Union Perspectives

Things are starting to look up for wage slaves. The economy is slowly recovering. Manufacturing is starting to return to the USA. Construction is starting to build again and most of all the workers are starting to understand how to organize themselves for workers’ rights and not just here, but all over the world. Soon there will not be a country where the anti-union companies can threaten workers with moving their factories to and this is evidenced by the companies that are returning to the USA. So 2013 could be the tipping point for the workers. Hell, we have already won the people’s election of our president, which showed the power of people over moneyed people so what’s to stop us from getting good wages and benefits from the Walmarts of this world. The fact is there is nothing to stop us except fear, apathy, and ignorance of how it was done before, and what worked and what did not and for this knowledge we can use the secret weapon, which are our labor histories. Everything we ...

The labor movement had two important wins, which were largely responsible for the creation of the Middle Class. They were the organizations of the Ford Motor Company and the United Auto Workers union and the government unions: state, federal, county and city. These wins mean that the workers now had good wages, healthcare and a pension when they retired. Now what happened? Did the state workers forget who was their enemy and then elected people who voted against them? The GOP and the federal workers, Post Office mostly, did the same thing—elected the wrong people. Whose fault is this; well mostly the workers and also their leaders for not educating their members. Now we workers have another chance at rebuilding our Middle Class by organizing Walmart, which is the new equivalent of the old Ford Company, and the fast food workers. The advantage the wage slaves have are the corporations can make the product out of the company, but the corporations must sell the product here and this ...

Is manufacturing returning to the USA and is this why the oligarchies are buying state representation and governments to change union states to right-to-work for less states. Wage slaves make about 15 percent less than workers in union states where union workers are made to pay dues and union state workers work much safer. The large companies that went out of the country have figured out that after a few years their products get knocked off and it is extremely hard to update their products. Also fuel is an extra cost that was not as big a factor a few years ago and lastly, they have found that getting the product out faster is good for business. So if manufacturing comes back home where can they cut costs and what they see is it’s in labor costs so they are putting a full court press to change as many states to right to work for less as fast as they can, which will weaken unions’ power. This is why the oligarchies like the Koch brothers and American Legislative Exchange Council just ...

Walmart, fast food and now the New York car wash workers are demanding their worker rights and doing it by what is called a concerted effort, which is just two or more wage slaves demanding what they believe is owed to them, such as a living wage, safe working conditions, no distinction between race, age, sex orientation, religious beliefs and gender. This type of protest is enforced by the National Labor Relation Board and is supposed to keep the workers safe from retaliation from the money people. This is what the wage slaves should have done 20 years ago when the money people started shipping jobs out of the country to bust unions and when anti-union money people found that they could bluff the unions with threats of suing unions for their assets. A lot of unions started backing off radical organizing tactics and started walking a very thin line, which will never beat back the attack on labor. Now with this new labor movement they have no labor union or assets to protect. They just...

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...

Why don’t we, labor wage slaves, have organizations, other than labor unions, fighting for our workers? The right wing has not only anti-labor think tanks, but also many undercover organizations, such as American Legislative Exchange Council; the right wing group the Lincoln Club of Orange County, California; Manufacturers Association; and the local, national and international Chamber of Commerce. These are just a few of the organizations that have come out from under their rocks and are getting laws or propositions on the ballot before we wage slaves even know what’s happened. This always puts us on the defense, which we must stop in order to counter their actions. They have the money, but we have the people. Whether or not they lose they will have depleted our treasury and worn our people out. What we need to do is take the fight to them, which will remove what they are doing to us. We could do this by using our labor councils and spin off organizations to work on propositions and ...

Either way the election of 2012 goes, we wage slaves will have an unimaginable amount of work to do. To start, we must help our young soon-to-be wage slaves. By the necessity of education we are inadvertently condemning our children to a life of wage slavery by the debt they will incur before they even start working. If we don’t have good wage jobs they will never be able to pay off their debt and if they can’t pay off their educational debt how can they ever have a family or afford to buy a house or start a business? If our new wage slaves do not have purchasing power how will our commercial economy ever grow. We wage slaves must push for better wages and raise the minimum wage to at least $15 an hour and stop this temporary/part time jobs that the money people are pushing. We must also support the National Labor Relations Board laws that will benefit the workers. If we work to do these things and accomplish these things then we have a chance to bring back the middle class lifestyle...

We have to know where we have been in order to know where we want to go, and how to get there. So, why do we still have to explain to our union members who they should support in elections? I think we need to adhere to what an old union leader once said: “We now have them organized so now we need to unionize them.” This is where we union leaders have failed our wage slaves and I think it should start from the top and the bottom in order to do it fast and then hopefully we’ll meet in the middle with knowledgeable union people. We should all be studying the Art of War by Sun Tzu and the Prince by Machiavelli. These books will get you solitary confinement in some prisons; but they are required reading in large corporations and all military schools. There must be a benefit in learning strategy of war and business. This is exactly what we wage slaves are involved in. In fact, it will be do or die in the next few years. We must organize and rebuild our labor influence and power. Our labor fo...

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...

National Chamber Legislation Center (NCLC) has brought cases to the U.S. Supreme Court and won 68 percent of the time. The U.S. Supreme Court traditionally agrees to hear fewer than 2 percent of the cases it receives for review. In the 2010/11 term, the NCLC urges the Court to review 30 cases and won 21 of these cases. A stunning 70 percent and this term they are eight for eight so far. There is no way that labor will ever win a case at the U.S. Supreme Court level – not until the wage slaves elect a president who will change the Court. We need at least one justice who will level the Court. With a labor push against the Walmarts, there will be court cases headed to the Supreme Court and the cases will be represented by the NCLC for the corporations, and labor at this time will not win before this Court. However, if the cases take one to two years to get to the Supreme Court and if we win in November this could all change for us wage slaves. If the Courts do change for labor, we need to...

Unions have begun organizing Walmart and this is a fight worth fighting, and if it is won all others will fall like dominos. It looks like the Walmart organizing effort was well planned. The Art of War says the Army who attacks can pick their time, in this case right before the holidays and the presidential election, and the places, stores, where workers are needed for the holiday hours. Other companies will not help, but will be happy to take Walmart’s customers and business. Knowing this, Walmart corporate leaders, threatened with a strike on Black Friday, are talking to themselves about whether to raise wages or bring in more part-time workers. The workers have nothing to lose. They are already at the bottom of the economic ladder: no healthcare, no pension, no job security and the only power they have are their feet, and the solidarity of other wage slaves and unions. Now is the time for a full court press from all wage slaves to support the Walmart workers in the streets and with ...

We need today a Congress like the one we had in 1935, which was a worker-type of Congress that guaranteed the rights of workers to form unions. Their rational for setting forth the National Labor Relations Board Act was that inequality of bargaining power between employees who do not possess full freedom of association … and employers. The money people who are organized in corporate or other forms of ownership association tends to aggravate recurrent business depressions by depressing wage rates and the purchasing power of wage earners in industry and this is the same today. The workers have shown productivity gains for the last 30-40 years and yet the wages have dropped and the money gains have gone to the 1%. Today what workers’ rights we still have are now in extreme jeopardy by restricting most of what the 1935 Congress set forth: (1) by restricting the rights of workers to learn about unions; (2) the right of workers to organize and choose union representation; (3) the right of...

We need a 35-hour work week and get rid of the temporary jobs. These types of jobs exploit the work force by not paying good wages, health insurance or pensions. This means that the workers with good wages and benefits must subsidize the Walmart-type workers, and the large box stores get a free ride off the backs of taxpayers. The people who hire temp workers get the same free ride. If the government set the rules so unions could organize retail workers, which would put them on par with the union retail and food stores we would have a much better economy. The stores, which are union, have an unfair fight when trying to compete with stores like Walmart, and it is all on the workers’ backs to stop these unfair practices. We need all retail stores with a work force of 20 or more employees to be unionized and not be bale to take advantage of the 19-20 hour work week. One way to do this is to have all retail workers be in a retail union so if they have to work two or three jobs the time wo...

Nothing gets built if not for labor so labor must be able to have a slice of the pie one way or the other. It would be nice if all large corporations, like Costco, which is non-union, would pay and treat their employees like they’re worth something. Safeway and most Raley’s supermarkets are unionized and treat their employees worthwhile. I hope there are more, but when you shop at these stores you know it is a good place to work. You can just feel it and tell by the employees and the employees can probably afford to buy the things they sell. This is how it should be. The carpenter should be able to buy the house he builds, the autoworker should be able to buy the car she builds, and the food worker should not go hungry. This is the way it should work out. A working person must think of themselves as a business, and the asset they have is their body so the worker must be healthy, educated, and have all the tools in which to make money. The worker will have to sale their lives and bod...

The corporate oligarchies’ plan is to turn the American worker into an uneducated, underclass, subsistent wage slaves, which will put the American Dream out of reach. Even at this time the Dream is a lie still being told to our young people today. The money hogs’ worship of profits has brought a plague upon our country, the environment, and our cities. While the oligarchies are doing this to us, the Wall Street speculators loot and pillage to the point we now know their plan and whether they know it or not it is a self-destructive plan. We will have to help them self-destruct for the oligarchies are working out of the old play book where they want to feed us 24-hour television and run up our credit card debt, work to pay off our loans and be grateful for the scrapes the corporations GOP toss us. That is their old short-term strategy, but we, the 99%, and unions have a grand strategy that is nonviolent shift in power by attacking the columns that hold up the power structure. Those colu...

Wage slaves want and need their share of the obscene profits that they have made for the 1%. The 1% may be the ones with the bank accounts, but the 1% would not have their wealth if not for the wage slaves who made the products that were sold to fill the 1%s’ coffers. We wage slaves are the ones who buy most of the goods being made or grown as food with this said we need to remind ourselves that wages have slipped or remained flat for four decades. One of the reasons unions have been slipping is because of a large fragmentation in the character of American liberalism. Labor must make progress with our wage-slave community and not at the expense of our non-union wage slaves. When union workers get a large wage increase we are blamed for inflation and high prices, which is in itself wrong for the more money made the more we spend and the more products must be made so more jobs and overtime, but we union must be able to explain and define this or we will become but an island of well-bein...

When does the labor start looking at building the party of labor to represent all wage slaves who want to join? We start with the assets we have on hand our dues paying members then when we have the members and money we started electing people who will defend labor wage slaves and see if the Democrats want to join us if so then we would build a 50/50 partnership with one side having 51 percent one year or two and then the other side having the 51 percent for an equal amount of time if they want. If we win this November we need for the Democrats to show us what they can and are willing to do to educate and grow our labor movement. If they, the Democratic Party, do not back the wage slaves and 99 percent, then we need to promote our unions and tell the wage slaves what we have done and what we can and will do for our fellow working families. If we have to start a new party so be it, but if the Democratic Party wants to partner with us then good. But, either way labor has to start rebuil...

Was Henry Ford smarter than the Walton family the Walmart owners? Henry Ford was ruthless in his opposition to unions and union contracts, hiring thugs called “Ford Service Workers,” who used any and all manner of force to keep out unions for years. But when Ford settled his first union contracts with the auto workers it was one of the best union contracts in the U.S. When reporters asked Ford why he settled and why at such a good wage, Ford told them he wanted his workers to be able to afford to buy his cars. This kind of thinking is what made the Middle Class; but the Walmart people do not see what Henry Ford saw: the workers as customers. Walmart sees workers as cheap labor. Underpaid labor does not buy TVs, and other luxury items. They just barely can buy their necessities. Could this be the reason Walmart started selling food? The low wages Walmart pays and the enticements for workers to spend their meager earnings is akin to the days when companies owned the houses and stores whe...

Mitt Romney has no chance to be honestly elected for he has no solid base. His so-called base is very uneasy about his religion, his ability to make decisions and stick with those decisions. His inability to stick with decision means there will never be stability in long range planning. No one can be sure what he would do in one or four years down the road. And when the oligarchies invest millions and millions of dollars in something they expect a greater return on their investment. This explains one reason why Romney is flip-flopping. The GOP money people are starting to get nervous, which is good for us 99%, but we must not back down on our agenda and stay focused on winning. When the GOP is losing it makes them do more desperate things. We should keep the pressure on, but not scare them into some crazy response that Democrats will have to respond to. At this time we, the 99%, might just win the presidency and enlarge our numbers in the Senate and House, and ultimately gain us a maj...

Now is the time for the Democrats and unions and all wage slaves to attack because the GOP is in disarray. We, the workers, must now also demand what we want in return for our services to the Democratic politicians. And we also must explain to our fellow wage slaves what we will get for our money and time. One thing we deserve is: card check for unions, which will enlarge union membership and tighten up the National Labor Relations Board laws. And for the nonunion workers and their families some of the things we would be looking very hard at the trend of 39-hour work weeks to keep workers off pensions, healthcare, vacation and overtime. Another area to look at is the temporary hiring agencies, which take advantage of the workers desperate for work. The money that the employer pays the temp agency would be more money the worker could earn. The temp agency is a middle man and why are they needed if not for greed? We, the proletarians, need to know just what we are fighting for and tell e...

Why and when did the GOP become so anti-worker? The Chamber of Commerce, which is GOP dominated and a few unknowing Democrats, has always been against workers having a living wage. At one time there were a few GOP elected presidents that were for wage slaves, healthcare, workers safety laws, environmental laws, and the right for workers to have unions. This was when they, the corporate-run GOP, needed our workers and at that time they just wanted to keep unemployment at a 6 percent or higher unemployment. The reason for the 6 percent and higher was when unemployment reaches 5 percent or lower then the workers would be in a better position to fight for better working conditions, such as pay, pensions, healthcare, work place safety. But now with NAFTA, outsourcing jobs overseas, the corporations don’t care about the unemployment percentage. The GOP politicians don’t care and have no intention to help working class people. Now the large U.S. corporations have traded away their loyalty fr...

Could the oligarchies buy a state as large as a country? California is the next battle ground between the corporate oligarchies and the wage slave proletariat. The 1% oligarchies went into the heart of where the government unions started: Wisconsin and won. So what would be the 1% GOP’s Holy Grail now? I think it is California If they can take out California and break the unions and the Democratic Party; they will pretty much have control of all the wage slaves. They will start breaking down our society and our social infrastructure, such as our schools in which only the top 1% or 3% will be able to afford to educate their family members. Then the gap will widen to include healthcare, pensions and of course wages where the only jobs will be like in the old days. The armed forces (oh wait, it is there already) the old days and the sad thing is most of California workers and retired people have not thought of this or do not think it could happen here. It has already been tried with the ...

If the wage slaves and retirees lose this election these are some of the things that will happen: 1) we will lose Social Security and Medicare as we know it; 2) more people will lose their rights to vote and there will be restrictions on free speech; 3) there will be an unprecedented attack on labor unions, such as the right to form unions and the right to bargain for healthcare, pensions and wages. They will also try to finish off the rest of the states with ‘right to work’ legislation, which means that if there is a union the members do not have to pay dues, which makes the union worth nothing to its members; 4) they will take away the minimum wage, which means that the corporations could pay whatever they want and work you as long as they want without over time; 5) the oligarchies will get rid of all worker safety rules, which means that now your body is expendable to them, and if you get injured on the job they would not be liable for your injuries and there won’t be any Socia...

Wage slaves proletarian workers must have unbiased representation on the Supreme Court, if not everything worker related for the good of working families will be lost at the Supreme Court. The Court can even take away all the decisions, which favors the workers that are now in place, and even the rights, which favors the proletarians on social issues. So it is imperative that we re-elect Obama. He is our only hope and if he is not re-elected the working class wage slaves will be set back 80 to 90 years – all lost. We would have to start from scratch: no labor laws, no free speech, voters’ rights, no free assembly, and all our elected people bought by the Citizens United law. We must maintain the presidency in order to get a good U.S. Supreme Court. Now, the GOP has a very good game on two fronts, which splits our boots on the ground, and diminishes our money. They have a very well-funded attack on state-level governments, where it is easy to buy governors and state representatives, ...

Why do we need a middle class living wage? One of the simplest answers is to spend money to buy from the small businesses and large corporations. If we, wage slaves, have a little left over after our basic needs then we can save for shelter and maybe even some toys or go back to school or maybe even a vacation. All of this spending is what drives our economy. If we buy then a worker will have a job to make things for the wage slaves to buy and the more the wage slaves earn the more they will spend. Why does the GOP and the Chamber of Commerce fight minimum wage and unions who are trying to rebuild the working middle class? They should know by now that the working middle class and retired workers with good pension are the drivers of the economy of restaurants, entertainment, housing, auto industry, food stores, and most all large, nonunion low wage box stores. We had a very workable system until the oligarchy money people got greedier and started 40 years ago to destroy the unions and ...

Our union messages have already been written. All we need to do is put them on the television, radio and in print. One message we need for California union workers was written by UAW past president Walter Reuther: There’s a direct relationship between the breadbox and the ballot box and what the union fights for and wins at the bargaining table can be taken away in the legislative halls and our members need to understand this or we will lose this in the fall election. The second union message was written by a union leader past president of the AFL, Samuel Gompers, was titled “What Does Labor Want?” "We want more schools, houses, and less jails, more books and less arsenals, more learning and less greed, more justice and less revenge; in fact, more of the opportunities to cultivate our better natures, to make manhood more noble, womanhood more beautiful, and childhood more happy and bright." The third message comes from President Franklin Roosevelt on wages. He wrote in 1933 ...

At a union meeting an AFL/CIO representative was trying to convince the union leaders there to educate their workers about how the GOP are going to attack them this election and with only 100 plus days left before the election I would call this crisis management. Why do the union leaders have to educate their workers for they should know what they’re up against and they should know themselves—their union history—for the Art of War says if you do not know yourself you will lose half of your battles; and if you do not know yourself and do not know your enemies then you will lose all your battles. I think that the AFL/CIO should spend most of its money on explaining about the unions and what they have done for the working people—whether they are union or not—and also we should show the faces of the new and old union leaders, which were the real heroes of the working class wage slaves and there are many. What the unions have been doing is giving money to promote unknown wannabe polit...

They ship their companies’ jobs off shore, which means they do not care for the working slave families in America, and they ship their money overseas to beat paying taxes. A recent study by the group Tax Justice Network estimates the amount of money in offshore tax havens to be between $21 and $32 trillion, this figure doesn’t include non-financial assets, such as real estate, gold, yachts and racehorses. Our taxes, that of the commoner, pays for and supports our Armed Forces, which protects the wealthy’s interests in other countries. The money they save by not paying their fair share in taxes, they use to buyoff state governors and federal politicians, which gives them more power and money. They can get rid of the health care laws, environmental regulations, unions, and pensions. You might ask why patriots would do this to their own country. The answer is they are not patriots. They have so much money that the USA is just a resting place to them, and a place to bleed the economy...

It looks like the unions are finally waking up to the fact that they will have to take care of themselves and not wait for some elected politician to do their work for them. So with that in mind our unions have withdrawn their support, $1 million, in funding from the Democratic National Convention, which is being held in a nonunion state in nonunion hotels. This is a slap in the face to unions. This money is our union dues, which was going to pay for this. There are more important ways to spend our dues, like organizing and training our members in labor history. To win the war against the money people we must know ourselves and also learn about our enemies, and this takes time and lots of money we need to run advertisements about why unions are good and the badness of Wall Street corporations with their oligarchies. We must be ready in November and have a plan for moving ahead or a plan for defining ourselves. We must not become pessimistic. We must stay positive in our thoughts ...

Health Care for 30 million is a Big F*&%ing Deal and will now bring more patients to the health clinics, which will mean more jobs for all medical providers, such as nurses, nurse practitioners, and doctors. Emergency rooms in hospitals will now really be emergency rooms, not waiting rooms for everything except emergencies. The want-to-be entrepreneur can now take the chance to start a business and not worry about health insurance for themselves and their employees. Some will be successful in their business and then create more jobs and hire more people. International corporations will now be more competitive with countries that have government health care for their workers, and the health care cost won’t be found in the cost of their product. This will eliminate at least one reason jobs are sent overseas. For unions this will be better. As for union organizers, and I speak from experience as a union organizer, that when I would sign up a member or a shop the workers did not und...

Wage Slaves Should Have More Control over the Banks --- It is we, the taxpayers, who will have to pony up the cash once again to bail out the banks’ gambling losses. Maybe we should be the ones who are in charge of the banks through our government, the ones who are supposed to represent us proletarians, wage slaves. With the government in control, maybe there would be some money to kick start our economy and get the workers back to work. Having the government in charge of the banks would allow us to keep an eye on what the Wall Street people, mostly bankers, are doing with our money and then maybe they would quit gambling with it. If the government fires the bankers or makes them go back to using their own money when gambling then they might be a little more frugal in their deals or investments. That’s how it used to be and why we haven’t had this kind of a collapse in a long time -- since the 1920s when there were no regulations to enforced. This was called laise-faire capitalism....

Plan A was to organize labor into a nationwide labor union for all working wage slaves. The labor movement went from aggressively organized to playing defense, and we are getting our butts handed to us. Why? Union busting. We have now come full circle. Union busting started in the 1800 by organizations like the Pinkertons, the Baldwin-Felts, and people like James A. Farley and Pearl Bergoff. Called the kings of the strike breakers and they made millions in this line of work; but overtime workers got some relief in laws meant to protect workers like those of the National Labor Relations Board, Wagner Act, Oppressive Labor Act (Senate Bill 1970) by senators Lafollette and Thomas, who were the drivers of this bill. It worked to help labor for a time, then in the mid-1940 things started to go downhill for labor when the new union busters came on scene. People like Charles Vance, owner of International Asset Protection Team, Special Response Corporation, Hoffmaster Associates, and ManPow...

The result was an exhaustion of our troops and the huge loss of our capital and respect. The same results of the Air Traffic Controllers loss. With both of these losses we have embolden the GOP anti-worker bullies, which will now give them ahead start in momentum for the November elections. It’s like giving one runner a 50-yard head start in a 100-yard race and the only way the other runner can win is if the first runner trips and falls down. How are we going to trip up the GOP runner and where are we going to get the troops and money to do battle? I think first we must look at what we have been doing wrong, who do we want to lead us into battle, and what is their strategy to win? There is no doubt that we were suckered into trying to recall Walker, and not sticking to a plan of changing who sits in the Wisconsin state Assembly and Senate. We went for revenge instead of voting out the Republican Assembly and Senate state members. There was some success in the Senate, but labor let th...

Why are the unions finding themselves alone in the fight for survival, and hated by both the oligarchies and the lower class? The reason is that the unions are the only organization standing in the way of total domination of the wage slaves by the 1%. Once unions are completely eliminated, the 1% will own the courts and government for years to come. The low wage workers were left behind in the earning power and resent those of us who have benefitted from union representation. Where is the help for the unions? For sure not the 1%, so what is left? The nonunion workers, who are not usually friendly toward union workers, perceive union workers as part of the 1% because, in their eyes, we union workers receive good wages, pensions, healthcare and paid vacations. We unions must fight for them, the low wage, nonunion slaves, and help float the ship up for all proletarian workers. They, the nonunion low-wage slaves, are the only resource left for the unions. Auto union president Walter Reu...

Wisconsin will be the turning point in which workers will either prosper or decline on the issues of pay, pensions, healthcare, vacations and all the other worker gains over the last 100 years. The GOP and wage slaves are at a crossroads and if the GOP wins then the dominoes will start falling state by state, which will put the workers in the position, the only option, of having to fight in the streets. We have already lost the U.S. Supreme Court, which is where all appealed cases end up, and they will and have already ruled against the workers. The only thing left will be the streets, which will not be good because the GOP/oligarchies will be able to identify the leaders and jail or, like in the 1800s-1930s, just kill them by trumped-up charges or by mob violence. Some of our labor leaders who were eliminated this way were Joe Hill, Big Bill Haywood, Walter Reuther, Eugene Debbs and Martin Luther King Jr., just to name a few. This is the old anti-union playbook and this worked time...

At this time some of labors best victories have occurred outside the protections of the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB). Some labor organizations, like the National Domestic Workers Alliance or workers centers are achieving wins through activism without identifying as union at all. Farm workers have also had success by working, pressuring, and sometimes boycotting. This sounds a lot like the old IWW Wobblies, who would not engage in labor contracts, because like the Service Employees International Union’s contract which ties their hands and prevents them from doing a secondary boycotts. The NLRB, at this time, is a deterrent to labor rather than a help. If the employers have a way to quash an organizing campaign they do not care if they break the NLRB laws because the win versus the imposed fine is no deterrent to the corporations. The NLRB laws need to be rewritten or done away with. Major unions have abandoned government-run elections in favor of comprehensive attack that l...

What is a person to do when you have billions of dollars and you get bored? What some of these billionaires have done or are doing is to start their own elite billionaire hunting club. First, you need a place to hunt so they buy a state and then buy the elected officials who govern those states so they can start hunting. The hunters have set their sights on union people, the wage slaves, who are the game or hunted. Ahhh --- the feeling of power and the thrill of the hunt. Union busting trophies equal more money for billionaires. What a sport. But why just stop at states when, with the U.S. Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision, they can buy the whole country, which would create the world’s largest hunting club. They would have the wage slaves serve them by working for less. The billionaires could make more money. The club is already up and running and all you need to join is a billion dollars. You could buy and hunt with these big name billionaires, such as Foster Friess, Harold...

Wisconsin was where the public unions started and this could be where public unions die. One reason is that 39% of Wisconsin union workers are registered Republican and are voting for Governor Scott Walker. I just wonder if they are stupid or nuts. How can a union person vote guns, god, and abortion, and forget about food, pension and healthcare? If union workers don’t get their heads straight they will lose all the work that the old pioneers fought, died and went to jail for trying to get union rights. Most of our present day union members have not been shot, beaten, tarred and feathered or hung for fighting for worker rights. The pioneers gave their lives and bled for our rights that some are now voting away. What the hell is wrong with these so-called union members? Is it the unions fault for not explaining how and what was given for what we have today or are they just a bunch of dumbasses? The other day a union supporter watched and listened to a mailman, who was sitting in his ...

The 99% and unions are starting to worry the GOP and oligarchies are starting to turn their rhetoric toward the unions. Why? It’s because the unions can still raise money and put people on the ground. This is why the GOP/oligarchies must stop unions just like Adolph Hitler did in 1933 when issued an edict abolishing all labor unions as part of his effort to ban any political opposition. The GOP/oligarchies are pushing toward this same outcome. This is what we, the 99% and unions, must do to provide one hell of a lot of political opposition. This is a war between the very rich 1% or 1/10th of the 1% and the wage slaves and yes, Obama did appoint a majority of the current members of the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), which was established in 1935. The NLRB was stacked against unions by the Bush administration, and now it is a fair board to all wage slaves. The GOP/oligarchies are afraid that if President Obama gets re-elected and brings along the Congress and retains the Sena...

There are rumors already that there are paid Blackwater-type people inserted into the 99% organization. These plants are to turn a peaceful revolution into a violent revolution, which will give the 1% oligarchies the gift of using the cops to break the demonstrations and put protesters in jail on trumpeted up charges. It is an old tactic that has been used ever since proletarian wage slaves have worked to better themselves. There is no doubt that the 99% and unions will be infiltrated with agitators and people who will try to disrupt the movement, but also will be imbedded with FBI, law enforcement and private agitators. The 99% should counter this by not allowing anyone to wear a face mask, such as Guy Fawkes’ Anonymous mask, to hide their faces or identifications. Cops and FBI agents do not like their pictures taken. The 99% should perhaps vet its leaders and boisterous members before engaging any of their suggestions. This is a war and the GOP anti-union will pull out all the sto...

If they can bring together all of the 99%, which includes among others the OWS, the employed, the unemployed and the unions – all the types of unions, both private and public, then the battle can be won. One of the problems that could derail this effort is that unions have a large number of republican-voting members in their ranks who apparently don’t understand who the wage slaves are. A union person once told me that a union member who votes for a republican is like a chicken voting for Colonel Sanders. The unions need to teach their republican members that when they vote republican they are voting to break their unions, lose their pensions, healthcare and good wages, which feeds and takes care of their families. If they vote against their union, which is a slap to their brothers and sisters, they should be banished from the union. They are just Trojan Horses in their unions. The rejuvenated unions should join the 99% in protesting anything that adversely affects workers, and we ...

There are two 99%. One is the workers, labor unions, proletarians, wage slaves. The other is the little shop owners, restaurants, mom & pop stores. They both have just about the same enemies, but only one hasn’t figured it out yet. If the small businesses think the Chamber of Commerce, large corporations and box stores, like Walmart, are their friends who would not undersell their products they have their heads in a dark place. Walmart and the like have no problem putting small stores out of business. What’s equally appalling is that city and county governments that approve the applications of big box stores are actually helping to destroy small businesses. The two 99% should be standing shoulder to shoulder against corporations, Chamber of Commerce and box stores. The small shop owners are getting hit from two sides. One hit from their customers and the other from large corporation box stores and out of town chain restaurants. If customers do not have money, they can’t spend i...

Labor is not the enemy. They are the customers. Why do us wage slaves give our hard earned money to people who use it against us. And, yes, we are wage slaves for anyone who drags their tired body up every day to earn wages. The GOP will tell you the U.S. is the land of opportunity; and that is true to a certain extent. Not everyone is born equal or from the same circumstance, and no one makes wealth on their own because they need employees to help them get there and we turn around and buy what they are selling. So, in this capitalist system we are wage slaves. If we don’t do this we will not eat or have shelter or be able to send our kids to school—you know, like take care of your family. Why do we give away our hard earned cash to corporations like Wendys, McDonalds, Mars Inc. (candy), Pepsi, Coca-Cola, Kraft Foods, Intuit (website creator) and the Gates Foundation (Microsoft), who were all long-time members of the American Legislative Exchange Council or ALEC. The organization b...