Union Perspectives

If we want to stop wars and get more jobs, we have to take the profit out of wars. We do this by nationalizing the arms production. By doing this, the government, our government, would control the so-called “military industrial complex,” as Republican President Dwight D. Eisenhower called it. The U.S. Government’s military budget for 2019 is $686 billion, that is larger than the next top five countries: China at $168.2 billion, Saudi Arabia at $82.9 billion, Russia at $63.1 billion, India at $57.9 billion and the United Kingdom at $56.1 billion. The U.S. gives Israel military aid and sells armaments to Saudi Arabia. The 2020 U.S. military budget is expected to be $989 billion. Now imagine how much of this is spent on contractors, like Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Northrop Grumman, Raytheon, General Dynamics, and the others, and then add on the tax break trump has already given these corporations. How much of this money is actually going to protect us since the threats we face now aren’t...

Why single-payer/Medicare for all would save money and help the capitalist system. One, if no business or corporation, like the auto plants did not have to pay health insurance, they could sell their vehicles overseas cheaper. If all the people had health insurance, a person could start a business and not worry about having to provide health insurance for themselves, their families and their employees, which would put more people to work and their jobs could be backfilled by another worker. People who could retire, but must keep working until Medicare covers them could now retire without worrying about their healthcare. They could retire and open a job up for someone new.  Countries with universal healthcare are: Australia, Austria, Bahrain, Belgium, Brunei, Canada, Cyprus, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hong Kong, Iceland, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Japan, Kuwait, Luxembourg, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Portugal, Singapore, Solvenia (where Trump's current wife is f...

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 ...

Has the world’s 99 percent finally figured out that they need to vote for and support people who will stand by and fight for the good life they deserve? People like Jeremy Corbyn, Britain’s newly elected Labor Leader is a socialist, and Canada’s liberal candidate, Justin Trudeau, promises to work for the toilers. Now, we have a leader in the U.S. who is running for president, Bernie Sanders, an avowed socialist, wants big money out of politics, universal healthcare, free public universities, expanded Social Security and a job’s program for youth, plus a living wage beginning at $15 an hour. There is a global movement going on at this time and the toilers are electing popular leaders in countries like Greece, Spain, Ireland, Turkey, Israel and Britain. These people are anti-austerity people and they rally thousands when they speak out for the dispossessed, challenge moribund elites, they are vilified as populists, deluded and dangerous, but they are winning elections. This movement is a...

Our soldiers should be factored into the cost of wars just like the machines of war, like bullets, missiles, tanks, airplanes, ships, guns—large and small, clothes and all the high tech equipment. All of which corporations get very rich from and all these things are replaceable for a cost. But, most all the equipment is useless unless you have a human soldier to use the equipment. So why is it everyone gets rich, including the politicians and lobbyists and the soldiers are left holding the bag, begging for jobs when they are discharged or looking for mental or physical medical help, and a lot of times having to turn to charity when homeless. The costs to care for our veterans should be paid up front by the war racketeers and put into a trust for when the soldiers come home from the corporate-sponsored wars from whom we buy the machines of death and destruction. This concept of banking for the future could be administered like union pensions. We spend billions on the countries we inva...

The world’s toilers have the same problems with work safety, like the Ukraine mine workers, Turkey’s mines and West Virginia’s mines. Then there are the oil refinery workers and the train workers hauling Bakken shale oil from the Canadian tar sand, which are wrecking at an alarming rate in the North American. So far in 2015 there have been eight so far in 2015 train wrecks, four in Oregon Illinois, West Virginia and two in Ontario. All these wrecks at a time when owners want to cut staff to one on the trains. This is just a fight to stay safe and alive on the jobs. Then we get to wage inequality and a living wage along with toiler’s rights in the work place like the West Coast dockworkers all 20,000 of them. The airport workers, who are making $8 to $10 an hour, should be making $15 just to make it. Also, Israel’s chemical workers walked out to block layoffs of about 840 workers—and the fight goes on and on. A meeting about the future of railroads’ safety, workers, community and the en...

Where are the Anonymous and Occupy Wall Street people have they been driven underground? Have they lost support? Lost interest? Are they in jail? Are they still alive? Or are they just beaten and scared of what the 1 percent can do to them? Of all these things I could understand, but if they have been bought off by the 1 percent, that would be the cardinal sin and I would hope for all the world’s 99 percent that being bought off is not the case. They must be given credit of starting the conversation about wage and life style inequality between the 1 percent and 99 percent. And even with other distractions, such as the revolutions in Arab Spring, Ukraine, Liberia, and Afghanistan. Of course, the USA’s local problems, plus Palestine and Israel, are distractions, but even with these distractions the main cause of the problems for 99 percent people are all the levels of inequality between the 99 percent and the 1 percent. The 1 percent with all its money and power hording will continue to...

What would the world be like if the dream of the old International Workers of the World (IWW) could come true? The IWW thought that all toilers of the world were the same and all had rights and there is no need for country borders. All workers are brothers and sisters. So if this is true, there would not be a reason for war. All would have a place in the world, such as Israel, Palestine, Kurdistan and Ukraine would not be fighting to hold onto their spot of land in the world. It is always the toilers who do the fighting and dying for the people in the background, who pull the strings of war. How do the toilers get forced into killing their brothers and sisters? A lot of this is rooted in a lack of education and religion. As long as there are borders around countries, the string masters can manipulate the toilers to do their bidding. Sooner or later the toilers of the world will figure out that they are the ones with the power. When they do they’ll have to decide if they want to conti...

The old International Workers of the World would be proud of the way wage slaves today are standing up for their rights in countries, such as Bangladesh, most of Europe, Israel, Palestine, and now South American countries, such as Ecuador, Colombia, Cuba, Venezuela, Bolivia, Brazil, Argentina and Chile, who are now fighting for the rights of day laborers, back pay, who work on the ports. They are being supported by the Longshoremen’s union. This is world solidarity among the wage slaves. The way it is supposed to be, and we should not forget the Ukrainians’ fight for the right to protest. Yes, the tide is turning slowly in favor of the wage slaves, but we must remember what Karl Marx and Frederick Engles said in 1848: That now and then the workers are victorious, but only for a time. The real fruit of their battles lies not in the immediate result, but in the ever expanding union of the workers. The fight must keep moving forward to even up the disparity of a few with so much and so m...