Union Perspectives

Now that the $15 an hour minimum wage has legs, we should start the fight for how people have little chance to find a lucrative job that will last their entire working life and end with a pension and healthcare. The manufacturing jobs are either relocated to another country or just about to be eliminated by machines or robots. Retail is going by the wayside as the brick and mortar stores are replaced by online shopping. What’s left are tech jobs, service jobs, and the best—building trade jobs, which need to be union with their own healthcare, pensions and their own four-to-five-year paid training programs. The unions and workers who support them now need to fight for Project Labor Agreements on all government projects. The union workers also need to vote for leaders who will support unions and the unions need to organize all non-union trades. Also, we need to support non-labor incomes, like the Universal Basic Income (UBI) and get behind corporations paying rent for our Commons. Whe...

One of the best solutions to inequality here in the U.S. and the world would be for everyone to have one share of the Commons, the wealth made from using what belongs to all of us our natural resources: air, water, gas and oil, among others. This is not a new thought nor is it welfare. Thomas Paine, 1737-1809, wrote that every individual is born with legitimate claims on natural property or its equivalent. A modern day exchange between two very conservative GOP Fox news commentators, Bill O’Reilly and Lou Dobbs, found that they agree with the concept of dividends for Commons. O’Reilly said, “It’s my contention that we, the people, own the gas and oil discovered in America. It’s our land and the government administers it in our name … land and water are the domain of we, the people.” Dobbs said, “The oil that we’re talking about belongs to us as you said … In Alaska, there is a perfect model for what we should do as a nation. We should have—let’s call it the American Trust. Have the oi...