Union Perspectives

Who gets the interest on earned wages? Hint, it's not the workers. Minimum wage workers do not make minimum wage. How wage slaves give money to their employers is rather sneaky on the part of the employers. The worker usually gets paid by the hour or piece work. The rub comes when the worker receives their pay. In the old days workers were paid upon completion of the job or at the end of the working day. Over time the employers have kept the money longer and longer before paying the worker. Sometimes, workers weren’t paid at all. Now the employer does not trust the workers to pay them up front. That was not unusual as some people have shown they aren’t trustworthy to complete a job if they’ve already been paid for it. However, employers used this as a reason to evolve into a system of holding onto a worker’s pay until the end of a job, then to the end of the week, then to the end of two weeks and then to the end of the month, and sometimes longer. Now, consider who gets the interes...

How income inequality could be stopped. On January 5, 1914, Henry Ford announced he was paying workers on his famously productive Model T assembly line in Highland Park, Michigan $5 per eight hour day. That amount was almost three times the amount typical factory employees earned at the time. In light of the audacious move, some lauded Ford as a friend of the workers, others called him a madman or a socialist or both. It’s not difficult to imagine which group said favorable things about Ford and which didn’t. The Wall Street Journal called his action an economic crime. Ford thought it a cunning business move, and history proved him right. The higher wage turned Ford’s auto workers into customers who could afford to pay $575 for a Model T. Ford was neither a madman nor a socialist, but a very smart capitalist who profits more than doubled from $25 million in 1914 to $57 million in just two years. Now just think if the Walmart Waltons would raise the wages three times higher like Ford ...

One ethical argument for redistributing the income from rich to poor comes from the psychological truth: the nineteenth century’s so-called utilitarianism in which a law should be to produce the greatest possible happiness equally. Taking a thousand dollars from someone who’s rich and giving it to someone who is poor might diminish the rich man’s happiness slightly, but would certainly increase the happiness of the poor person far more. Taxing the wealthy to help the poor therefore increases the sum total of happiness. The economic justification for organizing the economy in such a way that the oligarchies did not accumulate a disproportionate share to begin with and also to maintain enough total demand for products and services for if the spenders have no money to buy their share of happiness then the economy the economy does not work. This is why the minimum wage must be raised to $15 to $18 an hour across the USA and most of Europe. Some do see the need for the wage slaves and the ...

The strikes for $15 to $18 an hour are mere incidents in the class warfare. The strikes are tests of strength, periodic drills in the course of which the workers train themselves for concerted action. This training is most necessary to prepare the wage slaves for the final catastrophe, the general strike, which will complete the expropriation of the employers. The violence of a strike is simply the folding of the workers’ arms or putting your hands in your pockets. This philosophy was eloquently voiced by International Workers of the World organizer Joseph Ettor. If the workers of the world want to win all they have to do is recognize their own solidarity. They have nothing to do but fold their arms and the world will stop. The workers are more powerful with their hands in their pockets than all the property or money possessed by the capitalists and oligarchies. As long as the workers keep their hands in their pockets, the capitalists cannot put their hands in the pockets of the worker...

When the sun shines on ice, the ice usually melts and when the sun shines on agendas and methods of the oligarchies they will start to lose ground. The Koch brothers fund Americans for Prosperity—just think about this for a moment. The prosperity is just for the Koch brothers, not for the workers. When they invest they invest to make more money. The Koch brothers are also large contributors to ALEC (the American Legislative Exchange Council), that writes state bills and gives them to Koch supported politicians to get passed in state houses across the nation. Again, this only helps the oligarchies. One only has to look at Wisconsin and New Jersey to see how detrimental these ALEC influenced bills are destroying these states because the laws only help the oligarchies. The Koch brothers and other rich oligarchies have their water boys, who are their mouth pieces, their talking heads, like Limbaugh, Hannity, Beck, and the entire Fox news cast of characters. These corporate whores are als...

It looks like Ukraine might be saved from Russia’s Putin by union steelworkers. One of the richest oligarchies in Ukraine has asked his union steelworkers to start patrolling the cities and forcing the Putin people out of the government buildings taken over shortly after Putin violated Ukraine’s sovereignty over Crimea. Using the union members is working because it is working people taking care of working people, and not the government, who some in Ukraine don’t trust or agree with their handling of the situation. The union steelworkers are buying time for things to settle down and the Ukrainians to decide for themselves just what is best. Unions seems to be the way to solve a lot of problems for the working people, such as getting a living wage, mine safety in U.S. and Turkey, which just lost hundreds of miners. Then there is the fire safety in the clothing sweatshops worldwide. The wages and safety for workers will not be solved by governments for they are controlled by the money peo...

Old International Workers of the World’s (IWW) dream of a worldwide workers fight for economic justice is coming. This has got to feel very good for the old IWW’s Wobblies and it is showing respect for the martyrs who gave their lives or did prison time on mostly trumped up charges. All workers and retired people need to stand up and support the $15 an hour wage or a living wage, which some, like California Rep. Barbara Lee (D) say should be in the $26 an hour range, which is where it would be today if the minimum wage had kept up with inflation. The proletarians worldwide have awakened to the fact that no government is going to help them, they’re on their own. Just like always. It is the families and fellow workers who help you. Remember when you have nothing you don’t have much to lose and this is where the oligarchies have made a strategic mistake. You never force your enemy into a corner (Art of War) and left them with no alternatives, but to fight. Also remember if you are afraid...

Privatizing can costs lives and money. It does not save governments money and the costs are just passed on to the taxpayer, which takes money in the long run away from the government by way of sales tax and support for underpaid workers or by workers who lost a government job to a private company. When the oligarchies are taking control of coal mines like in the one in Turkey from government responsibility, the new private owners tried cutting costs for more profits. Usually it is done by cutting wages, safety of the workers, the loss of life of the Turkey miners make this very apparent. All the government of Turkey had to do was look to how the private for profit operate: money over everything else. Mines have cost the lives of U.S. miners, two just the other day, and black lung disease is on the rise again. When the lives of workers are put under the control of the oligarchies, the workers’ lives will be damaged or they will die for the company’s profits, and most of the time the gov...

How did the USA lose so much ground in the economical struggle, which has destroyed the middle class? The fight between oligarchies and the commoners began when President Roosevelt started the New Deal, which came on the heels of the 1929 Great Depression. The Great Depression was caused by the Robber Barons, the old oligarchies who destroyed the trade unions and the International Workers of the World (IWW) unions. With the IWW and the New Deal, the 99 percent came back, but forgot that in every war when one side loses they sometimes just go underground to harass and rebuild. This is what the Koch brothers did and what the billionaire party has been doing and their Holy Grail was getting control of the U.S. Supreme Court. Remember, the U.S. Supreme Court gives and takes away the Citizens United decision took the election process away from the workers and gave it to the one-tenth of the 1 percent. They have all the money and can buy or defeat any candidate. Their long-term economic goa...

Why is there so much unrest and fighting in the world? Is it just a coincidence that most of the impact is on the toilers? And who or what is to blame? It is not the wage slaves for they are just barely getting by and in some cases being savaged by raped, killed or sold into slavery. It is not only the Middle East or South America or Ukraine, it is everywhere. So what are the commonalities? Oil, gas, precious metals and gems, water and among resources, which then equals money and power. If the governments do not respect the ownership of the commons or its people power than the oligarchies will buy some of us, give guns and take what they want, which is all of it. There is never enough for these greedy people, and once the 1/10 of the 1 percent of the billionaires beat the toilers. They will turn on each other, but we, the workers, will be the ones who are forced to do the fighting and killing while they sit back and watch like a sporting event. We already see this sporting event in t...

The fight about inequality in the coming year will bring increasingly conscious and organized resistance by a growing vanguard of wage slaves pushed to the wall by bosses’ drive to cut wages and increase what they call productivity. This will be punctuated by street battles with ultra-rightist movements fighting against unions, militants, revolutionary socialists, women, blacks, gays, immigrants, Jews and others. This will happen even in the most stable democracies if the working class fails to take power out of the hands of the oligarchies. This is why the $15 to $18 an hour minimum wage is so important at this time. For one reason, it is a rallying point, and two, it will show the workers they can have a better life if they set aside all other differences and work together. The pressure is beginning to pay off as evident in a recent survey of American millionaires, 51 percent think inequality is a major problem for the U.S. About two-thirds also think higher taxes on the wealthy and ...

The oligarchies do control the world with money. They have bought and paid for our elected politicians and entire governments. What we usually see is the one person at the top who we then direct all our attention to, but we should look at this oligarch control as an iceberg, as the really destructive danger is not seen. The unseen, larger portion of the iceberg is under the water and this is why we, the 99 percent, get blindsided by people who we think are running our country, like presidents Ronald Reagan, George W. Bush, and Wisconsin governor Scott Walker and in Russia Putin. They are all just figureheads controlled by the 1 percent oligarchies and their corporate money, which is all part of the underwater part of the iceberg. The oligarchies formed organizations, such as American Legislative Exchange Council or ALEC to usurp our country’s political process. The ownership of countries by the oligarchies has never worked out or lasted long. After they have all the money and power th...

In all wars the battles decide who wins so you must win the most battles and the most important ones and the battle to unite the working class against the divide and rule strategies of the capitalist class upon which their domination rest. It is a battle the wage slaves must win. If you don’t fight, you don’t win—period. If someone you know doesn’t understand why the minimum wage needs to raise, wait until the end of the month and then ask again. The cost of everything is going up; some of the costs are understandable, but some are not and corporations are using any excuse to raise prices, but not workers’ wages. How the hell are we supposed to survive> The employers try to turn workers who are black, female, gay, Mexican, or immigrant into scapegoats as distraction for the lack of good jobs creation along with the strategies the oligarchies blame Obamacare or the Affordable Care Act and the minimum wage, but the minimum wage raises are coming and the spending power of the toilers w...