Union Perspectives

The Democratic Party can hand the election for president to Donald Trump by not including Bernie Sanders’ platform on its final platform at this year’s convention. Instead, the Democratic committee drafting the platform has rejected Sanders’ proposals. Proposals that would help the majority of Americans and other countries whether they are retired, young or working. The committee has excluded or watered down issues, such as raising the minimum wage, single-payer healthcare, and refusing to reject the Trans-Pacific Partnership, fracking, and addressing the Palestinian/Israeli conflict. They voted against or neutered an amendment to protect pensions, against a carbon tax, against preventing energy companies from using eminent domain for fossil fuel extractions, against making climate change a test for the Keystone Pipelines, against an amendment to add language eliminating use of force in the Syrian conflict, among other concerns that effect the majority of people. The committee instead ...

The fight for unions worldwide is being fought in France. French workers are like the little boy with his finger in the hole on the dike of anti-unionism worldwide. If the French government wins, so will the fight to make it easier to fire workers and to end the 35-hour workweek. The corporations of the world and governments who cater to them will all be trying the same thing in their countries. It is hard enough for unions to fight corporations and their own governments, but to do it at the same time is overwhelming. Although the Brits just voted for to leave the EU, for better or worse, but the people took their futures into their own hands and won the election over the money people. There is still hope for people power. The workers of the world need to support the French workers on opposing the French government’s planned labor reforms, which the conservatives-led senate is to vote on the bill Tuesday, June 28, 2016. If the workers lose this fight, the loss could reverberate around...

President Obama has sold out unions’ pensions when he signed a must pass omnibus bill, which has the Kline-Miller Multiemployer Pension Reform Act of 2014. The bill strikes down an enshrined American ideal that money earned for a pension can’t be pulled out from under our feet like a rug once we retire. That promise, once codified in law, was upended by the passage of this reform act. This act will effect some 400,000 participants by cutting benefits for some retirees now, some up to 60 percent. This is the central state pension funds, which is predicted to be insolvent in 10 years and this fund is the canary in the mineshaft as similar multiemployer pension funds are now at risk. If these funds go bust, mortgages won’t be paid, prescriptions won’t be filled, utility bills and groceries will be a regular hardship. Senate GOP leader Mitch McConnell hates unions so there will be no hope there, and Hillary Clinton is no fan of unions either. This just leaves Bernie Sanders and no one is ...

We are headed for another Occupy Wall Street movement and this time there is another army called the Bernie’s Army, people across the U.S. willing to fight for what’s right, thanks to Bernie Sanders. Now we just need more leaders like Bernie and it is time they step forward. The time is ripe and not only here in the U.S., but the world over. Just look at the union busting going on here and throughout the world. The fight between the corporations/oligarchies who are awash in hundreds of millions of dollars are permitted to loot and pillage the last shreds of wealth, human capital, and resources and the Commons of nations where the poor do not eat and there are no jobs, where the sick die and children go hungry. Now that there is a split in the parties, we must pull the other side into our movement. We want the police and National Guard to know that we understand they are not the 1 percent. The goal is not to get every cop and National Guard member, but to get enough to have a division. ...

Why are some labor unions supporting Hillary Clinton when labor does not have a seat at the table at the Democratic Convention? Bernie Sanders chose RoseAnn DeMoro, head of National Nurses union, as one of his platform representatives on the platform drafting committee for the convention. She was to advocate for Medicare for All. The rationale for eliminating DeMoro is because unions are represented on the full-platform committee. However, labor has one seat out of the 15 people on this drafting committee. Labor built the Democratic party to represent the working people, and built this country’s infrastructure, and for that we get one person to represent us. As has been said by others, at the Democratic Convention, K Street is better represented than the labor movement. The Clintons’ antilabor legacy is partly responsible for the 2008-2016 world financial crisis. NAFTA went against all labor and sent jobs out of the U.S. and the threat of moving jobs broke the unions and drove wa...