Union Perspectives

Why do local small businesses support the International Chamber of Commerce when they support low wages for the 99% wage slaves? They are also one of the oldest enemies of labor unions and the 99%. This never made sense to me for the wage slaves are the ones who buy the goods from the businesses who support the Chamber, when the Chamber ultimately doesn’t not support them. You would think the local businesses would want the slave wages to have more money to spend on the businesses goods and which would mean more jobs to make goods to sell and also pay more taxes to support local government. With this in mind, what sense does it make when businesses think they win when they can defeat a prevailing wage job, such as the Turtle Bay Sheraton Hotel in Redding, CA? Their win took $1.1 million in wages out of the pockets of the local wage slaves and therefore the local economy. You would think that the local businesses would be up in arms. One-point-one million dollars would have been a n...

There can be no doubt that we, the 99%, are in a class war and the oligarchies are draining the treasury of the 99% and the unions, which a classic way to win a war (Art of War). When we, the 99%, have to defend our labor rights, voting rights with a court system that is slanted toward the corporations - Citizens United - (which only supports the 1%) then the oligarchies can, with unlimited money, buy lawmakers, governors, judges and presidents of the United States, which creates a plutocracy-type government. We are very close to a plutocracy government and getting closer with each election. The Koch brothers and Karl Rove’s GPS Crossroads are dedicated to this end. One of the things that can turn this around is the 99%, OWS movement, with the help from labor. Right now labor is working at a disadvantage because of some labor contracts that labor has entered into, such as no strikes, but they might just Wobble like in the old days of IWW movement or when a state or other entity votes...

The Have Nothings are the homeless, the Have a Little used to be the middle class and the Have Some are the new middle class and the Haves are the 1% and they have it all. The wages of the 1% are at an 80 year high. Some of the highest 1%ers are: Oracle’s Larry Ellison with a wage of $77.6 million; Massey Energy’s Don Blankenship at $38.2 million; Zynga’s Mark Pincus at $110 million; Caterpillar’s Doug Oberhelman at $10.4 million; Johnson & Johnson’s William Weldon at $25.6 million; Goldman Sach’s Lloyd Blankfein at $19 million; Ford Motor Co.’s Alan Mulally at $26.5 million; McKesson’s John Hammergren at $469 million; Omnicare’s Joel F. Gemunder at $133 million; TRW Automotive Holdings’ John Plant at $4.5 million; Verisk Analytics’ Frank Coyne at $33 million; CVS Caremark’s Thomas M. Ryan at $ 50 million; Wal*Mart’s Michael Duke at $18.7 million, which is 750 times more pay than the average Wal*Mart worker makes. There as never been such a large inequity in wages....

The 99ers have mostly got it right. They stand for about everyone, the 99%, and put anonymity to good use. On the other hand, Labor Unions have fallen into the trap of dividing themselves against each other. There is a horrible example of an army divided against itself in 1904 at the Chicago Meat Packing houses and a perfect example of Art of War’s Divide and Conquer. They split into 56 different unions and still more in 14 different national trade unions of the American Federation of Labor. This is still going on today with state, county and city unions, instead of one union there are hundreds. This has got to change for the employer can and do pit the one little union against the other to the point if one union goes out on strike, the other union will keep working so no one but the employer wins. This is not the way the 99% envisions winning. A change in the wage disparity between corporate CEOs and the workers, the 99%. The wages of some of the CEOs are unprecedented and to chan...

Some times having nothing is an easier way to win. If a person or group have no home, no family, no job, no money or no hope, what do you have to lose? When your opposition finds this out then having nothing becomes a game changer. This is what the IWW or Wobblies found when they were fighting for free speech in Fresno, Calif., in the year of 1911. They won when law enforcement came to understand that people who have nothing to lose really can’t lose anything except their lives; and some in those days didn’t care for life was not very good when you have no family, job, home, money or hope. So, just like the 99%ers, the Wobblies outnumbered and outlasted the establishment to bring about change -- with nothing but their bodies and uncompromising determination. This is pointed out in the “Art of War;” when you have nothing else to give but your life, that’s when you fight the hardest. Wall Street big banks, corporation-led GOP and their Machiavellian strategy is actually playing into ...

Is it time we retired union workers with our nice pensions start paying back? Our union workers of old fought and died for our rights today so today’s retirees could live in comfort. Most of our retirees today did not have to spill blood to protect their jobs; hell, most of us only had to show up for work and pay our dues. Now our unions have just about vanished and on our watch. We might think hard about parking our golf carts, motor homes, and our boats and think about how we can pay our unions back and help rebuild the working class - the 99%. We need to support the OWS, who are there for the 99% by being on the streets, sacrificing at all costs and creature comforts for a better America. When things finally turn around and the unions go to the workers and ask them to join the unions, the workers will ask, ‘Where in the hell were the unions when we, OWS - the 99% - were in the streets?’ They have a right to ask that question. OWS - the 99% - are fighting for our members, our chi...

Remember all of the 9/11 grants that were available to protect us from the terrorists? Billions of dollars that were granted to government agencies, such as fire departments, and city and count law enforcement. We, the workers, paid for all that equipment to fight terrorism -- or so we thought. It now seems that a lot of that money was and has been used against us, the 99% who paid for it. I don’t think we, the 99%, understood that it would be used against us and that this has been planned for a long time. It stands to reason that the GOP knew that their control over this country would come to an end and that that 99% would awaken to what the GOP had done to this country by their insatiable greed and to the destruction of the American Dream. The GOP and well-equipped law enforcement were ready for us except for one thing -- they can’t find the leaders of the 99%. So, instead, they spew barrels of pepper spray on the protesters and for that they will lose. This is the Patriot Act ...

Finding biographical material about IWW (Industrial Workers of the World) writers is a difficult task for most Wobblies, the movement was more important than recording the lives of individual members. There was a cult of anonymity extended to the manner in which many Wobblies signed their own names, such as JBH, The Rambler, Card No. 34528, Denver Dan, Red, or Just Wob. Does this look familiar? Today’s young ‘Internet’ people are using made up names to maintain their anonymity, and this maybe one reason why OWS is still going strong. Its detractors have no one person they can vilify and use as an escape goat. With this in mind, how long will it be before states deploy laws against the Occupiers, as they did during the Wobblies’ heyday? Wobblies were prosecuted under the Syndicalism Laws. Syndicalism, in this case, refers to the practice of organizing workers into unions to protect their rights and interests as workers. Today, we call Syndicalism Laws the Patriot Act. Under the S...

Missed Opportunity Labor has missed many chances to enhance the labor movement over the last 66 years. One was when the AFL and the CIO merged - this was a great opportunity to start a nationwide organization drive. Our membership was high and labor had money to do the work but the AFL-CIO President George Meany, instead, chose to sit on his hands. This was a lost opportunity to educate and welcome the young diversified work force. Another missed opportunity was the Vietnam antiwar protesters. Half of the labor organization was against the war and half supported it. We fought against each other and labor should have supported our youth and the student movement. Remember Kent State, Jackson State and Chicago? Once again, we lost a chance to support our then 99%ers. Now we have another chance to support our young and our military personnel returning home from the wars: Iraq and Afghanistan. Our present 99%ers are protesting for what labor has been advocating forever: a better life ...

The Declaration of Independence says that government is not sacred, that it is set up to give people an equal right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, and that if it fails to do this, we have a right to “alter or abolish it.” It wasn’t long before the Declaration of Independence became an embarrassment to the Founders. Soon after the signing soldiers under George Washington spoke out about how the rich were profiting from the war. Then to exasperate things further, the Continental Congress, in 1781, voted to give half pay for life to the officers of the Revolution, and nothing to the enlisted men (the original 99%ers). There was a protest and Washington ordered two young soldiers shot as an example to the other protesters. Barely five years old, the Declaration’s statement that all men are created equal was already being ignored and poor people, who thought they were fighting for themselves and their new country, found out that the war was not fought to benefit them, b...

While our service men and women were serving overseas for the past 10 years, some losing their lives, and some enduring terrible injuries with lots of emotional injuries, as well. There is no doubt that they have given all they had. While our service members were doing their best we at home let the oligarchies (form of government where a small group of rich people have all the power), big corporations and Wall Street have just about ruined our country. When our service people return home what will we have to offer them? There are no jobs, the economy is in ruins and the Republicans party has vowed to block President Obama on all his efforts to improve our situations in the hopes of making him a one-term president. Our veterans gave all and we, the citizens, went to sleep and let the GOP lobbyists and the oligarchies buy state governments, which promptly began taking away workers’ rights, voters’ rights and even women’s rights. I don’t think this is what our military personnel were ...

In 1911 Soapbox Militants, the “Wobblies,” engaged in free speech campaigning against corruption. In 2011 Occupy Wall Street (OWS) and by extension Occupy Redding engages in free speech campaigning against corruption. Both were nonhierarchical, egalitarian, consensus-driven process. The purest kind of democracy exercised in free speech. Both organizations envisioned a better world for all, not just a few. They are one hundred years apart, but here is how close they are in their thinking and planning. On their freedom march 112 men, called Wobblies of the International Workers of the World, started in Seattle, WA., were determined to participate in the Fresno Free Speech Campaign on Feb. 13, 1911. Towns could prevent free speech and the right to peaceably asemble during this time. The Wobblies were standing together to claim these basic human rights. They organized themselves, had a secretary of treasure, a committee to find out the times they could hop trains, a cook with assis...

With our labor force mostly out of work in the construction industry, we should not let our members unity just melt away for if we stay together we are still a force to be reckoned with. Construction will eventually rebound so we must be trained and educated when the times come. The things we can do to with our out-of-work members is to have them help out Wall Street protesters. If nothing else they can just stay stand with them for we must stay in touch with what is going on in the world of workers as we all are 99%ers. We should also be planning our strategy, such as organizing new members, because one new large group is going to be our returning veterans, who are coming home with no prospects of employment. We, the unions, should be the people who will meet and support them. Our veterans are going to need us, as a whole, to be there for them for the sacrifices they have made and endured. The least we can do is give them genuine support and not a magnet yellow ribbon. We, the uni...

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...

Wall Street protesters are now nationwide and worldwide. There is no doubt that the 99ers are at last starting to realize that there is no one person riding in to save them. It will take all of the 99ers working together and, yes, some will do much more and some will do little for now, but as history tells us, the longer they hold out the more support will come in - people, money and political help. The 99ers are now starting to get support and advice from the ‘60s’ protesters, which, if listened to, can be of great help. They have been there and their lessons learned can teach the younger protesters a thing or two about options and pitfalls that happened to them. Recently, Tom Hayden let slip in a recent interview that 10,000 to 20,000 people sitting down on Main Street of New York or L.A. will bring on arrests and then each person demand a jury trial, which would literally shut down the city and court system. Just a hint from the old pros, some do have many options and if the cor...

It is time for the labor councils to join the 99ers who are the Wall Street protesters. For we all have the same concerns: shelter, food, health care, pensions and jobs. The 1 ‘percenters’ have crossed the line and not just in the USA. This is now a worldwide movement. It is reminiscent of Industrial Workers of the World (IWW). We the working people have had opportunities before and did not take advantage of them. This time we, the 99ers, and unions now have no choice but to keep going for the 99ers are at the bottom of the financial ladder. If you are not in the top 1 percent on the economic scale, you’re a 99er. This is not the first time we've had to deal with corporate greed. Ralph Chaplin captured the 1 percenters' greed at the turn of the 20th century. “It is we who plowed the prairies, built the cities where they trade Dug the mines and built the workshops endless miles of railroad laid Now we stand outcast and starving Midst the wonders we made, but ...

How will and how will the corporate GOP start demonizing our name 99ers? The 99ers are the people in the streets of New York and seventy plus cities across this nation. We are in a class war with the top 1 percent of the nation who owns 40 percent nation’s wealth, and the top 1 percent of Americans take home 24 percent of the nation’s income. They, the top 1 percent of Americans, owns half of the country’s stocks, bonds and mutual funds. They also have, with all that wealth, only 5 percent of the nation’s personal debt, and the top 1 percent is taking in more of the nation’s income since the 1920s. If this is not enough to infuriate us, the 99ers, then we only have to look at what the 1 percent, such as the Koch brothers and other billionaires are doing to us, such as buying entire states from governors to all elected politicians, attorney generals and judges. They then use these positions to break unions and deprive 99ers of their voting rights. They would like to get rid of child l...

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...

People hit the streets in New York’s financial district, Wall Street, and it’s about time the labor unions joined in. It will take all of us to win this “class warfare.” Whether they, the protesters, know it or not they are showing the old Wobbly (Industrial Workers of the World or IWW) Spirit. In their passion and their organization skills. The occupation of a financial district is only beginning for it is going to spread across the country. This is our American Autumn, the same as the Arab Spring in the Middle East protests; and yes, it is class warfare and we should not be manipulated by the GOP and corporations into saying that it is not class warfare. The GOP and corporations are afraid that if we realize and understand what is going on then we will have an American Autumn, and start taking back our rights and start rebuilding our middle class by pulling the poor from the muck the GOP and corporations have pushed them into. I don’t know if our young organizers have studied th...

The thirty-two GOP governors were elected and then they got together with ALEC (American Legislative Exchange Council), the Chamber of Commerce and the Koch brothers to come up with a strategy to destroy their only competition -- organized labor. We can put people on the ground and raise some money to get people elected that will protect workers. Our question should be: Why in the hell we did not know or see what they were planning? Or did some of us know and thought it was too implausible? If we had paid attention to or remembered our labor history, specifically the air traffic controllers, we would have known the GOP eats their own. The air traffic controllers union supported Ronald Reagan and he fired the lot of them. Since President Roosevelt implemented the Social Security Act, the GOP has wanted to kill it. Today, they are making their hardest push to destroy it. Remember, the GOP symbol is an elephant and elephants never forget. Just look at what the GOP corporations have ...

The California Assembly approved a bill, SB 126, that would punish farmers if they are found to have interfered with union elections. SB126 by Senate Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg, Democrat from Sacramento, would automatically certify a farm workers’ union. This bill is a remedy for election misconduct by growers. Lets all union members get behind SB 126 and let Governor Jerry Brown know we support it. The predecessor to SB 126 was vetoed by Governor Brown. He has another chance to redeem himself. Let’s put pressure for we need some new tools in our tool bag to organize. SB 126 falls under the Agricultural Labor Relations and amends sections 1156.3, 1158, 1160.4, and 1164 of the Labor Code relating to employment.

For decades corporations and the GOP have pressured the U.S. Postal Service to privatize. They want to break the postal union, which is one of America’s oldest and public institutions and provides employment to 574,000 people of color, women and the disabled. The postal service have an admirable record in its treatment and hiring of its workers. The postal service is the second largest employer in the United States, behind Wal*Mart. The postal service generally pays for itself, but does not make huge profits and with the economy today it is losing money. The main reason for this loss is that the federal government under George W. Bush required the postal service to make huge payments 75 years in advance, which was $50 billion over what it should have paid, to cover the union’s health and pension benefits. If the postal office hadn’t been forced to make that overpayment, it would not have the problem its facing today. Leading the GOP charge is southern California’s Darrell Issa, a c...

At the risk of sounding like a conspirator, please consider the following: The GOP are filing lawsuits against the health care. They are saying that you cannot force people to pay into the health care system despite this being their idea to begin with. The GOP is intent on taking this challenge all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court (USSC), five members of which are bought and paid for by corporations. If they win, this will be very bad for the working-class people for this will only be the beginning. If the GOP wins in this effort, they will go after the Holy Grail -- Social Security. Once they get the Social Security issue before the U.S. Supreme Court, the GOP will argue that it is illegal to force people to pay into their retirement plan -- Social Security. They will win at the USSC because the power is on their side. The GOP will offer the alternative of privatizing Social Security, which will put all the money into the hands of the GOP’s other best friend, Wall Street. If he...

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 ...

The Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) was formed to fight the harden, brutal corporations in the Twentieth century. There was a big difference in the way the unions fought against the giant corporations. The AF of L called for a fair day’s wage for a fair day’s work. This sounds good but the AF of L had to get a contract with the employer. This usually ended up in courts and with lots of lawyers. You can see how this is working for us (membership down). Now the IWW Wobblies played for keeps. They wrote in their preamble to their constitution: The working class and the employing class have nothing in common. There can be no peace so long as hunger and want are found among millions of working people and the few, who make up the employing class, have all the good things in life. Between these two classes a struggle must go on until the workers of the world organize as a class. The Wobblies (IWW) never had more than 60,000 members, but it shook up the nation as had no other orga...

The old cliche, “In all adversity there is a window of opportunity,” has never been more relevant than today. We are in a good position for the corporations and G.O.P. have shown their hands. Will we repeat the past and miss our opportunities again? You would think that if you were in a poker game and all the players’ showed their hands except for you that you could win if you stayed in the game; but history has shown that in the past labor has folded and left the game. Now, folding if your hand is not strong at the time is a good play sometimes, but to leave the game is not good poker if you know what their hands are every time. We know what their hands show for they have shown them in Wisconsin, Ohio, Florida, Minnesota, Michigan, and many other states. This isn’t the first time unions became complacent and failed to see what was going on around them. One has only to look back in history at the missed opportunities. Examples of missed opportunities include, the AFL-CIO’s plan t...

I am sure the taxes we pay to subsidize the corporate jets takes care of the fuel and upkeep, and we workers, most of us, have never ridden in a corporate jet. I am also sure our families would love to take our vacations in one instead of being packed in our car, paying $4 a gallon for gas and driving without the air conditioning in hopes of saving gas. Or catching a ride to our children’s Little League baseball games in a tax-paid helicopter. Love the Bush tax cuts or take the tax cuts for the rich off the table in the debt ceiling argument. Then in that agreement we were told we Social Security and Medicare people were getting way too much so they are cutting us and we still don’t get a ride in the corporate jets. What the hell? The 1 percent of the people who have the most think we workers are the most generous people or the dumbest. They probably think the later. We need to wise up. What the anti-workers agenda is just going to get worse. The Republicans have no problem holding ...

This time we have a lot of millionaires versus billionaires and our millionaires are kicking ass. How? By the old union way having hundreds of athletes showing extraordinary solidarity. When a typical pro career last only 3.5 years, the pressure must be intense, but the NFL won. Now the NBA owners are crying poverty, which is just a cover to break the union. The NBA owners have much in common with classic labor disputes including misrepresentation of owners losses and so-called worker excess. This struggle is really not about billionaires versus millionaires after all, but it is the billionaires versus everyone else, including fans. This might be a time when the athletes of the NFL ad NBA start thinking about a good defense is a good offense and think about asking, ‘Why do the NFL or NBA even need owners for they could have fan-owned teams similar to the Superbowl Champion Green Bay Packers.’ The Packers have 112,000 owners and a large percentage of all proceeds go to local communi...

Saturday, August 6th, 2011 Friends, From time to time, someone under 30 will ask me, "When did this all begin, America's downward slide?" They say they've heard of a time when working people could raise a family and send the kids to college on just one parent's income (and that college in states like California and New York was almost free). That anyone who wanted a decent paying job could get one. That people only worked five days a week, eight hours a day, got the whole weekend off and had a paid vacation every summer. That many jobs were union jobs, from baggers at the grocery store to the guy painting your house, and this meant that no matter how "lowly" your job was you had guarantees of a pension, occasional raises, health insurance and someone to stick up for you if you were unfairly treated. Young people have heard of this mythical time -- but it was no myth, it was real. And when they ask, "When did this all end?", I say, "I...

What the Hell Happened? We need the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA) and we were very close in 2009. President Obama and Vice President Biden co-authored the bill and it had passed the Congress. Organized labor invested $450 million in the Obama campaign, and the Democrats had or were very close to a 60 filibuster-proof vote in support of the Act. The AFL-CIO had a war chest of $14 million dedicated to the passage of the Act. What’s more, the Democrats and organized labor, and the media did an excellent job of keeping it very quiet, and most businesses were unaware of the campaign. This was to be passed in 2009 so what the hell happened? 
 We know that a union busting organization by the name of “People Works International” was on this like a dog on a bone. Check these people out: http://www.peopleworkslabor.com?EFCA.html They are a piece of work. We need to get to know them to know our enemy (Art of War). We have a chance to beat them. What did the AFL-CIO get for its money...

Tactics means doing what you can with what you have. In the world of give and take, tactics is the art of how to take and how to give. Our concern is with the tactic of taking, how the have nots can take power away from the haves. Saul D. Alinsky had some of the best tactics to use. The symphony tactic: the plan was to buy tickets for workers and feed them baked beans before the symphony that the wife of a corporate mogul’s attended. The workers won. The O’Hare Airport tactic: organizers counted the number of stalls in the restrooms of the airport and then give union members money to tie up the stalls. At the time it cost 5¢ to use the toilet and the user could stay as long as they wanted. The organizers also got men to line up to use the urinals. The workers won. The gum tactic: when college students were unable to reach an agreement with the college administration, the students, who were not allowed to have fun, dances or drink beer on campus, were asked what could they do? The...

Are retired union workers living under a rock? I have often wondered why union retirees, with a union pension, move to Shasta County and become a GOP nut job and vote for people who oppose unions and the working class. These same people collect all sorts of government sponsored programs, such as Medicare, social security and possibly veteran services. Do they just want to belong? Are they conformists? Are they ashamed to have their GOP neighbors know they are Democrats or retired union workers? Or are they coldhearted, bloodsucking gnats who got theirs so to hell with everyone else? I just don’t understand. I, for one, am proud of my union pension, my medical coverage, and my social security. I worked very hard for all three and I will fight hard to keep them. If other retired union members, social security and Medicare recipients don’t think the GOP are trying to take these benefits away, you’ve had to have been living under a rock. I think all of us with these union and governm...

We must be on guard against the GOP and corporate backers of the plutocracy way of government. Plutocracy is the governing by the ultra rich and corporations. For they have a very effective strategy for how to divide and conquer, as defined in the book “Art of War.” One way they are accomplishing this is to put Obama and the Democrats in a position where they will have to do something that will anger our base. Another way, for whatever reason, is to attack unions and the working class by going after our rights. Case in point, is when California Governor Jerry Brown, a Democrat, veto the card check (Employment Free Choice Act) for the farm workers. The Democratic party at the local, state and federal levels have not done one thing for the unions or the working class for a long time. In order for unions or workers to hit the street in support of the Democratic party and donate money we will need to have something to show that the Democrats are supporting us. Without our support the r...

I was representing the 5 County Labor Council at a Work Force Development meeting recently in San Jose. The meeting was held in a union-organized Hilton hotel and there were hundreds of union people from all over the United States. I was shocked to learn the supposed Democratic mayor of San Jose was pushing a measure to gut workers right. I was waiting for the conference organizers to make a plan for us to hit the streets in outrage; or at least go to city hall. We did nothing that I know of. I also wondered if when the San Jose people voted for Chuck Reed for mayor did they know he would throw them under the bus. Again, when politicians have no respect for us, they will do whatever they want. I remember hearing a mob boss say in an interview that he couldn’t allow anyone to disrespect him because if they did he would lose power. Ladies and gentlemen, this is what has happened to us, we’ve allowed people/corporations to disrespect us. We have lost the power to negotiate, and with no ...

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 ...

We, workers and average citizens, receive no respect from corporations. Lack of respect leads to low morale, desperation and fear. When we are in a class war, as we are now, we receive no respect and corporations bully employees. When employees complain about losing workers’ rights, health care, pensions and jobs eliminated when workers attempt unionizing; however, nothing is done because the corporations don’t care about their workers. Corporations have unlimited funding and court power, the workers are at the corporations’ mercy. No matter how many people we put in the streets, we’ll still get no respect. It will just cost our treasury and wear out our people. In European countries, such as England and France, they, the workers, can just shut down the countries and the workers receive respect. We, in the U.S., would find this hard to do because our country is so large and spread out. There is a way to get respect, a little at a time, such as shutting down the transportation of a...

If we depend on courts and lawyers we will lose the battle on union rights. Wisconsin Supreme Court recently handed Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker a sledgehammer to further destroy union rights. I was told a long time ago by a union organizer that when we left the streets and picket lines and turned over our fight to the lawyers and court system is when we started to losing the battle against the GOP. Long strikes won’t work nowadays for most working families because they do not have the resources to withstand a long battle and the unions don’t have the resources to back our people. What will work is timing our moves like hit and run, old gorilla tactics. One or two days at a time pick targets where we can get the most support, most media and be able to drive our point home on what we want. Timing, planning, good communication and being well-organized is done through people all supporting each other. Even if it does not at the time affect you, but if we work together, we will bui...

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 (...

Are we, the working class, nonunion, union, and retirees, ready to start pushing back on the assault on us? Understand that the corporations lead the GOP and will not stop until union and worker rights, unemployment insurance, minimum wage, Social Security and Medicare are gone. The GOP have bankrupt our economy and now think they can force us into cutting our programs. This is not new. The GOP and corporations have never given up on this since Frances Perkins and President Roosevelt, during the Great Depression, passed and signed into law Social Security, unemployment, minimum wage, and the right to organize. At this point in history, union membership had fallen to 5 percent. Today, union membership is roughly at 3 percent private and 30 percent public. In order to increase the union numbers we would need to have card check or Employee Free Choice Act needs to be brought up for a vote, but we need a party strong enough to bring card check for a vote, and to fight for and represent u...

In 1973, 300 corporations banded together to form a group called American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) and its mission was and is to declare war on the working people. In 2009, ALEC wrote 826 bills throughout the U.S. and saw 115 of those bills passed. ALEC receives 81.7 percent of its funding from corporations. I just do not understand why corporations want a war with the working people when we are the ones who support their businesses. It like eating the seed corn. With that aside, how is it that most of us have never heard of this group. Were we just not paying attention or were we working too hard and did not see what they were doing to us, like what happened in Wisconsin, Ohio, Minnesota, and Michigan. They are now 27 states controlled Republican governors and legislatures that subscribe to ALEC’s mission. Now that we understand what they want to do to our jobs and rights may be we, union and nonunion, workers will start collaborating. Members of ALEC worked together to...

Unions are weak in the U.S. because of a labor fragmentation in the character of American liberalism. To counter this fragmentation, labor must make what progress it can with the community and not at the expense of the community. There was a time when leftists of all persuasions saw the unions as the vanguard of social reconstruction. And now our unions greatest danger comes from an explosive division within the working population itself. Walter Ruether observed in 1984, “As unionized labor has become but an island of well-being in a sea of resentful low-wage aspirants, income inequality within the working class that has reached levels unseen for more than two generations.” Corporations have found that years of deindustrialization and wage stagnation has generated a huge reservoir of eager replacement workers whose residual commitment to their working class neighbors had long since been extinguished in their desperate scramble to hold onto their houses, cars and dignity. Maybe we n...

The reason the underpaid, or 39 hours worker with no benefits, needs the card check tool is to bring the worker back to the possibility of getting a union where they work. We used to have a good National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), which enforced the labor laws, but over time, just like the tax laws, loop holes were found by the union busters, some who were ex-labor lawyers who went into a very large new industry of busting unions and disrupting elections. They would advise owners to intimidate their workers by telling them they would close their shops or move them. They would fire some, give raises or promotions to others. All this was against NLRB laws, but they still did it. The loop hole was the time it took to set up and execute the election. With card check, the workers only need 51 percent of the workers signing a card stating they would like to form or join a union. The employer and employees would have to sit down and negotiate the conditions for the contract for the worke...

In a previous post I wrote about the GOP’s strategy to go the birth place of union activities and begin dismantling workers’ rights and protections. There is a war going on but unions and progressives aren't paying attention. We’ve seen how the GOP in Wisconsin dismantled public employees’ bargaining rights. Now the GOP is going into Maine, the birthplace of the oldest child labor laws, and seeking to weaken the law that protect children form exploitation. Maine’s governor, Paul LePage, wants all workers younger than 20 years of age to make less than minimum wage. He wants to increase the work week for teens from 20 hours to 24 a week and increase the work hours on a school night from 10 p.m. to 11 p.m. The pay would be whatever the employer determined for the first 180 days of employment. After 180 days, the employer could conceivably fire the teen and hire new teens for 180 days again. The common thread is that these two states are birthplaces of the labor laws: public employ...