Union Perspectives

The world’s Stock Market is taking big hits, which kills 401Ks usually owned by the little people and pension plans. One of the main reasons for this is the inequality on the part of the spenders of the capitalist system, which we and most of the world use. The capitalist system we us is where the profits from corporations go to just a few people at the top while none goes to the wage slaves who make the profits in the first place. The few at the top take their profits and hide them overseas or loan the profits to the toilers, who then have to pay top interest rates on the loans, which means more money out of the pockets out of the toilers need to just survive. The problem is the toilers are out of money to pay back the loans and this is what is going to kill the capitalist system worldwide, and the top 1 percent know this or should. The way out of this is 1) Raise the minimum wage to $15 to $24 an hour; and 2) have workers on corporation boards, with votes on how profits are spen...

Low wages and debt go together to make the 1 percent very, very rich. To begin with, the rich pay the wage slaves very little, which then promotes the toilers to use debt to survive. Case in point, with no extra cash for repairs and a broken washing machine, for example, the cost to repair the machine is a one-time large cost that seems greater than buying a new machine for a low monthly payment. This way, the 1 percent makes more money in two ways and makes the toilers actual wage slaves. This enslavement starts very early with school debt so that young workers start out in debt with an average of $31,000 to $100,000 and higher depending on the field of study, which, without a very good paying job, leaves them as wage slaves for many years. We are nearing the end of economic/industrial growth, primarily, but not only for ecological reasons. When growth stalls, lending opportunities disappear. Since money is essentially lent for existence, debt levels increase faster than the supply ...

Instead of cities blaming unions and their union pensions for cities going broke, the cities should take a lesson from unions on how to negotiate with Wall Street who are the ones who, with their financial fees, are sucking U.S. cities dry. In 2014, the labor unions found that Los Angeles city had spent twice as much on bank fees in 2013 as it had on street repairs, which resulted in a campaign slogan: “Invest in our streets not Wall Street.” It was a call to the big banks and Wall Street, thugs who gamble with our pension money and are not willing to help on fees charged, which keeps going up. This is where the cities should take a page from the labor movement and bargain collectively on interest rates and other financial deals. This needs to be done now because during the last 20 to 30 years banking industry has shifted its profits schemes to now rely heavily on fees—the money charged for creating loans and packaging them into securities, selling them and servicing them. They charge...

An old tactic is resurfacing that union workers and workers who want unions should know that there is a well-funded, concerted effort to break unions and stop work places from becoming unionized. These companies hire busloads of scabs who will replace all types of workers like steelworkers, all types of construction workers, bus drivers, medical nurses, and fast food workers. Sometimes it is started by hiring temporary or cutting hours in the case of the Pennsylvania steelworkers at Harrison where negotiations with Allegheny Technologies Inc. (ATI) where 2,450 workers contract expired and ATI wants to slash healthcare for active, retired and future workers, institute 12-hour shifts, cut pensions for current and future workers, reduce wages and overtime pay and to contract out more work. When the contract expired at midnight on June 30th, ATI brought in three busloads of scabs from Storm Engineering, a strike breaking outfit. This is the old Andrew Carnegie way of strike breaking tact...

If the capitalist system is dependent on 67.5 percent spending, which is provided by the habits of the proletarians then shouldn’t the proletarians have jobs or a hybrid system of work in which they are paid a living wage of $15 to $18 an hour minimum or a temporary job or some payment for non-labor to put money in the spenders’ pockets. The money hoarders do not want to invest in factories, they want to invest in bonds, stocks or extend credit line loaning money to countries that cannot repay or student loans. So what needs to be done is to tax the cash hoarders so governments worldwide can start rebuilding the crumbling infrastructure worldwide. Here in the U.S. we need to rebuild our bridges, highways, water mains, sewers, electrical grids, railroads, schools, waterways, fiber optics, clean energy and all the jobs that would be created if we invested in these areas. If the government focused on these areas, then it would create opportunities for investors to be able to maintain or s...

Has the proletarian class finally found a leader? Could Bernie Sanders be the next Eugene Debs or Franklin Roosevelt? At this time, it looks like he very well could the person that the 99 percent were waiting for. He is not only saying the right things, but he has lived these principles, and he has always advocated for these things his entire life even when some thought he what he was saying was crazy. In fact, when he was younger he started every day by saying his ideas are not crazy, and it seems to be he is right if the numbers gathering to see him are any indication. Single payer healthcare for everyone, a living wage, jobs for all, a good retirement, pensions, taxing the rich and removing the Social Security cap where the rich do not pay into the program. These are the things that resonate with the young, the unions, and the old—and these not crazy, especially since people are awakening to the fact that system is stacked against them courtesy of the rich and GOP. Bernie Sanders...

Water is one of the most vital Commons, but who should own it? Who should control it? Who should be responsible for the care of it? I know who should not be involved in any of these questions and it is private stock holders of corporations who want to profit and will or are destroying the water of the world. Water is one of the Commons of the people, but as a whole it is an essential of life not only for drinking but for health and sanitation and to grow our food. Water is more important than gold or oil because without it you die. So why are cities and governments selling or privatizing our water, and do they even have the right to sell our Commons without a vote even? The essentials of life—water, clean air, healthcare, unadulterated food, housing—should be a civil right and one politician should not have the power to take it away from people. All of these things should have oversight by the people as a whole and not by just a few greedy, very rich corporations. This is what will h...

Then the rulers and bosses seek to squeeze the last drop of blood out of the Have Nots and working class whose labor is or was the source of their wealth. The capitalist governances in Europe are united only in their determination to make working people bear the brunt of their greed. Within the European Union, which includes the 19 member Eurozone, the capitalist in each country plus the U.S. go after the wages and living conditions of the working people within their borders and the anti-union ruling class of the larger powers seeks to reinforce their domination and deepen the exploitation of the toilers, such as removal of obstacles to laying-off workers, weakening unions, and their collective bargaining rights. Then when the power of the people is gone the banks can then force the countries and cities to sell or privatize their assets, such as Athens, Greece, which must privatize its some 55 billion in government assets. This is what is now happening in some U.S. cities. The prolet...

We, proletarians, are now trying to fight the second Gilded Age. The workers have lost the muscle and drive to confront a system run by and for the very rich 1 percent and the people who should be sided with the Have Nots and labor has been brainwashed into believing that they should be supporting the corporate domination of the economy and against Social Security, Medicare, and food stamps even though most of the proletarians are receiving or will be receiving Social Security, Medicare and food stamps. Do people get dumber with age instead of getting smarter? Or is it the corporate media like Fox brainwashing these people who are recipients of some type of pension from a government or union and they don’t understand that they have been suckered by the likes of the Koch brothers. Then there are the veterans, who buy into the same kind of crap by listening to radio talk show hosts like Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Glenn Beck, who are broadcast overseas to our troops, but not the progres...

Minimum wage should be called a living wage. Some employers say $15 an hour is too high and that people won’t buy their goods if they have to pay their workers $15 an hour minimum wage. If this is true then maybe this is a business that should not have employees and maybe that business should just be an owner-based company and no employees. I’m sure the owners would soon figure out a way to not have to work and figure out how to pay someone to do the work for $15 an hour and still make a profit, just a little less than the large amounts made by screwing the workers over. Businesses always find ways to stay in business when fuel and increase costs in goods needed for production, but it is just the wages that seems to put them out of business. It is like President Roosevelt said if a business can only afford to pay starvation wages they should not be in business. I think the $15 an hour minimum wage Genie is out of the bottle ad there is no stopping the movement unless the workers becom...

The new attack on unions is Verizon’s move to cut pensions and healthcare, which Verizon says it needs to do to keep up with its competitors. If it wins, its cuts will be a death spiral to the bottom for union workers. There are two ways for unions to win: one is to stand fast; the other is to put pressure on the nonunion competitors or a combination of both. Workers must know that these attacks on them come from the GOP’s call for austerity and that ideology imported from Europe, mainly Angela Merkle’s Germany, and big banks, which is being forced upon countries like Ireland, Greece, Portugal, and Italy. These banks and corporations would very much like to import austerity here into the U.S. to break unions. This is or should be the tipping point for workers to go on the offensive instead of always playing the defensive game. A good offense will always defeat a defense. And at this time it looks like workers and labor unions have retreated to large cities and abandoned the rural count...