Union Perspectives

The AFL/CIO needs to start kicking some union ass. All unions must start having meetings and having union-oriented speakers and focus their meetings on their union history and struggles to get started and how to keep our unions. It's up to us. Unions did not just happen. There was blood spilled in the streets and many spent time in jail, and some even died for the union cause. Men, women and children were burned alive in tents, like at Ludlow, Colorado. Our union members’ families need to know what is going to happen with the GOP in charge they are out to destroy our unions. There is no one coming to our rescue. Forbes identified 902 billionaires on its 2025 list, but in 2024 the World Population Review reports there are 813. At what point does a person realize they have more money than they need or will spend in their life times. They want low wages, no benefits, no healthcare, not even Social Security. They want slave labor so they can become trillionaires. So at every meeting t...

As of April 1, there are 288 new billionaires added to the list for a total of 3,028 billionaires with a total net worth of $16.1 trillion. This is what is against us. They want slaves and slave wages here like they pay in other countries. Trump’s Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick wants the slave labor corporations use in other countries to be brought back and have Americans do the work. “The army of millions and millions of human beings screwing in little, little screws to make iPhones, that kind of thing is going to come to America.” It is save to assume if this happened, it will not be at union wages or a livable wage. Unions memers have to be prepared. Our old ways of doing things will no longer work and the oligarchs know this. All union members must start saving money and not go into debt. It’s time to question the difference between a “need” from a “want” before making purchases of any kind. It’s imperative that we become self-sufficient as possible, even to the point of gr...

International Brotherhood of Teamsters are following the United Auto Workers in making history with the groundbreaking joint employer decision against Amazon. Now, the Longshoremen have gotten a groundbreaking contract, as well. This is very telling on what labor can do if they all pull together. These are some of the best deals in the last 30 years. However, all can be lost in the next election if our members vote for the wrong candidate. It is not hyperbole, but history, to say Republicans hate unions. This election, all must set aside some of the “piss me off” things and vote for the people who will stand up for unions and the working people, union or nonunion. The richest 1 percent have half of the worlds wealth while the rest of us only have 0.75 percent. Since 2020, this 1 percent have taken 63 percent of all the wealth. In the U.S., 800 billionaires have more than half of the nation’s wealth while the bottom half of our families have 2.5 percent. Do you think these rich peop...

If there is no class warfare then why are the one percenters, the billionaires, building bunkers, buying thousands of acres of land, buying islands, building superyachts, and going into space looking for potentially inhabitable planets? Do they know more than we, the peons, do about what is happening and what is expected to happen? Just what are they afraid of? Do they think the proletariats are coming for them with pitchforks? If so, why would they think this way? Guilty conscience, maybe? Could it be that they know that a few people that possess 99% of the wealth in the world is unsustainable, and are worried about the 99% of the people will do and will they declare a class war? The 99% against the 1%, and if I was a member of the 1%, I would change my ways or dig a deeper bunker. Even with bunkers, super yachts, islands or their money and thousands of acres of land, they will still need fuel, food, water, medicine, medical care, and who will they trust to do it for them? There has ...

If our country is a country of laws that keeps even and honest then we need to cleanup the U.S. Supreme Court, the last stop for all lawsuits and even then they can change any laws based on previous laws. However, it appears they are now changing laws based on corporate money and vacations. Today, if the political party in the White House wants a change on the billionaire-influenced Supreme Court they would have to have the money today for any change. The corporate billionaires use Citizens United ruling to buy off the late Antonin Scalia, current Supreme Court judges Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito—that we know of—and who knows about the rest for the temptation of billions of dollars can sway even the so-called honest judges. At this time, any case, which would do damage to the 1 percent will lose, which means any labor case, union case or voting case will lose even student debt relief. On top of this any climate and healthcare laws will not make it passed the Supreme Court because t...

How do 85 people in the world control the same amount of the wealth as one half of the world’s population or 3.5 billion people? Another way to look at this is each of the 85 richest people has access to the same resources as do 42 million of the world’s “have nots” and last year 210 people joined the ranks of billionaires. So at this time the wealth of the 1 percent is $110 trillion. Now, how do the 99 percent pry away some of this money? One way is to make the oligarchies pay a living wage of at least $15 to $16 an hour and, yes, there is a huge inequality between the 1 percent and the 99 percent, and the old worn out playbook of the GOP anti-union plays will not hold water any more. You know the old sayings like, “pull yourself up by your own boot straps.” I would like to see someone do this. I think it is literally and physically impossible to do. Another ignorant position is only young wage slaves just starting their work experience are the workers at fast food, low wage jobs. Th...

What is a person to do when you have billions of dollars and you get bored? What some of these billionaires have done or are doing is to start their own elite billionaire hunting club. First, you need a place to hunt so they buy a state and then buy the elected officials who govern those states so they can start hunting. The hunters have set their sights on union people, the wage slaves, who are the game or hunted. Ahhh --- the feeling of power and the thrill of the hunt. Union busting trophies equal more money for billionaires. What a sport. But why just stop at states when, with the U.S. Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision, they can buy the whole country, which would create the world’s largest hunting club. They would have the wage slaves serve them by working for less. The billionaires could make more money. The club is already up and running and all you need to join is a billion dollars. You could buy and hunt with these big name billionaires, such as Foster Friess, Harold...

This time we have a lot of millionaires versus billionaires and our millionaires are kicking ass. How? By the old union way having hundreds of athletes showing extraordinary solidarity. When a typical pro career last only 3.5 years, the pressure must be intense, but the NFL won. Now the NBA owners are crying poverty, which is just a cover to break the union. The NBA owners have much in common with classic labor disputes including misrepresentation of owners losses and so-called worker excess. This struggle is really not about billionaires versus millionaires after all, but it is the billionaires versus everyone else, including fans. This might be a time when the athletes of the NFL ad NBA start thinking about a good defense is a good offense and think about asking, ‘Why do the NFL or NBA even need owners for they could have fan-owned teams similar to the Superbowl Champion Green Bay Packers.’ The Packers have 112,000 owners and a large percentage of all proceeds go to local communi...