Union Perspectives

Labor must always be on the offense so we must never rest. There should never be time that we are not organizing for new members and shops. This is a 24-7, 365-day a year job that unions must commit to in order to beat the destructive nonunion GOP corporations wishing to destroy the union way of life. Every town with a labor counsel should be the headquarters for organizing for all unions at one time. We started a program called Labor Cities. Maybe we should look at that program again. Unions need to work on a ‘work-life’ balance, like a four-day work week with full pay. Workers need to stop and think about how they are selling their time one hour at a time and time is the greatest resource that we have in our lives and on this earth. Corporations want to exploit this resource as cheaply as they can get without regard to the hardships on the workers. Corporations are not your friends. Remember the billionaire class. They have a different set of rules for themselves and expect everybody...

Anger and distrust is destroying the workers, both unionized and non-union. Even some unions are split, and some unions are fighting each other, which then makes the non-union workers distrust our unions even more. Our anger is misdirected by intention. If the money people can keep us fighting amongst ourselves then we won't see how they are screwing us over. This distrust started in the U.S. and worldwide with the anti-union line of Great Britain’s Margaret Thatcher government along with the anti-union policies of Ronald Reagan's administration. But the assault actually began in the late 1940s, and escalated in the late 1970s, and has gotten progressively worse since 1981 until now. Polls have revealed some dissatisfaction on the part of our members and nonmembers alike with the way unions are run and governed. Unions are doing a poor job of presenting their members and giving members a say in how a union should operate and not telling union members what the unions are doing...

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...

Climate change is here in the name of a drought and heat, which has provided the tools for extreme fires. In California, fires have already cost many lives, injuries and hundreds of millions of dollars so far. The final tally is still to be determined. So far, in California six civilians and two firefighters have died, and many were injured. In the Lake County alone, 1,958 structures were lost, 93 damaged and 2,953 structures threatened, displacing almost 3,000 people without homes, and the fire season is not even over. Also, wildland fires are now worldwide so climate change does not only involve us, here in the U.S., but its impacting people worldwide, especially New Zealand, Spain, Indonesia and Singapore so far. We, in the U.S., have the most problem facing firefighters in what we call wild land-urban interface, which is homes built in or very close to the forests. At this time there are about 10 million homes built in fire-prone rural areas an addition to the 6 million built in 1...

Organizers of unions must look at new ways to organize new members for nothing stays the same and trying to do and use the same methods that no longer work is the definition of insanity. Organizers have depended on the National Labor Relation Board (NLRB) laws to give workers the right to unionize and protect then, but using the NLRB as a fortress to protest will not work today. In any fortress there will sooner or later be destroyed either by being overrun or by just poking holes into it and making it no longer defensible without upgrades, like new, stronger laws. The NLRB is dying so organizers must change their tactics. The SEIU, between 1995 and 1999, unionized 74,000 home healthcare workers in Los Angeles. The labor movement will be in low wage employees working toward $15 to $18 an hour minimum wage plus benefits. The once powerful trade and industrial labor unions, which built the middle class, are no longer able to protect the interests of the American workers and this also is...

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...

The $15 to $16 an hour minimum wage that the low-wage workers are asking for has a lot of positive to it, such as helping to end corporation welfare and these large corporations like Walmart paying below living wages and then the tax payers having to supplement their workers by way of food stamps and Medicaid, school lunches. Usually the cost for a low-wage worker is about $10,000 a year so if the corporations paid a living wage like they should, that corporation welfare money could go toward other things, which would benefit all of the 99 percent, and, of course, better wages would mean more jobs and maybe some families could go back to a one-wage earner per family, which would be good for the children, in some cases. In order to get the win on wages each wage slaves must want it and be willing to make the commitment just like going on a diet, quit smoking, getting sober. Each person must do it and then find others with the same will and tenacity to stay with it until you win. But jus...