Your unions are only as strong as your participation.
All union members of all unions need to read and understand their union contracts , and the rules and regulations. They need to know all elected officials of their unions, local and national. Are your dues paid to the local or national union coffers? Also, where, exactly, do your union dues go? What are unions’ supporting or investing our dues in? Trust but verify.
When and where are your union meetings held? When are the election of your officers? What elected jobs are there and what volunteer jobs are there in your union.
What is happens if a union member is charged with a violation of union rules? What training is there for your union?
When you have the answers to the above questions, then it’s time to learn about your union’s history and the labor movement. The good and the bad because you cannot defend your union if you don’t know all bout your union’s history and the history of the labor movement.
Just like the Art of War says, know yourself and also you must know your enemy—the nonunion people and if you know both you have a good chance to win your fight with the ignorant and the GOP anti-union people. This fight will never end. How willing are you prepared to protect your union?
There should be classes and films on our history shown at union meetings and also on how to act on picket lines on strikes. we need to know the laws and history. There are lots of books available on the history and importance of unions--should labor halls have library for books to be available to check out?
There is a lot to know about being a good union member. It is not just paying dues and going to work. There are a lot of greedy people who would like to see unions go away and have you working at a minimum wage with no healthcare, pension, and no safety on the jobs.
Remember, a union is only as good as the members makes it.
In 2012 more than a quarter of all political contributions came from just 30,000 people who represented the 1 percent of the 1 percent, 90 percent who spent the most won. Today, we are an experiment in either a democracy, which started in 1787 or an oligarchy, which is winning. The nonunion people, like Trump and Musk, have most all the tools in their pockets to destroy our unions. They have money, they have the courts, they have law enforcement, they have the media, and 50 percent of workers that don’t know this don’t know the history of the working class people. This is the perfect storm to lose all the gains workers have made whether they’re union or not, even our Social Security and Medicare, and the Affordable Care Act. So, now we will have to go way back to the late 1920s and ‘30s and dig up the old labor party books. One book, written in 1964, has the information, The Rebel Voices, an IWW Anthology by Joyce L. Kornbluh, educator, activist, and advocate. The history of our labor...
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