Union Perspectives

Economic thoughts of a great Federal Reserve Board chairman from 1934 to 1947: Chairman Marriner S. Eccles was way ahead of the times regarding the workings of the economy. He was a millionaire by the age of 24 and a tycoon by age 40. When conventional logic was for austerity during the Great Depression, he reasoned that investments in jobs take place in a climate of high prosperity for when the purchasing power of the masses increases the demands for a higher standard of living enables them to purchase luxury items. At this time we have millions of our people who don’t have enough purchasing power for even their barest needs. Eccles is one of the architects of the New Deal, despite being a wealthy man. Just like today, back in the 1930s, some business leaders believed that a depression was the God-given scientific operation of economic laws and not manmade. These laws could not be interfered with because they represented the biblical story of Joseph and the seven bountiful years fol...

What does austerity, union busting, worker lockouts and making it harder to vote have in common? It is starting a worldwide revolution between the 99 percent and the oligarchies, which in most cases have the governments in their pockets bought and paid for. Some of the places and countries that are in the fight today are Belgium’s city of Brussels where 25,000 people took part Friday in a European trade union demonstration against austerity, 20 people were injured. The Kellogg workers in the U.S. are locked out of their jobs because Kellogg hired temporary workers to undercut worker pay. In the Ukraine, their unions and their sovereignty rights are under attack at this time. Also, there are 1,500 union and nonunion Canadian truckers at the ports in British Columbia, Vancouver who are in the financial fight of their lives. This is what standing together looks like. UPS just fired 250 workers who went on a 90-minute protest strike in February for the firing of union activist Jairo Reyes...

Economics 101 and the bullshit of the austerity: the only people who have benefitted from austerity are the 1 percent by having their jobs safe, their investments continued growing and their taxes were kept low. Do you really think this is the way to keep the economy growing? If yes, you’d be wrong. The longer the austerity last, the less money there is in the pockets of the 99 percent who are most likely to spend the money. There are other players in the game of economics, which is just like the game of Monopoly? The game does not get started until all the players have money, but as the game goes on someone will end up with all the money, the 1 percent. Then the game is over, just like an economy that becomes stagnant. To start a new game you must do what? Yes, put the money back in the hands of the players. One way we should have done this was to take advantage of a once in a generation opportunity to repair roads, bridges, air ports, water lines, electrical grids, gas piping and t...

If the USA is a consumer economy, then there must be good wages paid to the consumers to drive the economy. The business community thinks they have the right to pay anything they wants in wages, but what they don’t want to consider is that their businesses is not totally theirs if in order to conduct their business they use the commons (e.g. roads), which is paid for by all the U.S. people who actually pay their taxes or at least subsidized by the people like the railroads and post office, law enforcement, schools, bank regulators, Environmental Protection Agency and Food and Drug Administration, to name a few. Without most of these things there would be no way to have or conduct a business. The taxes to support our schools that train the workers in math and English the companies then hire. Without good wages as the base pay it must be very solid or the consumer economy will crumble and with it the whole system. The more we make the more we spend and the more we must produce, which is...