Union Perspectives

Had an enjoyable conservation not too long ago with a young stockbroker about solutions to income inequality and other ails afflicting our country. I advocate for universal basic income (UBI). A few years ago the call for a $15 minimum wage was called delusional, but now there are many places that are paying $15 an hour minimum wage or slow walking to the $15. Still, even if it was full-time work, it would only be an annual income of $31,000 a year. Just about enough to keep a person off the streets and get the basics, but, still, it is an incredible accomplishment by those who took to the streets to bring about this change. So, now it is time for another delusional fight to take place and that is for a UBI. Though there are a lot of areas to be worked out with the UBI, there are just as many good things to come from UBI. Some people say if people receive $1,500 to $2,000 a month, they would quit working, which has proven not to be the case within Alaska, the best example of UBI in a...

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...