Union Perspectives

The Gig con, which sells people on a more flexible job without fixed hours. This sounds enticing to workers fed up with their 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. jobs. Also, to people without jobs, and to people who have part-time jobs, and need more money. Gig jobs fill in many needs, but the rub is that these jobs or most of these jobs don’t pay into Social Security or Social Disability Insurance so when someone hits retirement age there is nothing to fall back on. Most have been told that Social Security will not have money for them because Social Security will be broke. This is a lie and a con job on the workers. Social Security will be OK if the federal government will keep its hands off the money we paid into it. They think it is their piggy bank. Then what if you get sick or injured on the Gig job, there is no healthcare. We know that we are running out of jobs here and worldwide. This is why we need the universal basic income and unions for all. At this time, the federal government estimates ...

Why is there a 700 percent increase in high end bunkers from 2015 to 2016? It is not fear of a nuclear attack, but fear of a Russian-style revolution. Here, the American super rich are investing in subterranean residences at an unprecedented rate, spending as much as $100 million on fortified bunkers designed to withstand any kind of disaster. The survival-condo project quickly sold out—a dozen single family luxury apartments in a converted missile silo. Bill Gates has shelters below every one of his homes. Why is there an impending disaster gripping the very rich? Is it that they know that the inequality with the masses will not last long before the masses demand their rights as humans and the right to a living wage or a universal basic income (UBI) to compensate for the lack of jobs, healthcare, free education, pensions, childcare, vacation and the chance for a home. You know, like the rich take for granted. If the rich think they can just stick their heads in a hole like an ostr...

The Art of War says when the enemy is in disarray is the time to attack, so what are our union work force doing? Are they planning for an expansion? Are they educating their members on the history of unions? Are they training their members on how to be foot soldiers in the upcoming fight to destroy their safety net—the unions? Make no mistake about it, the anti-union GOP are coming for the unions. Unions are the last bastion of defense for the workers who still have jobs. They have “right to work” laws in most states, which devastates unions. The GOP is planning to go after the Holy Grail, which is California. If they ever pull that off, it is Doom’s Day for the unions and Have Nots. We will be in the streets begging or in the streets fighting. Either way, we will probably lose. Now is the time for us to go on the offense and stop using our defense policies. Being on the defense will always get beat in the long run because all you do is buy a little time. Now there is a window of op...

What type of government are we heading toward? Niccolo Machiavelli wrote that there are three kinds of governments: Principality, Aristocracy, and Democracy. He said those who organize a government must turn to one of these based on what seems most appropriate to them and their mission. Others have the opinion that there are six types of government, three of which are bad and three are good in themselves. Although they are so easily corrupted that they too can become pernicious. Those types that are good are Principality, Aristocracy, and Democracy, but the bad ones are derived from the good ones. Each of the bad types are similar to the good types and because of this one type can easily slip from one into the other. A Principality can easily become a Tyranny, an Aristocracy can become an Oligarchy with ease, and a Democracy can turn into Anarchy with no difficulty. If the founders of a republic establishes one of these three types of governments, it will be established for only a sh...

We need healthcare for everyone and Medicare single payer is the best way to go. This would relieve businesses of the burden of healthcare and make our goods more competitive overseas where labor is cheap. Think of car and truck manufacturing not having to pay for healthcare for their workers. This would cut the cost of their vehicles, which would give them more profits or make for more sales. Either way, it is a win. Then there are all the manufactured products, like televisions, washing machines and dryers, stoves or steel, plus all of the technology products we sell here and abroad. The local government employees would not have to ask the states, counties, and cities for healthcare for the law enforcement, firefighters, and maintenance workers, again saving money for the government, which could go toward healthcare taxes. There is argument that we need a healthcare safety net for all, but disagreement on the best way to achieve it.Some Democrats, including Senator Bernie Sanders ...

Are towns with companies where most people work better off than towns with no companies? I have seen the towns with no large companies that lasted longer because they have to diversify and not depend on one or two places for people of the town to work. I came from Dresden, a little town in Ohio. It had a company at each end of the town. One was a woolen mill. The other was a paper mill. Dresden sat between two larger towns, about 15 miles apart. Slowly the two mills shut down, but then a new company came about as a result of a local man David “Popeye” Longaberger, who started the Longaberger basket company. It became a billion dollar company and most of the town’s people worked for this company or at other businesses owned by Longaberger. When Longaberger died, the company he started in a garage started to go downhill, especially after his daughter shifted manufacturing to China, destroying the uniqueness and brand of the baskets they made. Luckily, there were the two towns borderin...

Joel Fox is editor of the website Fox and Hounds, and is president of the Small Business Action Committee. Fox is trying to tell workers who work for minimum wage that their hard fought win for the $15 an hour minimum wage will be hit by a 15 percent tax for single-payer healthcare if Senate Bill 562 passes in California. There will be a kind of payroll tax, like the FICA (Federal Insurance Contributions Act) that pays for Social Security and Medicare, but there is already a payroll tax and if you take the current cost of healthcare it could be a rub. This is just a scare tactic to keep single-payer healthcare from getting passed. The Fox and Hounds’ Small Business Action Committee is also trying to beat back the free college education bill, Assembly Bill 1356, which would be paid for by raising the corporation top income tax rate 1-percentage point. This is just the start of the rich vs the poor, but the poor must wake up and understand what is happening to them. We now have a Righ...