Union Perspectives

The race for single-payer healthcare or Medicare For All it will be between the Bernie Sanders people, The GOP and the corporate Democratic Party. If the GOP wants to keep their seats in the Senate and Congress, they need something big, like healthcare that the people will be pleased with. The GOP is desperate, they have a loser of a president and they have failed to achieve any meaningful legislation. The GOP has said they want to replace the Affordable Care Act aka Obamacare since it was passed with something better, but their definition of better so far was deadly for many. They just need to make healthcare for all ages and if they do this they will keep power for a long time. The U.S. pays more in healthcare than Italy, Britain, Japan, Australia, France, Canada, Sweden, Germany and Switzerland, and many others. Our politicians have sold us out to the highest bidder, the insurance companies, and we need to make them pay for putting their pockets before our health. It is imperativ...

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...

Working people should look very long and hard when there is talk of splitting a state or country or when they are thinking of a coup or changing a country’s leaders. First, follow the money to find why and who is it—a corporation behind it. Is another country behind it? Is it an old or new political party behind it? Then what are the benefits to the wage slave? Will it be a better life, more food, better healthcare, job safety, voting rights, better education, more job selections, and if none or all of these are not on the plus side then we might start asking questions before supporting a candidate, political party or ballot measures. The workers might end up in a religious controlled country or state with an unbearable life or in a civil war like Syria or Iraq or Libya or some other country like Somalia. Even here in the U.S. there is a faction that wants to split California into two states, one of which would be called the State of Jefferson. There is a symbol they use, XX, which a...

Is it time to rethink our union? At this time union cannot support each other on strikes. In a lot of union companies with many different unions within them with most of these different unions expiring at different time, which means they cannot support each other in a strike because they would be breaching their contract and opening themselves up to being sued. In some cases they are held responsible for lost profits, court costs and other possible damages. The other thing is most unions with apprenticeship trainings are so good that a union worker can leave the union and become a foreman or start their own nonunion business. Some have even stolen tools to start their businesses. This is prevalent in all construction trades and it usually happens when we, unions, cannot keep our workers employed and when we can’t is when they, the nonunion, take over our training and use it against us. It's pretty pathetic when the U.S. ranks 21st out of 21 countries for union membership and cove...