Union Perspectives

Labor unions need to recruit fighters, and educate them about union history. We don’t just need more membership, we need educated fighters who understand how politics work, how politicians and corporate media manipulate what the working people are told. They need to understand the GOP and the Democratic parties and who supports these politicians and who donates money to them. The Art of War says you must understand your enemy as well as yourself in order to win any fight against that enemy. This is the time for union members to think critical thinking skills, to examine what they are told and to critique systems of power, culture and political assumptions; to ask the broader questions of meaning and morality once sustained by the humanities. The unions formerly concentrated on the class struggle, and in those days unions filled its leadership with people who sought broad social and political changes and rights for the working class, but now these positions have been transformed into n...

Tired of the inequality, people have taken to the streets. Black Lives Matter, but they need their white allies to stand beside them to win the fight against racism and discrimination. People of color need their white allies to speak up and stand up when they see injustices of any kind. We all need to fight against the system that put us into the streets and kept us down and disadvantaged. None of these inequities should one tolerated anymore. Black people began the fight, the rest of us need to support and continue to fight with them. With all these people in the streets, we are all part of the solution now. To get the people off the streets we have to hit critical mass. Then we need to reform law enforcement, the prison system, the healthcare system for profit; we need to reallocate the money that went toward militarizing the police toward social programs; a universal basic income of $1,500 to $2,000 a month for people 18 years or older; a federal government financial public works p...

In America today, we have the Haves and the Have Nots, which is the very rich and the poor. What is missing is the middle, which is the group that makes it all work. They are the spenders who pay taxes, raise families. They are the supporters of the very rich and the supporters of the poor. This support system has worked very well until the very rich gets greedier and begins hoarding all the cash and cutting out the middle class with inequality. Inequality is done in many ways. Some is through laws enacted that shut down unions. This defund unions, but also stops worker training apprenticeship programs the unions provide. Shutting down these programs helps to turn our country into a wasteland of poverty. With the power concentrated at the top, democracy cannot thrive. This happened in the Guilded Age at the end of the 19th century. Now it is happening today. America cannot ever be great again until there is a large middle class with good wages, healthcare, free education, and good ...

We are headed for another Occupy Wall Street movement and this time there is another army called the Bernie’s Army, people across the U.S. willing to fight for what’s right, thanks to Bernie Sanders. Now we just need more leaders like Bernie and it is time they step forward. The time is ripe and not only here in the U.S., but the world over. Just look at the union busting going on here and throughout the world. The fight between the corporations/oligarchies who are awash in hundreds of millions of dollars are permitted to loot and pillage the last shreds of wealth, human capital, and resources and the Commons of nations where the poor do not eat and there are no jobs, where the sick die and children go hungry. Now that there is a split in the parties, we must pull the other side into our movement. We want the police and National Guard to know that we understand they are not the 1 percent. The goal is not to get every cop and National Guard member, but to get enough to have a division. ...

In the1920s, the corporations representing capital (money) mobilized for war of the extermination on all labor organizations in the United States, and they never stopped. They have just changed tactics and leaders overtime. Today, the one who is leading this charge is back by the Koch brothers is Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker, who recently signed the right to work legislation into law. This means workers in a union do not have to pay union dues, but still get the same union benefits as dues paying workers. How the hell does this work? When they take away union funds it is like tying one hand behind your back, and then trying to fight a two-handed bully. The anti-union money people have never given up on breaking unions or breaking up the New Deal. The other tactic union busters use is the old divide and conquer—pitting working people against working people so they will tear down their neighbors, who are lucky enough to have union jobs—and this seems to be working. Labor was warned ...

The fight to destroy the New Deal has and never will stop. This is the Holy Grail for the anti-worker GOP. Their newest plan is to once again attack the safety net for old or injured workers’ pensions only this time they have a new plan that is working. It is the old Trojan horse plan to destroy it from the inside out with high ranking agency officials closing post offices and forcing people to apply online for Social Security services. Apparently, they believe that every American has a computer and is computer savvy or maybe they know they’re not and won’t be able to find their way through the verification process to get Social Security benefits they worked for. This Internet application process is being pushed by a Trojan horse by an acting commissioner Carolyn Colvin and her staff. Her goal is to close hundreds of Social Security offices around the country and completely abolish face-to-face personalized service. Since 2010 the Social Security Administration (SSA) has closed 80 fiel...

How did the USA lose so much ground in the economical struggle, which has destroyed the middle class? The fight between oligarchies and the commoners began when President Roosevelt started the New Deal, which came on the heels of the 1929 Great Depression. The Great Depression was caused by the Robber Barons, the old oligarchies who destroyed the trade unions and the International Workers of the World (IWW) unions. With the IWW and the New Deal, the 99 percent came back, but forgot that in every war when one side loses they sometimes just go underground to harass and rebuild. This is what the Koch brothers did and what the billionaire party has been doing and their Holy Grail was getting control of the U.S. Supreme Court. Remember, the U.S. Supreme Court gives and takes away the Citizens United decision took the election process away from the workers and gave it to the one-tenth of the 1 percent. They have all the money and can buy or defeat any candidate. Their long-term economic goa...

If you want to see a true example of apathy, look at a typical postal worker. The USPS eliminated 37,000 jobs last year and will keep eliminating jobs. In any other sector of the labor force, an elimination of this kind is done under the guise of saving money by downsizing and privatization. Keep in mind, the real reason is to break the largest existing union, which will lessen money for the anti-GOP fight. Also, look at where the GOP wants to put USPS wants to put offices—in private mini-post offices within non-union Staples stores. I’m sure it’s just a coincidence that Staples in floundering. The company initially had 2,000 stores in 26 countries, and now Staples is closing 60 more stores worldwide this year, 15 in the U.S. and 45 in Europe, in an attempt to save 250 stores. Staples’ pays $8.25 an hour versus the $25 an hour for union postal workers. So how will taking away $25 an hour pay from 37,000 workers going to help the economy? Again, this attempt to move the USPS into Stapl...

Labor needs to vote labor in local, state and U.S. government elections. The GOP elephant was the right pick for its logo for they never forget and will not change even if it means its demise. To think that they are still angry about the New Deal of President Franklin Roosevelt some 75 years ago; this is just stupid. They should rename the party ‘Gone on Past’ stupid party. Eleanor Roosevelt had to fight the ‘right to work for less’ 70 years ago and the stupid party is still waving that right to work for less flag. Eleanor Roosevelt’s argument then was, “I am opposed to right to work legislation because it does nothing for working people but, instead, gives employers the right to exploit labor.” She was right then and what she said 70 years ago is still accurate today. So what I do not understand is why labor is still losing the fight for there are more wage slaves than there are oligarchies. Is it that maybe the wage slaves are just as stupid as the GOP? If so, then the question sho...

National Chamber Legislation Center (NCLC) has brought cases to the U.S. Supreme Court and won 68 percent of the time. The U.S. Supreme Court traditionally agrees to hear fewer than 2 percent of the cases it receives for review. In the 2010/11 term, the NCLC urges the Court to review 30 cases and won 21 of these cases. A stunning 70 percent and this term they are eight for eight so far. There is no way that labor will ever win a case at the U.S. Supreme Court level – not until the wage slaves elect a president who will change the Court. We need at least one justice who will level the Court. With a labor push against the Walmarts, there will be court cases headed to the Supreme Court and the cases will be represented by the NCLC for the corporations, and labor at this time will not win before this Court. However, if the cases take one to two years to get to the Supreme Court and if we win in November this could all change for us wage slaves. If the Courts do change for labor, we need to...

The corporate oligarchies’ plan is to turn the American worker into an uneducated, underclass, subsistent wage slaves, which will put the American Dream out of reach. Even at this time the Dream is a lie still being told to our young people today. The money hogs’ worship of profits has brought a plague upon our country, the environment, and our cities. While the oligarchies are doing this to us, the Wall Street speculators loot and pillage to the point we now know their plan and whether they know it or not it is a self-destructive plan. We will have to help them self-destruct for the oligarchies are working out of the old play book where they want to feed us 24-hour television and run up our credit card debt, work to pay off our loans and be grateful for the scrapes the corporations GOP toss us. That is their old short-term strategy, but we, the 99%, and unions have a grand strategy that is nonviolent shift in power by attacking the columns that hold up the power structure. Those colu...

It seem that what the 99% are working for is to try to take back our rights to the time of the Commons, which are the parks, housing, jobs, living wages and social safety nets – all things that the 99% have in common. This is not a new idea. Nature’s gifts have been the Commons’ property since the beginning. Thomas Paine declared that these gifts were the property of the human race and the land ordinance of the 1785 drafted by a committee of the Continental Congress that included Thomas Jefferson. They established a cooperative model for settlement of the West by setting aside one-square mile in every township as a Common property to be used to support a public school. The New Deal gave us Social Security; the GI Bill was also our Commons. We, the 99%, Commoners are now under attack and we, at this time, are being denied our basic needs of food, housing, healthcare, daycare, education, transportation, job training, paid vacation, old age benefits and common dignity in our lives. ...

There are now 23 work for less states in the U.S. How did this happen? Well, one way was how the legislation was worded. The bill was written as ‘The Right to Work.’ So who would vote against the right to work? For everyone has the right to work, but that was not the real issue. The real reason was to weaken labor unions by letting workers be in a union shop and not pay dues. A large group of union members voted for this not understanding what it would do to them. To make matters worse there are a lot of union members who joined the GOP because the GOP was successful in hijacking outdoor sports, such as hunting, fishing and shooting sports with the fear of gun laws, environmental laws and it was - and is – just bull. A lot of fire personnel, law enforcement and postal workers vote GOP. Maybe they thought that the GOP would not attack them. How did that work for the Air Traffic Controllers? Now the most recent attacks are on the civil workers in Arizona, New Hampshire, Utah and Ca...