Union Perspectives

Why is the living wage so important? First, the “Have Littles” need to be and should be able to survive without government aide when they work. Second, is that getting the minimum wage to $15 to $18 an hour is the only way the little people can pry cash out of the hands of the hoarders and put in back into circulation. Increasing the minimum wage supports the spenders who will, with their buying habits, create more jobs to make and service the products that are purchased. This is also the reason that the $10 to $12 an hour will not work. It will only disqualify these workers from government aide; but the $15 to $18 an hour minimum wage would not only remove the need for government aide, but would also give the workers some disposal income. We, the workers, probably are the only means to pry this money from the greedy. The government will fight with lobbyists tooth and nail to stop a higher wage. Just look at one of the big reasons that the cash is growing in the hands of just a few a...

Princeton and Northwest universities did a study recently of our government structure and economic state of affairs and determined our democracy has turned into an oligarchy. The report entitled, “Testing Theories of American Politics: Elites, Interest Groups and Average Citizens,” used extensive policy data collected from between the years 1981 through 2002 to empirically determine the state of the U.S. political system. The researchers concluded that the U.S. government policies rarely align with the preferences of the majority of Americans, but do favor special interests and lobbying organizations. When a majority of the citizens disagrees with economic elites or with organized interests they lose. Niccolo Machiavelli, who wrote the books, “The Prince” and “The Art of War” around the year 1513, pointed out the three types of good government and how they can slip into a bad type of government for the masses. At this time we are an oligarchy form of government, which the study conclu...

Work less but get paid the same while the employer gets more production out of the happy workers. If given three-days off a work week, most workers would be eager to see Monday morning roll around. I know this because I worked six years at a community college at 19 and one-half hours a week, Monday through Thursday with Thursdays being my shorter day. Most of the time I got the equivalent of an eight-hour day by planning and working smart; however, the college did not pay much for the specialized work I was doing. This concept works; one only has to look at the coding/web design/online interactive educational platform company, Treehouse. Its employees work four days a week with full pay and in return the company receives excellent work results with a high morale among the employees. Still the concept for all except the wages worked well. So if we, as a country, would pay all workers a living wage, such as $2,500 a month whether they work or not this would open many jobs for people w...

To bring back financial stability and put the unemployed to work we must raise the wages to at least $15 to $18 an hour, but there is an even quicker way to matching aggregate supply and demand and this is the most important role of the government fiscal policy that is make sure the U.S. has the $16 trillion in purchasing power to buy the $16 trillion in goods and services that we produce each year. For a little more than one-third of the military budget we could have full employment of the 11 million people in the U.S. The fastest way yet is to do what the Swiss will be voting on this fall and that is to pay its citizens $2,800 a month regardless if they work or not. This campaign for a Europe-wide basic income is gaining ground. This would be full employment, which would give workers much greater bargaining power for wages, childcare, eldercare, hiring disabled workers and a much higher standard of living with pensions and healthcare when too old to work anymore. Those who want to wo...

The disempowerment of the workers worldwide and the USA is driving the wage inequality wider each day, which puts the capitalists’ consumer-driven economy into a death spiral. This spiral began in the mid-1980s when executives and directors tossed aside their old patriotic inhabitations against laying off workers, cutting wages, closing U.S. plants, moving production overseas to dirt-cheap labor, and taking on debt. Most of this was driven by locally owned companies becoming stockholder corporations where the bottom line was all that mattered, no matter the cost. Their only concern is the shareholders; but this way of doing business is proving counterproductive. There is no way to grow. There is no wages or jobs. No spending. No economy. It’s essentially like committing business suicide. This type of death spiral was also supported by the business roundtable in the 1990. They changed their statement of corporations’ mission from making goods available at a fair price to generating eco...

Why have wages remained flat or even gone down in the last 30 years? There are lots of reasons and plenty of blame to go around from the workers to the corporations to the politicians and even to the courts. To start to understand, the workers should look at themselves. Like why we negotiate our wages down to get a job or why we work for a nonunion, low wage corporation, or why we don’t fight to have a union or basic working rights. Workers stop valuing their skills and, out of fear, gave into the corporate disrespect for workers. Then there are the huge corporations who pollute the wages by setting or using the minimum wage set by our government, who the workers voted into office to look out for our interests. Look how that has turned out for us. Remember, minimum wage is just that. It is the lowest wage you can receive unless you work as a restaurant food server, and then you can receive much less. Of course, you could be an unpaid intern, who’s most likely taking the job of a paid w...

What does austerity, union busting, worker lockouts and making it harder to vote have in common? It is starting a worldwide revolution between the 99 percent and the oligarchies, which in most cases have the governments in their pockets bought and paid for. Some of the places and countries that are in the fight today are Belgium’s city of Brussels where 25,000 people took part Friday in a European trade union demonstration against austerity, 20 people were injured. The Kellogg workers in the U.S. are locked out of their jobs because Kellogg hired temporary workers to undercut worker pay. In the Ukraine, their unions and their sovereignty rights are under attack at this time. Also, there are 1,500 union and nonunion Canadian truckers at the ports in British Columbia, Vancouver who are in the financial fight of their lives. This is what standing together looks like. UPS just fired 250 workers who went on a 90-minute protest strike in February for the firing of union activist Jairo Reyes...

The parasites of the economy and the capitalist system are people like Sheldon Adelson, who makes nothing, but just sucks money out of the economy. The people who lose money in his casinos are really just taking money out of circulation and the consumer market. The gamblers get nothing for their money and Adelson banks it away because the House always wins. Adelson makes nothing and gamblers buy nothing, which is a net zero gain for jobs and the economy. Adelson has nothing to spend his profits on so he buys Republican politicians, instead. Adelson, like the Koch brothers, wants to control our government so he can change our laws to benefit him, which would remove even more money out of our consumer-driven economy, and eventually destroy our economy and our democracy as we know it. These types of parasites are like leeches sucking the life blood from all working wage slaves. What do we do? First, each person must understand what they are involved in or purchasing with their money and t...