Skip to main content

Fox and Hounds After Us

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 Right-to-Work bill that the anti-union people are trying to get passed here in California, which would devastate unions. This must not get passed. Watch for the new people who are running for office on a school voucher or privatizing schools platform. These are the people who would support things like the Right-to-Work bill, the no single-payer healthcare, against free college, and cap and trade, and Assembly Bill 5, the paternity and maternity time off bill, which most civilized countries have in place. Workers must see through the lies like higher minimum wage will hurt workers trying to break into the labor market. Always read between the lines and the small print. The fight goes on and will never stop and neither should we.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Now is the Time to Prepare

I hope that I am wrong, but what I see at this time is our unions are going to be in the fight of their existence. This is the most perilous time of our life. The life we had is threatened like never before. Unions are the largest organized group of people who can save our country if things keep going the way they are heading at this time. We need to all stand together for power, but we each must prepare and plan to take care of ourselves and our families. We can fight the big fight and not be distracted by worry about things that can and should already be taken care of. For instance, stashing at least one month’s pay and at least a month or even a year’s worth of food, whether the food is staples (pasta, rice, canned goods) and meat or chicken in the freezer. Keep your vehicles' tanks full and if possible a gas can full. It’s in your best interest to also save money for house or rent payments plus extra. This is not new thinking for us old trade workers who had to prepare when...

They'll Be Coming For All Of Us

Yes, they are coming for us. Workers need to have one another’s backs because no one else will. Neither the broader labor movement nor the Democratic party are prepared to meet the urgency of this moment. So it’s going to fall upon the rest of us to mount a real resistance against Trump’s authoritarian takeover. We’re going to have to get our hands dirty. I don’t care if you have a good, well-paying union job and you are in the middle class now—if you see a worker being dragged out of his workplace regardless of how skilled the job and potentially taken to another country, you should be ready to be there for that worker. When I.C.E. shows up, gather around and shame them into leaving. It has worked in other places. America is sleep walking into authoritarianism, and if there’s anyone out there who is a member of a labor union that is safe—at this point— and doesn’t think this applies to them. Understand that they just haven’t gotten to you yet. They’re coming for all of us. There are ...

We Are the Power

Looks like there is hope for the union workers and our country for the union people who believed Trump’s lies, who now know that he was just full of bullshitting all of you. He said the he would bring more work to this country, but took away money from job projects, and the ones that were too late to stop, Trump put his name on it and is taking credit for the work done. Trump is not a union supporter and the people who work for him do not support unions either because they all get their money from big corporations, who are notoriously anti-union. The entire GOP is bought and paid for by large corporations, such as Home Depot, Walmart, Chamber of Commerce and many other nonunion selfish companies. We all have a chance to change things and take it all back if we dare by voting blue in the mid-term elections. If we vote for things that are what we really need like healthcare, good pensions, living wages, voting rights, more affordable housing, and rent control. In other words, let’s get a...