Union Perspectives

Out living your pensions, we, who had a good pension 20 years ago when we retired, have seen our monthly pay slowly drain away. With a pension there is no savings and the saving we had when working also slips away to make up the difference in our pension shortcomings. This is if we were lucky enough to stash money away while working and not experiencing any major setbacks, like an illness, house fire, or natural disaster. Just keeping with repairs on a house can be drain a budget even if you are skilled enough to have the health and knowledge to do the repairs yourself and not have to hire someone to do the work for you or let your largest investment deteriorate, which will impact the value on your house should you need to sale it. So, what can a person do to compensate their income? If they are lucky and have good health, they might be able to find a job, but a job that compensates a 65 to 80 year old for their knowledge and experience might be difficult to find. If you can find a...

Can labor mobilize our union families like they did in the 1920s, ‘30s ‘40s and ‘50s? If this could be done our union labor activists could be three to four times in numbers larger than the one person paying dues. If labor could mobilize our retired members there would be thousands more activists who could be recruiting or promoting unions and the fight against wage inequality of the non-union low wage slaves. Families and retirees are a valuable resource not being utilized by the unions. For example, my wife was shopping in a large retail store and, in retaliation for raising the minimum wage in California; the store had only a few checkout lanes open. The excuse was that the store “had” to lay-off employees due to the increase. As customers became irritated and began to voice their dissatisfaction, some began to blame the miniscule wage hike, but my wife spoke up, informing people that had wages kept up with inflation, minimum wage would be much higher than $9 or $10 and asked the pe...

The fight for $15 is not just a fight for money or even the equality of life. In all wars there are scrimmages and in these scrimmages is where momentum is won, which usually puts the opponent on the defense and is hard to overcome. The fight for $15 is now worldwide and gaining ground. Labor is on the move and with each win they are and will get stronger. Also, labor is winning strikes across the U.S. and the world. But we are fighting an uphill battle with a long road to go and labor needs all wage slaves and unions to stand together just like all those hard hat union construction workers did for the fast food workers not too long ago. We need to understand that the fight against labor started long ago, and also who we are up against. The “Art of War” says that you must know yourself (your history) and your enemy to have a chance for victory. Labor’s enemies are the Chamber of Commerce, the National Association of Manufacturers and the Koch brothers’ American Legislative Exchange Co...

Why can’t the Democrats have a Tea Party-like movement like the GOP—this movement would be the proletariats and wage slaves and normal, intelligent people who will fight for higher wages, fight against inequality of the lower 47 percent. Yes, it would be nice if there was a strong labor party and maybe there will or could be one day, but in the meantime why not use the tools that are there, which is the brand name Democrats/progressive and the brand name is about all you would get for you would not get much money from corporations or even the Democratic Party. So it would be funded by the wage slaves and some smart forward thinking unions or maybe even new unions. Yes, it would be much easier to just go with a socialist party, but to do that and win there would have to be a lot of education on what socialism actually is and what it isn’t—communism. At this time I think there could be a parallel program, which would support each other and benefit the Democratic Party and the 47 percent....

The Art of War says that you must know your enemy and, yes, there is a war between the 1 percent’s very rich and the corporate chief executive officers against the toilers. The toilers do not know just who their enemies truly are because the anti-union, anti-worker corporations spend our money (from buying their products) to pound us with misinformation The inequality keeps the toilers heads bent low trying to just trying to scrap by with minimum wage jobs that they don’t have the time of energy to stand up, look around and compare notes with other toilers and understand what they, the 1 percent, are doing to us. The worst part is we give them the bullets (our money) to use against. When we do business with a store that belongs to the Chamber of Commerce, which is just a union by a different name. They use their dues to lobby against unions and higher wages for the workers, safety laws and benefits. They look out for themselves, not the workers who will eventually be their customers. ...

We know why and when the National Guard was started. It was to break labor unrest. The corporations forced the states to fund the Guard to foil labor strikes, but do you know why police departments were started? Well, once again it was to control the wage slaves and protect the people with the money, the corporations. When labor becomes unhappy with their status in life, unhappy with low wages, unhappy with job security and safety, unhappy with the lack of pensions, lack of healthcare and unhappy with job discrimination, they find ways to come together to fix the discrepancies. But, there are people who are always there unseen, the puppet masters who are the old foes of labor. It’s always been that way since the 17th and 18th centuries. In those days it was called the enforcement of vagabondage laws against working people. This was the predecessor of modern prisons or workhouses where convicts were put to labor. The first prisons in the U.S. began in the 1800. They were modeled after ...

Why don’t we, labor wage slaves, have organizations, other than labor unions, fighting for our workers? The right wing has not only anti-labor think tanks, but also many undercover organizations, such as American Legislative Exchange Council; the right wing group the Lincoln Club of Orange County, California; Manufacturers Association; and the local, national and international Chamber of Commerce. These are just a few of the organizations that have come out from under their rocks and are getting laws or propositions on the ballot before we wage slaves even know what’s happened. This always puts us on the defense, which we must stop in order to counter their actions. They have the money, but we have the people. Whether or not they lose they will have depleted our treasury and worn our people out. What we need to do is take the fight to them, which will remove what they are doing to us. We could do this by using our labor councils and spin off organizations to work on propositions and ...

We have to know where we have been in order to know where we want to go, and how to get there. So, why do we still have to explain to our union members who they should support in elections? I think we need to adhere to what an old union leader once said: “We now have them organized so now we need to unionize them.” This is where we union leaders have failed our wage slaves and I think it should start from the top and the bottom in order to do it fast and then hopefully we’ll meet in the middle with knowledgeable union people. We should all be studying the Art of War by Sun Tzu and the Prince by Machiavelli. These books will get you solitary confinement in some prisons; but they are required reading in large corporations and all military schools. There must be a benefit in learning strategy of war and business. This is exactly what we wage slaves are involved in. In fact, it will be do or die in the next few years. We must organize and rebuild our labor influence and power. Our labor fo...

Nonunion employers’ feel they own their wage slaves and today it is the same as it was in the 1800s when the boss lined up the wage slaves and marched them to the polling places to cast their vote and told the employees who to vote for. If they did not vote the way the employers dictated they would be fired. Another insult that wage slaves were not paid for that day. Here it is, the 2012 election, and the employers are using this same tactic: coal miners marched out and made to stand behind a GOP presidential candidate and told to donate to the candidate’s campaign and weren’t paid for the time they had to stand behind that candidate. Companies are many who force their workers to do what they want even when the wage slaves are on their own time. The employers tell or have the slaves sign contracts that dictate what the employee can say or write on social network sites or letters to newspapers, agreeing not to join a union or dropping out of a union in order to get a job with a compan...

Why and when did the GOP become so anti-worker? The Chamber of Commerce, which is GOP dominated and a few unknowing Democrats, has always been against workers having a living wage. At one time there were a few GOP elected presidents that were for wage slaves, healthcare, workers safety laws, environmental laws, and the right for workers to have unions. This was when they, the corporate-run GOP, needed our workers and at that time they just wanted to keep unemployment at a 6 percent or higher unemployment. The reason for the 6 percent and higher was when unemployment reaches 5 percent or lower then the workers would be in a better position to fight for better working conditions, such as pay, pensions, healthcare, work place safety. But now with NAFTA, outsourcing jobs overseas, the corporations don’t care about the unemployment percentage. The GOP politicians don’t care and have no intention to help working class people. Now the large U.S. corporations have traded away their loyalty fr...

Wage slaves proletarian workers must have unbiased representation on the Supreme Court, if not everything worker related for the good of working families will be lost at the Supreme Court. The Court can even take away all the decisions, which favors the workers that are now in place, and even the rights, which favors the proletarians on social issues. So it is imperative that we re-elect Obama. He is our only hope and if he is not re-elected the working class wage slaves will be set back 80 to 90 years – all lost. We would have to start from scratch: no labor laws, no free speech, voters’ rights, no free assembly, and all our elected people bought by the Citizens United law. We must maintain the presidency in order to get a good U.S. Supreme Court. Now, the GOP has a very good game on two fronts, which splits our boots on the ground, and diminishes our money. They have a very well-funded attack on state-level governments, where it is easy to buy governors and state representatives, ...

Why do we need a middle class living wage? One of the simplest answers is to spend money to buy from the small businesses and large corporations. If we, wage slaves, have a little left over after our basic needs then we can save for shelter and maybe even some toys or go back to school or maybe even a vacation. All of this spending is what drives our economy. If we buy then a worker will have a job to make things for the wage slaves to buy and the more the wage slaves earn the more they will spend. Why does the GOP and the Chamber of Commerce fight minimum wage and unions who are trying to rebuild the working middle class? They should know by now that the working middle class and retired workers with good pension are the drivers of the economy of restaurants, entertainment, housing, auto industry, food stores, and most all large, nonunion low wage box stores. We had a very workable system until the oligarchy money people got greedier and started 40 years ago to destroy the unions and ...

There are two 99%. One is the workers, labor unions, proletarians, wage slaves. The other is the little shop owners, restaurants, mom & pop stores. They both have just about the same enemies, but only one hasn’t figured it out yet. If the small businesses think the Chamber of Commerce, large corporations and box stores, like Walmart, are their friends who would not undersell their products they have their heads in a dark place. Walmart and the like have no problem putting small stores out of business. What’s equally appalling is that city and county governments that approve the applications of big box stores are actually helping to destroy small businesses. The two 99% should be standing shoulder to shoulder against corporations, Chamber of Commerce and box stores. The small shop owners are getting hit from two sides. One hit from their customers and the other from large corporation box stores and out of town chain restaurants. If customers do not have money, they can’t spend i...

When we don’t know what the antiunion people like American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) are planning then all we can do is respond like the thousands of Indiana workers who just got the “right to work” for less jammed up their butts. Now that it is done we talk about how bad it will be for the workers like making more than $5,000 a year less on average maybe we should pay attention to what is going to happen and warn our workers before the damage is done. It’s too late after the legislation has passed to take to the streets in protest. Unions should be holding meetings with its members, educate them and their families on “who” and “what” and “how" labor is being attacked right now. Labor is being attacked in 20 states along the lines of anti-worker legislation. The “what” is to break workers into temp workers without a voice; the “how” is through the power of people and the ballot box; and the “who” are the likes of ALEC, Citizens United, American Crossroads, Chamber of ...

Are the anti-union people like the Chamber of Commerce, the Manufacturing Association and other like-mind organizations doing the right thing for themselves? The conflict between labor and the business owners or “capitals” (as the wealthy business owners were once called) is a natural one that goes back since the beginning of this country. The proletarian toilers or wage slaves (a term coined by Jack London) have nothing in common with the employing class. The IWW Wobblies understood this and this is the reason they did not want to enter into labor contracts, which, they believed, would take away labor’s best weapon—the strike. Also the IWW did not want to affiliate with any political party. Its party was the wage slaves’ workers. This is the reason the Wobblies were so feared. They were the first 99%. What would be the recourse of us wage slaves if we lose all unions and the right to form or belong to any organizations to lobby for our rights within law?  What will happen? Well, l...

Why do local small businesses support the International Chamber of Commerce when they support low wages for the 99% wage slaves? They are also one of the oldest enemies of labor unions and the 99%. This never made sense to me for the wage slaves are the ones who buy the goods from the businesses who support the Chamber, when the Chamber ultimately doesn’t not support them. You would think the local businesses would want the slave wages to have more money to spend on the businesses goods and which would mean more jobs to make goods to sell and also pay more taxes to support local government. With this in mind, what sense does it make when businesses think they win when they can defeat a prevailing wage job, such as the Turtle Bay Sheraton Hotel in Redding, CA? Their win took $1.1 million in wages out of the pockets of the local wage slaves and therefore the local economy. You would think that the local businesses would be up in arms. One-point-one million dollars would have been a n...

Plutocracy is a form of government that is ruled by the very rich and the corporations. Those with money have the power. They can finance the election of politicians they want in office and the president they want, who in turn can appoint the judges from the federal level all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court. Once the rich and corporations get this in place, then we have a plutocracy. How close are we, the United States, now? Once plutocracy is in place, how can we change this back to a true democracy? When the tea party followers say they want to take their government back, just who do they want to take the country back from? For the courts and the GOP are running our government as a plutocracy and our democracy government is becoming less and less. The state governments are being bought and paid for by the Koch brothers, Carl Rove’s group and the chamber of commerce’s money from China and who knows what other countries. All of these entities buy our elections. Other local money ...