Skip to main content

Payback Time

It is time for retired workers to park their motor homes and dock their boats and hit the streets in support of other union workers and the 99%. Besides the support, it will be good physical exercise and give the participant a good feeling about their contributions to the cause. It might even be fun for the retirees, but for sure it would be pay back for us retirees who have healthcare and a good pension.

I hope we have all been good union people, but I am pretty sure some of us have sinned and shopped at WalMart and not at our union stores! Most of us have not spent time in jail or been beaten up for being a union member trying to protect our jobs like our forefathers; but now our union brothers and sisters are getting framed on charges, such as the Longshore union in Longview, Wash., and the American Crystal sugar workers, who are locked out and cannot get unemployment.

The sugar workers are trying to survive on $100 a week from the unions and their savings. They need food. And so do workers at the Cooper Tire workers in Findlay, Ohio, who are locked out, and we have candy workers in southern California, who could probably use some help and there are many others just like the ones listed.

We can just go and stand in solidarity with them, take a pizza or a bag of food. For the sugar workers, there is a defense fund where donations can be made at: http:/www.gofundme.com/d6aas or a check or money order can be sent to Union Local 167G, Wells Fargo Bank, 730 Center Ave., Moorhead, MN 56560. This union might want to rethink about banking Wells Fargo for they are no friends of labor.

The Longshoreman fight was won by the support of their retired members, who took extra shifts at picket lines. They prepared meals, accompanied members to court hearings and trials. They raised funds for the fight so when your union time comes and it will come, we need to be organized with all the help we can get and hope our retired workers have not forgotten us or what was fought and won for us in the 1800s and 1920s and ‘30s.

Good luck and I hope to see some of our union brothers and sisters on the street representing their unions and getting in shape for the spring offense of unions and the 99%.

See you on the streets!
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Fight or Perish

In 2012 more than a quarter of all political contributions came from just 30,000 people who represented the 1 percent of the 1 percent, 90 percent who spent the most won. Today, we are an experiment in either a democracy, which started in 1787 or an oligarchy, which is winning. The nonunion people, like Trump and Musk, have most all the tools in their pockets to destroy our unions. They have money, they have the courts, they have law enforcement, they have the media, and 50 percent of workers that don’t know this don’t know the history of the working class people. This is the perfect storm to lose all the gains workers have made whether they’re union or not, even our Social Security and Medicare, and the Affordable Care Act. So, now we will have to go way back to the late 1920s and ‘30s and dig up the old labor party books. One book, written in 1964, has the information, The Rebel Voices, an IWW Anthology by Joyce L. Kornbluh, educator, activist, and advocate. The history of our labor...
Post a Comment
Read more

Project 2025 will be the Death of Unions

Each blog I write from here on out could be my last. I don’t know if or when they will shut me down, but I will keep the blog going for as long as I can. I’m not engaging in hyperbole, not with what is coming at us in January. We need to protect and defend the National Labor Relations Board. When Trump was last in office, he systematically eliminated workers’ rights to join unions and negotiate collective bargaining with employers—this not only hurt employees, but their communities and the economy overall. Trump weakened worker protections and actively worked at eliminating rules that protected workers. We need to keep the NLRB for all workers, for organizing workers and nonunion workers and build a workers’ union that is much stronger than the MAGA or the old Tea Party. Our unions will fight and win. The benefits unions fight for eventually work their way down to nonunion workers. If MAGAs weren’t so hellbent on owning the Libs, they, too, would enjoy a four-day work-week with full p...
Post a Comment
Read more

Support Those Unionizing

Workers are still unionizing their workplaces so here is a shoutout to the nurses at the University Medical Center, a private hospital in New Orleans and the only level-one trauma center. The nurses held a one-day strike, but had been bargaining with the hospital for eight months regarding workplace concerns, such as safety and more money. There are about 600 nurses, considered the backbone of all hospitals, working at UMC. All of our unions should be giving them our support in any way that helps them succeed. If the election doesn’t go blue, this type of worker protests could very well end if the election goes red. This year with our president’s and vice president’s support of unions, there have been some big wins for labor. If we lose, the National Labor Relations Board will be eliminated and all states will become right to work states, which is the kiss of death to unions. Today, twenty-seven states have right to work laws, which prohibits union contracts. Right to work is a new t...
Post a Comment
Read more