Union Perspectives

The Postal Clause, Article I, Section 8, Clause 7 of the United States Constitution, known as the Postal Clause or the Postal Power, was enacted in 1792 when Congress passed the “Postal Service Act.” This Act established the Post Office Department. The republican party is still going after what they consider the holy grail of large unions and doing everything it can to bust the United States Postal Service’s (USPS) union at a loss of thousands of good paying jobs. There are two current factors pushing this effort to destroy the USPS. One cause of the current attack is based on the thin-skinned crybaby occupying the White House. His revenge against Jeff Bezo, who happens to own both Amazon and the Washington Post, is one driving force behind the current attack. The Post runs articles telling the truth about Trump so, in retaliation, Trump is demanding the Postal Service triple or quadruple shipping costs for Amazon packages and the Postal Services gets caught in the middle of these tw...

Sitting at me desk, trying to think if something to write is very hard with all the purpose-driven chaos caused by our government and the lack of appropriate media coverage of the damage being done by this corrupt government. It’s hard to stay positive, but I keep reminding myself, “This too shall pass.” I am looking at my books by authors like Jack London (The Iron Heel), Eugene V. Debs (The Bending Cross), Peter Barnes (Liberty and Dividends for All), Thomas Paine (Common Sense Rights of Man), Samuel B. Griffith (edition of Suntzu’s The Art of War), Niccolo Machiavelli (The Prince) and wonder how many people have read these great works, and had our educational system taught the truths within the covers of these books would our country be in the mess we are in now? We have a belligerent, insecure, devious, unintelligent, deadbeat conman in the White House bankrupting our country and throwing parades for himself like despots of other regimes, while our feckless executive branch of ...

The biggest fear the GOP and Trump have are Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, financial and climate regulations, and social changes opening the door to people of color. Sanders and Warren will push an anti-corruption and anti-inequality programs and Medicare for All with a $15 an hour minimum wage. They should also be looking at a UBI (universal basic income). Rising the minimum wage to $15 an hour will not stop the inequality, but I UBI would help. The GOP will counter by accusing Sanders and Warren of being scary Democratic Socialists, which Sanders and Warren should wear the title as a badge of honor and point out the obvious—all the socialist-type programs the U.S, already has in place, such as Social Security (which we pay into), Medicare, Medicaid/MediCal, law enforcement, fire and rescue services, and schools. The GOP and its followers will deliberately conflate socialism with communism, which is a misnomer. Communism and socialism may have some similarities, sharing of the cou...

The fight against “right to work” legislation goes back to 1968. In one of his speeches, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. said, “That in our glorious fight for civil rights, we must guard against being fooled by false slogans, as right to work. It provides no rights, and no work. Its purpose is to destroy labor unions and the freedom of collective bargaining. We demand this fraud be stopped.” It is has now been about 49 years, and the same playbook called, “Right to work” to destroy union is still being played. The GOP and corporate Democrats want to destroy unions by taking away the right to collect dues. People still fall for this self-destructive line without looking into what they are forfeiting in the process: healthcare and pensions. Fraud and who are to blame? It is the unions for not educating people, not just their workers? The attack and the fight against it has never stopped. In 1933, in his Statement on National Industrial Recovery Act, President Franklin D. Roosevelt sai...

One of the best playbook to destroy a democracy was written in a new biography of Adolf Hitler by Richard J. Evans. This is the playbook that is close to what our new president is using. With only some name recognition and no political experience, Donald Trump, like Hitler, found the underbelly of disenfranchised people and the electoral college and got himself elected to office with speeches full of allegations and vile stereotypes; and they were precisely designed to gain maximum attention from the media and the reaction from the crowds who gathered to hear his rhetoric. Also, in Trump’s speeches, he flaunted vulgarities and exploited tribal hatreds, and he lied and lied his way to success. But his similarities with Hitler does not end there. Just like Hitler ensured he stayed in power, Trump ensured the Armed Forces were on his side by giving them massive increases in funding, he’s reduced the checks and balances, and provided a huge armaments program, which is supposed to make Am...

The workers are losing while our labor leaders sleep or hide out, hoping they can hold onto their position until they retire. Our labor leaders appeared to have given up the rural areas and pulled their efforts into the big cities. This is like having a fort with a moat around it and think they are safe. We all know forts can be conquered in the long run. It’s as if labor leaders learned nothing from the Clinton era. We, at this time, are losing with the Right to Work laws being passed in 27 states, and now there is legislation in Congress for a national Right to Work law. Couple this with legislation in Congress to ban the Davis-Bacon Act on prevailing wage law, and the attacks on union pensions. These things will drive the nail into the heart of unions. This is happening in other countries, like the UK and France, who are electing leaders, such as Marine Le Pen, a far right leader. We, here, in the U.S., cannot just depend on the Bernie Sanders-types. We need new, strong unions wi...

People who receive Social Security, Medicare, government and union pensions and healthcare now, and the people who hope to receive these same benefits have an opportunity to show the politicians and oligarchies who want to take all of this away, this includes the minimum wage. To send a clear message on Jan. 20 to these greedy individuals, you must hit them where it hurts most—their pocket books. Call in sick from work, don’t spend any money any where, and don’t watch the Donald Trump show otherwise known as an inauguration had he been legitimately elected by the people and not the electoral college. Yo can buy whatever you need the day before and you know the media and social media will be all a buzz about the Trump show the next day so you won’t miss anything. This is a do or die situation we’re in. Trump, the Tweeter in chief, has lined his cabinet with the worst possible people he could find and they are going to rape and pillage this country for their own gain. If you thought G...

A national strike is called for Jan. 20. If successful, this national strike would be the first in our country’s history. In 1908, author Jack London published a multi-layered narrative that showed a vision of the future, which is now a step away from reality with Donald Trump being given the presidency and the people he has selected for his cabinet members. We are not the only ones facing dire circumstances. It is happening all around the world where the plutocratic class is squashing the proletariats, but the proletarians have not figured out the con job that was done to them. Now, the proletarians need to show the plutocrats who has the real power by engaging in a national strike on Jan. 20, which means not working, not spending money, and not watching the inauguration on television. This will not only scare the crap out of the plutocrats, but it will show that we will not stand ideally by while they take our Social Security, Medicare, pensions, voting rights, and the right to ...

Labor, unions, $15 an hour minimum wage, pensions, and safe working conditions are all under attack here in the U.S. and around the world. In the U.S., the Republicans have put out a bill to gut Social Security and raise the retirement age to 69 years old. The anti-worker people are coming for everything President Franklin D. Roosevelt accomplished. They want to destroy Social Security and Medicare. This is what Newt Gingrich, former speaker of the House, told an audience at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank. Donald Trump, who was handed the presidency by the electoral collage, is lining his cabinet with other like-minded people as himself. Trump has recruited corporate individuals that he promised his followers he would banish from Capitol Hill. Trump filled the Secretary of State position with an Exxon Mobil executive; for the head of the Treasury; Trump chose an executive from Goldman Sachs; Secretary of Labor is a fast food executive; he chose an anti-gay person ...

Elections come and go, but nothing changes, and the masses continue to take it in the shorts. Our Democratic president just negotiated a deal with Israel to give that country $38 billion in military aid to “protect” themselves from the carnage they stir up against the Palestinians, stealing the Palestinians land and killing them, and then acting outraged when they fight back. Those billions could help our students with their educational debts, or pay for single-payer healthcare, or rebuild our infrastructure. Then consider these endless wars, which will not end. Why? Because it’s big money to be made in killing people. The costs in lives seems to be ignored by our government, both parties benefit from payoffs and have done nothing to resolve or end the wars. Both parties are at fault so nothing will change with the 2016 election. We are being forced to choose between two lousy candidates. The corporate media pays its part in not reporting on this or any other relevant topic. In the 2...

How can a few oligarchies control the masses here in the U.S.? What they do is use the old playbook of the antiunion coal companies in which they would hire different ethnic and racial groups who cannot communicate with the other groups, and they had different religions whereupon a lack of trust was fostered among them. Now, in a larger way, the oligarchies are using states with different laws within each of them to make the rich richer and the poor poorer, which the laws in many states allow businesses to stand on the necks of the poor, who have no power to change the laws punishing them disproportionately. The oligarchies now have their own kingdoms in some states and they can get local governments to privatize all the government services to the detriment of their citizens. Look at Kansas, it not only has privatized a lot of their government services, but they enacted or adopted strict religious ideology in meting out “punishments” toward the poor that benefits the privatized age...

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 ...

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. ...

Can the Bernie Sanders supporters multitask and hit the 1 percent on many fronts at once? Like wage inequality and single payer healthcare, labor rights, climate change and school debt. Let’s take the criminal interests being charged on student debt. There are 5 million student debt holders. What if they took the skills and knowledge they have and used it in the Sanders’ campaign to build a list of student debt holders, and then using this list to demand the right to bargain with the Department of Education and the banks to reduce or eliminate this debt, or they could just refuse to pay any more on the debts. There are groups out there trying to achieve the same thing, but it doesn’t appear their tactics are working. So maybe it’s time these institutions felt the Bern. Those fighting against student debt could look at what the group leading the FightFor$15 has done and follow their lead or look to how 2,000 doctors have come together to fight for single-payer healthcare under Sanders....

Labor needs to keep the revolution going if it wants to save the labor movement for they go hand in hand. Labor and its members are the only force that can defeat the 1 percent -1.1 percent and corporations. It looks like Hillary and by default Bill Clinton could possibly win the nomination and possibly the election, and there will not be much difference between the two, Bill and Hillary, because neither care about unions. They both are war hawks and both are corporatists, supporters of big banks and Wall Street people over us commoners. No one can count on what they say because it usually isn’t what they usually end up doing. Bernie has pulled Hillary to the left on subjects of Social Security, a minimum wage of $15 an hour, and anti-trade deals, but as soon as she is elected all these stances will revert back to her original, true beliefs. Who in the hell knows what Trump will actually do? Our only hope is staying with Bernie and if he doesn’t win, he can still be a leader in the re...

Wall Street wants the clients to keep Wall Street just as it is and for that is Bill Clinton will get another four years as president even though Hillary would be the elected president, assuming she is elected president. She cannot and will not be able to control Bill, and the establishment knows this. They all at Wall Street, corporations and big banks remember what Bill did for them at the detriment of the wage slaves. So why do the wage slaves want Hillary? This includes some of the leadership of the unions. Don’t the union leadership remember NAFTA, and Bill never helped the unions with card check or tightening up the National Labor Relations Board to help keep unions strong. Maybe it was because Hillary set on Walmart’s board of directors. Should we not expect Hillary to support a $15 an hour minimum wage? Also there is the incarceration of black Americans at a higher rate than others. This prison population exploded under Bill’s presidency and now Hillary was getting large sums ...

In his April 2, 1925 speech, Eugene V. Debs said, “The capitalist politician tells you how intelligent you are to keep you ignorant. I tell you how ignorant you are to make you desire to be intelligent.” The kernel of this speech offered a telling measure of foresight by Eugene Debs: “This world respects as it is compelled to respect,” Debs declared. “Develop your own capacity for clear thinking. Unorganized, you are helpless, you are held in contempt. Power comes through unity.Organization or stagnation, which will you take? The labor movement must either go forward or backward.” At this time, the unions are in the fight of their lives and must pick a side or just go in on their own, and spend their money on local and state elections--this is where they can do the most with their money. It is easier to elect people who will support Project Labor Agreements on job sites, which are prevailing wage jobs based on union wages for each trade; and also be able to keep the elected official...

In 1932, Franklin D. Roosevelt won the presidency during the Great Depression. People were looking for bold leadership and that’s what’s happening now. Roosevelt’s New Deal was a package of reforms to rescue capitalism from collapse and thwart rising labor militancy from growing into independent working class political action. The Have Nots now have a long needed leader in Bernie Sanders, who has devoted his entire life for the betterment of the working class so it perplexes me as to why union members would support Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton. Though we can’t blame Clinton for her husband’s policies, such as NAFTA, mainly because she has enough baggage of her own. Unlike her opponent Sanders, Clinton supported the Iraq invasion, Wall Street bailout, authorizing the Patriot Act twice in 2001 and 2006, supports TPP, which is considered worse than NAFTA, offshore drilling that is killing our oceans, and Foreign U.S. Military intervention that is bankrupting our economy. Her top donor...

Will Donald Trump be the leader the right wing GOP has been waiting for to lead toady’s version of the America’s Silver Shirts? Silver shirts was based on Nazi Germany’s Brown Shirts. Trump has already gotten the support of the White Supremacists and the Ku Klux Klan and all the closeted angry racists of the GOP party. Remember, people laughed at Adolph Hitler and Benito Mussolini and said the two would never come to power. We all know the horror and terror they wreaked upon the world. If the U.S. doesn’t wake up this country could very well see the same thing happen here. The Silver Shirts were America’s answer to the Brown Shirts, same kind of ideology, same kind of entitlement over others and same kind of twisted propaganda that unsuspecting people fell for. There could be small revolutions fighting against terrorism—in all its forms, ethnic-type of discrimination, or even the young, disenchanted low-wage college people who have huge debts but low-wage jobs. The young who bought int...