Union Perspectives

This is the best time in the last fifty years for the union people to get better contracts and for the nonunion workers to get their first union contracts. The stars have alined in the workers’ favor with unemployment at its lowest and lots of jobs not being filled. There are lots of jobs not being filled. There are lots of low-end jobs out there ready to be filled so now is the time for the $15 to $24 hour wage to be established. If employees don’t receive this then they should strike like the food workers—essential workers—at Ralph’s, Albertsons, Vons, and Pavilions. The owners offered employees a 60 cent per hour increase. The workers want $5 per hour. This walk out would be grocery clerks, meat cutters, pharmacists and pharmacy technicians. They are represented by seven locals of the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union with 47,000 workers in all. Albertsons owns Safeway, which became unionized beginning in 1935. Despite Albertsons making better-than-expected qua...

Why are union workers’ money enriching the rich? Public employees pension funds fund the destruction of not only the livelihoods of private sector workers, but also their own unions, which are, of course, the only reason union workers enjoy any benefits at all. The unions in search of higher returns, pension fund managers have taken to investing in what are known in the trades as “alternative” investments, such as hedge funds and private equity. They take union money and invest in companies that then do a so-called “efficiency” remodel to make the company make more money. This is just a code for screwing the workers by cutting wages, hours and even jobs. The purchasers borrow lots of money to buyout these heavily indebted companies, which forces management in an effort to achieve greater efficiency by cutting against the employees. What they did in the case of Safeway grocery stores is sold stores to nonunion operators, closing stores and squeezing labor. In all, 63,000 people lost ...

The $15 to $16 an hour minimum wage fight must have a large outreach of community-based support and education of the public in the overall good that will come from higher wages for the lower wage workers. There are 46 million people in this country living in poverty. Between 2009 and 2011, all the new income generated in this country went to the top 1 percent making the income inequality in this country greater than in any other developed country. It looks like some of the corporations are starting to see the benefits of more money in the pockets of our wage slaves will help not only the workers, but will mean more profits for the corporation. It will not mean fewer jobs, but not more jobs to keep up with the customer demands for the food industry and manufacturers. I think the corporations are really starting to see the benefits of paying a good living wage and benefits. Some of these corporations are Costco, Trader Joe’s, Safeway, Raley’s, among others. They see that one of the ways...

Nothing gets built if not for labor so labor must be able to have a slice of the pie one way or the other. It would be nice if all large corporations, like Costco, which is non-union, would pay and treat their employees like they’re worth something. Safeway and most Raley’s supermarkets are unionized and treat their employees worthwhile. I hope there are more, but when you shop at these stores you know it is a good place to work. You can just feel it and tell by the employees and the employees can probably afford to buy the things they sell. This is how it should be. The carpenter should be able to buy the house he builds, the autoworker should be able to buy the car she builds, and the food worker should not go hungry. This is the way it should work out. A working person must think of themselves as a business, and the asset they have is their body so the worker must be healthy, educated, and have all the tools in which to make money. The worker will have to sale their lives and bod...

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...