Union Perspectives

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...

Our union messages have already been written. All we need to do is put them on the television, radio and in print. One message we need for California union workers was written by UAW past president Walter Reuther: There’s a direct relationship between the breadbox and the ballot box and what the union fights for and wins at the bargaining table can be taken away in the legislative halls and our members need to understand this or we will lose this in the fall election. The second union message was written by a union leader past president of the AFL, Samuel Gompers, was titled “What Does Labor Want?” "We want more schools, houses, and less jails, more books and less arsenals, more learning and less greed, more justice and less revenge; in fact, more of the opportunities to cultivate our better natures, to make manhood more noble, womanhood more beautiful, and childhood more happy and bright." The third message comes from President Franklin Roosevelt on wages. He wrote in 1933 ...