Union Perspectives

The wage slaves and the spenders are the backbone of the capitalist system. The spending is about 67 percent of it; but the money is the cartilage for the system. What is happening with income inequality and austerity is like osteoporosis of the bones, they’re depleting the economy of its strength. Money is now in the hands of just a few families, the 1 percent, while the 99 percent, who are the actual spenders by virtue of their numbers, have less and less money to keep the capitalist system functioning. Karl Marx pointed out some problems with the capitalist system, which, for one, is the hording of cash and the second, is more products made than are purchased. Both of these problems can be solved by raising the minimum wage to no less than $15 to $18 an hour, which will give the spenders the disposable income to buy durable goods and enhance their living standards. Now where do we find jobs that we are losing to robots? One way is to look at our work history for ways we did before....

Why are the people of the world enraged when they find out the leaders they supported and gave money to get them elected to office then turn out to be just nuts and lack the leadership or knowledge to deliver the promises they made to their constituents to get elected. Maybe if the people would just take notice of the signs like why would a person want to spend $1 to $2 million for a campaign to be elected to a job/office that pays a paltry $120,000 a year. Where does this money come from? What is their track record on wage slaves? Are they good or bad? Do they support unions, higher wages, healthcare, pensions—if they don’t then you shouldn’t support them. This is one case where you do get what is paid for. It is just the wrong people paying, and we wage slaves need to know who is paying the $1 million to $2 million, we know it is not us proletarians. We need to know who we are entrusting our government to before they get entrenched in office. We need to be like a good car mechanic ...

All countries are only as good as their people. They are the engines of any country. The engines should be as powerful as possible in order to do this we need the best educational system, which should be free up to the bachelor’s degree, or an apprenticeship of four to five years for a trade, and a free healthcare system. The workers must have the wages to be able to save for a good pension when they retire, which would mean they would be productive on a volunteer basis. The workers must be paid a good living wage, starting at $15 to $18 an hour. Paying people well for their work would release funds for government assets, which could be used for the cost of free education and healthcare. Also, the workers would be tax payers, instead of being like the Walmart stores in Minnesota with its 20,997 employees, which creates a public burden of $92.7 million a year in government assistance for these employees. Most workers are 35 years old and 88 percent are 20 years or older. This is just wh...

The Democrats and the President need to step up to the plate and back the workers and unions in this class warfare. If Democrats can’t arrest the downward spiral of America’s economical lives of the 99 percent, maybe a new party is needed. The workers’ need is more than the minimum wage increase of $15 to $18 an hour. We need to restore workers’ collective bargaining in pay, benefits and hours. To do this we need stronger labor laws that protect us, the workers, and plug the holes in the existing laws that have been decimated in the last 40 years. The government should also re-establish the link between economic growth and Americans’ incomes. There is a way to tie economic growth to wages, which would be a shared prosperity for all. It’s been done before. We need a strong labor leader like President Franklin Roosevelt. When he was at Madison Square Garden; he singled out business and financial monopoly speculation and reckless banking as enemies of a social peace. Government by organiz...

How did we get here and where are we headed? To understand this, one must go back to the year of 1651 to provide an account of political development of Europe and North America. A historian, Samuel Finer, left behind the history of government from the earliest times in a 1,701 page book, which went through the Liberal Revolution of the late 198th and 19th centuries that replaced the Patronage system with Meritocratic and a smaller government. Then the Fabian Revolution in the early 20th century created the modern welfare state. Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan changed this government style to market/corporate-oriented governance. Each revolution tried to answer a basic question: what is a state for? Regarding liberty, in 1859 John Stuart Mill argued that the state was to prevent people from doing harm to others, which did some good, but as he grew older he became troubled by some profound questions. The questions mainly had to do with the persistence of poverty. Mill then wrote Mil...

The strategy of the GOP oligarchies is to control the governments from the local level to the state to the federal level and the U.S. Supreme Court. Their biggest and most effective weapon is money, which they have the most of, and everyone knows, unfortunately, money equals power. The 99 percent working people have more people than the 1 percent, which means the Have Nots have their own kind of power. The people’s only chance to add money to their strategy is through unions and their members paying dues and this is why the GOP is so hell bent on destroying the means of unions collecting dues from union members. Using tactics like Right to Work laws in states and laws that let workers be in a union without paying dues, yet receiving all the union benefits. So the union members who do pay their dues are supporting the benefits of the non-paying members. It is easy to see how this is working out for the money strategy on both sides—union and GOP. Right to Work has nothing to do with the...

Competition can be used against the Haves. The Haves possess and, in turn, are possessed by power, obsessed with the fear of losing power; their every move is dictated by the idea of keeping their power. The way of life of the Haves is to keep what they have and wherever possible to shore up their defenses so now we have the Haves 1 percent determined to keep its power and in constant fight with the Have Nots. At the same time they are in conflict among themselves. Power grows or dies therefore in order to keep power the status quo must get more; but from whom? There is just so much that can be squeezed out of the Have Nots, so the Haves must take it from each other. This cannibalism of the 1 percent is a good time for the Have Nots to attack, such as the $15 to $18 an hour minimum wage. The Have Nots should try to pick fights between fast food places by picketing one, which would bring more business to the one where there are no pickets. Then, when the owners see what is happening t...

One thing labor has to look forward to is the growth of the technology markets, which typically follows a distinct pattern of power law, or Pareto Curve. Pareto Curve is a small number of players represent a disproportionate share of the rewards. High Tech Internet networks become more valuable the more they are used. It can also generate a kind of winner-takes-all or winner-takes-most markets. This is the start of a revolution in the work place and for the U.S. to have a chance at competition in the world. Businesses, individuals and governments must understand what is going on. Yes, we are having some manufacturing returning to the USA, but the dynamism and creativity that made the U.S. the most innovative nation in the world is faltering. Graduates in the U.S. with at least an associate’s degree has fallen to 12th place in the world. We were once the envy of the world, but then came the greedy GOP’s Tea Party and the Have It All with their heads in a very dark place. This can be ch...

Unions are the boots on the ground, fighting for their governments and jobs in Ukraine and are taking hits from Russian separatists. The separatists trapped 700 miners underground and fired upon hundreds of second-shift miners to keep them away; but more than 1,000 miners marched to show support for their country. Unions in Turkey are fighting for better wages and job safety. Again, it is the unions who are leading the fight for the working people. The Kurds are finally going to have a homeland again it is the proletarian workers who are leading the fight for their homeland. It looks like the time for Kurdistan’s independence is closer than any time before, Kurdish government employee Shorsh Khalid Ahmed told the Wall Street Journal. All of these things are happening in Ukraine, Turkey and Kurdistan are happening because of the masses. If these countries can put up this kind of fight, then we, in the USA, should be able to do the same. Where are our people to stop the attacks on votin...

The fight to destroy the New Deal has and never will stop. This is the Holy Grail for the anti-worker GOP. Their newest plan is to once again attack the safety net for old or injured workers’ pensions only this time they have a new plan that is working. It is the old Trojan horse plan to destroy it from the inside out with high ranking agency officials closing post offices and forcing people to apply online for Social Security services. Apparently, they believe that every American has a computer and is computer savvy or maybe they know they’re not and won’t be able to find their way through the verification process to get Social Security benefits they worked for. This Internet application process is being pushed by a Trojan horse by an acting commissioner Carolyn Colvin and her staff. Her goal is to close hundreds of Social Security offices around the country and completely abolish face-to-face personalized service. Since 2010 the Social Security Administration (SSA) has closed 80 fiel...

We Have Nots wage slaves of the world must make changes ourselves. Hannibal said we will either find a way or make one. We can start by asking why, who and how. Asking these questions is the start of change. Some say it’s no coincidence that the question mark is an inverted plow, breaking up the hard soil of old believes and preparing for the new growth. Workers must have a plan for the working people that are for the good of the people. Remember when you start the war between the 1-2 percent and the 98-99 percent; the 99 percent need a starting point and a stopping point. How the war will be waged hopefully without destroying what we are fighting for. In President Lincoln’s First Inaugural, he said, “This country, with its institutions, belongs to the people who inhabit it. Whenever they shall grow weary of the existing government they can exercise their revolutionary right to dismember or overthrow it. The people who should take heed of the options of the masses and not keep taking ...

The attacks on unions and working people are pushing people to the brink of civil resistance just like the 1920s and 1930s when there was a strike or work shut downs every day which involved shootings, killings. It was stopped by people who worked with unions and the creation of the National Labor Relations Board (NLBR), which was a board formed to settle differences between labor and corporations. However, the NLBR has been decimated and no longer works for the workers. The next place for workers—the last stop—is the U.S. Supreme Court, which has been subverted by the anti-worker GOP-backed, Bible-thumping, and biased-in-favor-of-oligarchies justices: Scalia, Alito, Thomas, Roberts and Kennedy. So where do the workers go? They will go back to what works: civil resistance. It will succeed because the diverse base of participants can outlast the armed struggles used against them. Oligarchies think they have the upper hand because they can buy others to attack the resisters, but this wi...

Nick Hanauer is a visionary capitalist and a billionaire, who is warning his co-oligarchies that the pitchforks are coming for the plutocrats. You know the ultra-rich greedy oligarchies who are fighting the minimum wage hike to a living wage with some disposable income. If the tidal wave of wage inequality does not stop, then surely there will be pitchforks. I understand some entrepreneurs’ thinking having been one myself. Unless your workers have a union, the worker is on their own. I remember once speaking with a non-union contractor about workers’ pay and I told the contractor that I thought his workers were worth more than he was paying them. His answer was, “I know they are, but I am not going to pay them more until they make me do it.” It is sad some people think this way and have to be made to do the right thing. This is why it is so important for people not to get distracted or happy at the prospect of increasing the wages to $10 an hour or so. If the employers and government h...