebuild the National Labor Relations Board, that has been starved of resou...

What type of union person are you? Have you even thought about this? There is a theory put forth in 1956 by DL Tagliacozzo is that union members are broken into seven groups: 1. the ideological unionist; 2. the good union member; 3. the loyal but critical member; 4. the crisis activist; 5. the dually oriented member; 6. the card carrying or indifferent member; and 7. the unwilling unionist. In some cases the types tend to merge, making the count arbitrary at times, but on the whole most members fit into one of these seven categories. The ideological unionist is distinguished from the others by articulate, political and social philosophy. They will know and study union history, and be willing to consider personal sacrifices in order to strengthen the union. The good union member will protect and advance the union’s prestige and power. They will strike and walk picket lines when called upon. They are usually preferred by leaders when an office within the union is to be filled. The l...

Young people who are not yet in the work place will get their first impressions of unions from sound bites or negative reports from anti-union sources like the Republican party and GOP corporations and the media they control. Labor is missing a lot of chances to educate potential members by putting a positive spin on what labor unions are and how they can help workers. Most of our public education system is taught by union teachers. They could tell their students indirect or innocuous stories about how unions have effected their lives and that of the students. For instance, a teacher/professor could say, something like, ‘union negotiations have kept class size down so that, as a teacher, I can have more time with each of those students who might need more help.’ Or, like I’ve heard, ‘Before our teachers unionized, I had to work a second job to make ends meet.’ Teachers could also incorporate labor history into U.S. history, such as when describing the Great Depression or how children ...