Union Perspectives

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

Is Senator Bernie Sanders the person to lead labor in politics? What would happen if Senator Bernie Sanders and Shawn Fain, president of the United Automobile Workers, joined forces? Could Bernie, with labors help, get the working people a four-day work week with full pay, healthcare with no out of pocket costs, childcare and free education and a universal basic income for those who fall between the cracks? Before you say or think this is wishful thinking, go back and look at what we used to have before Republicans started chipping away at benefits so that corporations wouldn’t have to suffer a loss in profits. If that’s not enough look at other countries that take care of their people and corporations still make profits, just not obscene profits. Labor needs a person who can carry the torch in government for the union workers and in trade unions need to support the torch bearer, Bernie Sanders, and the people he supports to get the votes needed to get the laws that support the workin

Unions new slogan should be “Organize or Die.” We must be stronger by the 2024 elections because we don’t know for sure what the outcome will be. When we are striking or organizing, our workers will see the need to vote and vote for people who support workers. They see this when on the picket line or when working for a union they will vote for and to keep a union. This is when workers understand what is at stake and who their friends are. So, in the 2024 election, workers will have a friendly president and government or they will have a president who will turn government on unions and its members. Either way, now is the time for all unions and its members to come together least for this year. Unions that have problems with other unions have got to set aside their differences and issues at least for this year or we could very possibly lose our unions and the security unions provide to the workers. On the other hand, if union workers prevail in 2024 with the election of a Democratic pr

Our Social Security is now at risk thanks to the Republicans. As France has now had their retirement age increased from 62 years to 64 years of age. The people of France fought and are fighting hard, but not hard enough or in the right way, it appears. Their leader circumvented protocol to ram this retirement age higher. Is there anything else they can do? We, here in the U.S., must look hard at how the French lost because if the Democrats lose the next presidential election, the oligarch’s control of the Republicans will use the French’s playbook to raise our retirement age to 72 and possibly cut our Social Security pensions. We need to get ready for the fight to save our Social Security and retirement age as we have them right now. The Republicans have been trying to to destroy Social Security since we started receiving it. It was our old age safety net. They will never stop just like they didn’t stop trying to overturn Roe v Wade, which no one thought could ever happen. At least n

Why are the building trades not organizing? At this time when there are and will be lots of prevailing wage jobs starting. This is the time to go after non-union trade workers to get new members, which will turn into more union shops or out non-union shops out of business since they will not have trades people, who will work for them. We need to keep our money for organizing, and tell the politicians we will give you votes but not our money until you are elected and do something, like better fund the National Labor Relations Board and vote for the Protecting the Right to Organize Act or PRO Act. The trades people need to stop giving up on the rural part of the country, like the Democrats have done, retreating and holding up in cities with larger populations, which turned out not to be as effective a strategy as they thought it would be. All it did or does is slow the bleeding. So we, labor and labor friendly political people need to go back to the counties, like in far northern and eas

There needs to be some very large changes in order to get our country back on track, and keep up with the changing types of jobs, climate change, healthcare, and the cost of living to include food, fuel and Social Security. One thing the current administration could do to help out the elderly is to undo Reagan’s taxing of Social Security followed by a cost of living increase. We need to start lowering the age eligibility for Medicare to at least to the age of 50 and eventually to Medicare for All. We need a universal basic income (UBI) in order to save our capitalist system. People have to have money to spend for without it the capitalist system withers on the vine and dies. Taxes paid on sales should stay within the city and county to fund fire departments, law enforcement, streets, parks, among others necessities. As usual, the republicans will scream, ‘how do we pay for treating our citizens with respect’ or ‘we can’t afford it.’ The same tired garbage they always trot out when the

In all adversity there is a window of opportunity, a window the University of California’s student researchers crawled through during the pandemic to unionize. Throughout the UC campuses, almost 15,000 student researchers signed authorization cards to join the already 80,000 other academic workers across the country who unionized with the United Auto Workers. The time is right for trade and factory workers to ask for a union to receive better, fair wages, benefits and safety. These simple workers’ rights were why the UC student researchers unionized. They were doing the work but had no rights or protections for that work, they struggled to pay rent or buy necessities, so they were essentially working as indentured servants. At this time there is a shortage of workers. You can tell businesses and corporations are getting desperate when they offer potential workers anything from an iPhone to thousands of dollars as sign on bonuses. It will get better for workers when out country starts r

May 1st traditionally celebrated the transition into spring, but the day became a union rallying call when a major strike took place with more than 300,000 workers leaving their jobs in 13,000 businesses across the U.S. It began in Chicago when 40,000 workers went out on an eight-hour strike on May 1, 1886 at the Haymarket Square. May 1 became International Workers’ Day to commemorate the loss of life and injuries sustained by protestors when a bomb went off and law enforcement used gun fire to squash the peaceful protest. Tomorrow, May 1, workers from Amazon, Walmart, Target, Whole Foods, Instacart, and FedEx, tired of feeling invisible and taken for granted by the corporations and the public at large, are set to go on strike. Many of these companies have not offered the best working conditions, but now with a deadly virus underway workers are being treated as if they are expendable. Suddenly deemed essential workers for a fraction of the wages, these workers’ health is being jeop

Our country is on life support thanks to the incompetency of the jester in the White House and the dunces that make up his administration. We are faced with a deadly virus of which we’ve not seen since the 1918 Spanish flu epidemic and the ensuing economic collapse, both here and internationally. Trump says he couldn’t have known that the virus would reach our shores yet he did. Reports are saying he was informed in January, giving him plenty of time to activate a plan of action. But since he disbanded the National Security Council unit focused on pandemic preparedness, there was no one in charge to take the helm. Trump’s team was briefed on what to do should the U.S face a pandemic, but apparently no one was listening. Trump refused help from the World Health Organization. He did nothing so he, his family members and other Republicans could benefit from the ensuing crisis. Rather than listen to the experts, Trump chose to listen to and take direction from his son-in-law Jared Kush

What happens when one person is above the law? And, what if he or she is the president of the United States? If this were to happen then it is not just one person above the law, but this includes all the people helping this person be above the law knowing there is a pardon waiting for them when the rug is pulled out from under them. How can this happen? First a party, like the Republicans, needs to be corrupt and greedy to the point it will warp the very foundation of our country. Then you must obtain control of the highest court of the land, the Supreme Court by denying a sitting president the right to appoint a candidate to fill a vacant seat; then you get the new president to appoint judges willing to rule the way you want and not by legal precedence. Then you pull out all of the stops to include election corruption to get your candidate elected to the presidency, just like George W. Bush, who was followed in office by Barrack Obama, who chose not to prosecute the corruption that w

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

Is joblessness going to be the new normal for most workers? Or will “gig job” (job of a short duration) and temporary jobs be the new order with low pay and no pensions or healthcare. This is what the capitalist rulers are telling the working people, and that they will just have to live with it. The capitalists are now attacking the pensions that workers have already earned. With a Congressional law passed in December of 2014, The Pension Reform Act, which gives permission to slash retirees payments and will effect 68 separate private sector union pension funds. This could impact about 1 million pensions, which not only effects the retirees, but their families, as well, amounting to 2 million to 3 million people or more. A person receiving a government pension of $3,500, could see a cut of $1,900 per month. Then the Government Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation, which is supposed to pick up the shortfall, is projected to run out of money in eight to ten years. There will be no m

Where is the AFL-CIO on things like $15 to $24 an hour minimum wage or on the universal basic income (UBI). Also, the idea that the French has on a universal robot tax to support the UBI. A robot tax because the more technology advances, the more machines take over our jobs. Then, there is the attack on the U.S. prevailing wage, the Davis-Bacon Act, which Republicans have attack and now want to end prevailing wage protections. This is not only a union matter, but a nonunion issue for all workers who now earn a living wage when working on government jobs. It is time unions and nonunion workers get together and hit the streets, and if we don’t the workers will be working for less than minimum wage and no union healthcare or pensions. The union busting GOP are turning the working class against itself, black against white, men against women, Jews against nonJews. Using hate, division, white supremacy, misogyny, religion and racism are the choice weapons in every union busting fight in

Is California next on the Koch brothers’ agenda? The Republicans will have 33 governors in office, and in 25 of those states, the Republicans will also control both the governorships and the legislations. The Democrats have six governors and legislations, and the rest of the states are politically divided. Sam Lansing is chief operating officer at the Americans for Prosperity, a conservative super pac bankrolled by the Koch brothers, and he thinks now is the best opportunity to accomplish a lot of the big-ticket items in 10 to 15 states. People in these states will be steamrolled on policies, such as destroying unions, Social Security, Medicare, right to work laws, school vouchers to break the teachers’ union and private prisons, while giving tax breaks wealthy. How long will it be before the GOP and the Koch brothers start in on California and New York, which will now be considered their holy grail for destruction. They decimated the unions in the birthplace of public unions, Wisc

Labor the world over at this time has no friends in this corporate world, and there is no political part that will support labor because unions don’t have the kind of money politicians are looking for. The political parties now side with Wall Street, corporations, big banks and lobbyists for this is where the money and political power is and where laws can be written—laws that will make them more money. One only has to look at the U.K., France, Ukraine, Spain, Greece, Turkey, South America, and, of course, here in the U.S. where labor laws have been shot full of holes and probably do more harm than good. Now is the time for a revolution of minimum wage workers, students burdened by student loans, all labor unions, people on Social Security, veterans, minorities and all the rest of us to band together to bring voter pressure on the Democrats, if not them, then a new people’s party because what we have now is not working for either party, Democratic or GOP. Are we in the U.S. reverting b

It’s the young people of the world who will save us from the corporate world of the money people. Just look at the historic election of Burma. Then look at the young people of the U.S. who are backing Bernie Sanders for president, which will start a revolution. The young have figured out how to organize for power, how to get it, and to use it to end economic inequality and to believe that a broadly engaged electorate in which power is reactively equally distributed. The people with the power and money find themselves in a dilemma: we want them to share their money with people who have less money or power but they don’t want to despite knowing it would benefit the common good. This is where the ideology part ways, but the young wage slaves who have all but lost hope have now found some leaders in our world who understand their needs. Bernie Sanders’ efforts to build a broad national coalition can reverse our march toward increasing inequality and concentration of power among the elites.

Is democratic socialism coming back, and can it pull us all together? Here in the U.S., all is divided between the Democrats and the Republicans (GOP for Grand Ol’ Party), the unions and the money people. So the winners are the people who can settle their differences the quickest. On the Democratic side, who depend upon unions for boots on the ground and money at this time probably will not happen for unions are not happy with the trade agreement and the lack of support from Democrats. The unions used to blame the Blue Dog Democrats, but now it seems that there are a lot more of the Blue Dogs-types of anti-union politicians in office. If the Democrats are going to depend on union help, they must give the unions the tools to work with because the GOP has just about emptied the union tool box with passage of Right to Work laws and attack on the right to form unions and collect dues. The GOP has kept the unions on defense, which has slowed the unions’ offence, such as with organizing new

The growing pauperization of our country can be stopped by declaring war on pauperization, which could and should be led by unions with labor councils’ support. If labor begins its work at the bottom of the wage level where there are no unions or labor contracts to have to adhere to, it would pretty much give us a free hand and all is fair in love and war. Maybe with the unrest produced by bad law enforcement practices and the unfairness towards the underserved, which causes adversity, there is a window of opportunity for labor to lend support toward bettering the lives of the people who are suffering from inequality. Labor could help in local elections, fight for higher wages, universal healthcare, jobs and better education opportunities. It is a lot easier to change a local city or county than the federal laws. People are already in the streets so why not help each other and if we can slow or stop inequality. We could change things for the better for all. An example of this is the

Have the Wisconsin wage slaves figured out that forming a band of brothers and sisters is better than listening to Fox News and electing people who want to destroy their financial way of life? If so, maybe this would be the reason union membership is up in Wisconsin. After Wisconsin workers saw the third largest decline in the nation in 2012, it is now seeing the seventh largest gains in membership from 11.25 percent to 12.34. This surprised even the unions because many believed corruptness of the state’s governor and his Koch-backed minion had essentially destroyed the unions in Wisconsin. Does this also mean that the wage slaves have figured out that taking the high ground to do battle is the way to win, which is putting pressure on the anti-union elected officials and electing people who believe in the cause and will not worry about losing their next election to the anti-union GOP opponents? If there is no candidate who fits that explanation, then put your money and energy into buil

Inequality means you get screwed. Large gaps in educational achievement and racial divides all make the reduction in inequality difficult. The poorest states in the USA are Montana, Arkansas, Mississippi and West Virginia and most of these are Red states or considered Republican non-union, but right-to-work states. The Republicans will tell you wage slaves that inequality is desirable. Inequality gives wage slaves the incentive to work harder and invest. But at some point, which is where we are now, the inequality of income and wealth becomes so wide as to harm society. When most all the economic gains go to the top; the wage slaves and everyone aspires to join the top percentage, but they no longer have the purchasing power to keep the economy going. Moreover with the small number at the top 1 percent making most of the investment decisions the economy will go up and down. Also, with the 1 percent gains more wealth they also gain more political power in a disproportionate amount, whic