Union Perspectives

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 ...