Union Perspectives

The unintended consequences from the loss of unions here and worldwide--is that the trade unions trained its workers and the workers were getting a living wage healthcare, and a pension--will be felt by all of us. Unions usually trained its members for four to five years and then they were journeymen, who could expect good wages and continued training as needed. At the end of their working careers, workers, who were usually between the ages 52 and 55, had a living-wage pension to live on--now this is threatened on both fronts--union pensions and Social Security. When workers turned 62, they could receive Social Security and Medicare, which they paid into. They would not need much government assistance, in fact, they could be contributors to the social infrastructure as volunteers. But this is in an ideal world. We live in a GOP-anti-union world where the money people made it their dream to destroy the unions, and the union members stood by and allowed it to happen. The state-by-sta...

With the Trump election, we here in the U.S. must brace ourselves for privatization of our security and government services. Also, there will be a huge push in union busting activities and we will see more states pushing right-to-work laws, which will smash unions by reducing union dues. We are seeing this in Australia, Britain, Greece, and Israel. These trends are now driving violations of labor laws, which is responsible for underpaying workers, and now Israel has the highest poverty level among developed nations, and it has the highest level of inequality among children. Privatization is the fastest path to the bottom of the economic ladder. The model set by President Ronald Reagan and Britain’s Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, who both followed the hardline economist and privatization nutcase Milton Friedman, who has been one of the ones who have widened the inequality gap here in the U.S. and the world over. With the Trump election, we will see privatization and wars on ster...

Workers engaged in the “Gig” job should study the playbook of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), also known as the Wobblies. They fought for free speech and one big worldwide union with a cooperative common wealth, which would be free of class and national distinction. The Wobblies were founded in 1905 and are still around today. The Gig workers should consider joining the IWW since most of the Wobblies were part-time workers and travelled the country looking for work. The 9-to-5 jobs that a worker could retire from are just about gone. Four out of 10 Americans now make a living through nontraditional work schedules. There are a large group of freelance, contract, part time, temporary, virtual shared, and patched-together work. All that the workers fought for since the 1880s and the 21st century have been lost and we are now back to a kind of scavenger economy and existence. Forbes magazine predicted that by 2020, 50 percent of the American labor force will work at least p...

The Democratic Party lost from the top down. The Party is decimated and everyone who was a part of the Party’s demise should be fired or replaced. Labor should now understand that no one person or party is going to ride in on a white horse and make them whole again. Labor will have to do it themselves with good, strong leadership that comes from the ranks and is supported by the workers not just because it is their turn to get the job. Labor must now start to educate the workers on the good of unions. They must organize, organize, organize, and rebuild their membership, but in order to have jobs for the workers. Unions must work to get Project Labor Agreement on school boards, city and all prevailing wage jobs for any work with government money, which falls under the Davis-Bacon Act. This means that there must be union advocates at the meetings when jobs are put out to bid. If the rules are followed, there is no reason that union shops should not get the work. It just takes work fro...