Union Perspectives

The AFL is with Senator Bernie Sanders and it is the people’s only chance to push back against Elon Musk, who wants to dismantle our government. Musk family is said to have left South Africa because they could no longer exploit The native/black Africans so he bought Trump and now he’s laying waste to America in the name of progress. With Senator Sanders’ leadership and backing of all labor unions, we could put together the whole of 99 percent of the people and beat back the 2 percent destroying we what once had and stood for while also saving Social Security, healthcare for all, elder care, child care, while working on the climate change crisis (we are running out of time, as the weather is showing us). The workers need to go big, such as a four-day work week like other countries have; universal basic income (UBI) and Medicare for all for unhoused people, which would help get them off the streets. UBI goes right back into the local economies, which supports jobs for the other working p...

Could union members lose their pensions plus their Social Security? Yes, they can if Project 2025 is acted upon. As unions are distracted by the right to work states and soon the whole country by the attacks from all sides, it could happen. If they succeed in implementing Project 2025, the right to own a gun will become against the law. There will be no working union people to keep their unions solvent resulting in people losing their union pensions and their Social Security. This is the plan of the GOP and corporations is to rid the country of unions and if Project 2025 is implement we can kiss pensions, safe working conditions and laws and protecting our children from slave labor goodbye. Already, the large corporations think unions are irrelevant and with owning the Supreme Court, they are mostly right. It is now or never for our members to push our union leaders to close ranks for the fight of our life time. We need two plans: one to stop the GOP and its Project 2025 plan, and a ...

Will we have a democracy in 2025 or a dictatorship? We are one vote either way. There are times in life when we must put aside our own beliefs and do what must be done for the betterment of all of us and our way of life, such as having unions, free speech, healthcare, Social Security/Medicare in retirement and good education for all. If Project 2025 and Agenda 47 go into effect, all bets are off. Project 2025 is a 920-page mandate for leadership that Trump’s handlers want to become law. All of this will be done at their discretion and we will not be able to go to the streets to protest and if we do, we will be shot like Trump wanted to do to protesters when he was in office. Project 2025 would include firing all Department of State heads by the end of the day on Jan. 20, 2025. Senior State Department appointment leaders will be acting roles so they won’t need Senate confirmation. The plan is a collection of policy transition plans should Trump succeed in stealing the election again, a...

The death of the labor movement will be from the infighting of our labor unions. We have labor unions never speaking to each other. These are our bothers and sisters. This hate can be found in our AFL/CIO or any union group and is a gift to the GOP anti-union anti labor people and we are giving this to them as a gift, and they are using it against us while unions stand around squabbling. Now, it will take time to work out the jurisdictional problems among the trades, but in the meantime we must unite and work together as one to elect the politicians who are staunch labor supporters. We must forget about the pettiness some unions engage in thinking their type of labor is better, more significant than others, but this arrogance forgets that one without the others is nothing. A home without plumbing is incomplete. A home without electricity is incomplete. A home without a roof is incomplete. A home without cabinets is incomplete. You get my drift. It takes all of the trades to keep this c...

Unions’ long game is to get all union contracts to expire on the same day nationwide. The United Auto Workers combines contracts ends on April 28, 2028. This could then result in a mass national strike starting on May Day beeginning that year. This could then put enormous pressure on employers, but also on lawmakers. It’s the muscle and sweat of the workers that keeps this country great, not the individual company or corporations. This May Day strike would be the time to change the workers’ world for the better by negotiating for a 32-hour week with the same pay, and the U.S. adopts a healthcare for all with no out of pocket costs. This would also help the employers as they would no longer have to provide healthcare. By striking, the UAW won same pay for new workers, all UAW contracts will end on the same date, a 25-percent pay increase, a cost of living adjustments, a guaranteed right to strike over potential plant closures, and also the right to vote to unionize through the card che...

Unions do not do well in a dictatorship because unions are the first thing dictators destroy, and rest assured the workers won’t be allowed to hit the streets in protest. If Trump is elected he will invoke the Insurrection Act and send troops into the cities to crush them and send a message that he will terminate and dissent. They will eliminate unions and unionized workers. We are standing at the precipice and it's up to us to fight the fall into a dictatorship. By voting for the GOP, maga people and anyone else will be able to keep their guns until Trump says, “No.” By then, he will have already amassed an Army of foot soldiers in place to take over the government jobs. They will be Trump’s people and they will do whatever he tells them to do. The only way this can be stopped is for all unions and their members to put aside their political and social differences and stand strong for democracy, unions, workers rights and workers safety. This is not a drill. It will happen just loo...

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...

There is no reason for a Republic to die, It should live as long as the masses want. There is not given life span. Republics will live or die by the choices of the people we put in change of our Republic’s custody if the people who we put in charge are selfish, greedy and just want power, and people still voted for these people. This simply encouraged more extreme misbehavior and the masses saw this and nothing year after year and election after election with increasing extreme behaviors. In some countries, each president took more power until they did not leave, they became president for life, like Vlad Putin of Russia, Xi Jinping of China and Kim Jung-un of North Korea. These rulers have shown the way to undercut the power of the Republics and the people. Our rule of law is jeopardized by our elected people taking bribes in exchange for their votes. So, when we, for whatever reason, supported or refused to condemn and hold these people accountable, we are just giving away our Republ...

Indulge an old union man, but I feel like I need to get some things off my chest that are irritating me. For instance, retired union members who vote for republicans. Why would you vote for a party that one: hates unions and two: hates workers? Why do some males, because they’re really not emotionally developed, drive around in large, raised pick-up trucks with large trump and the American flags waving. Please look up the American flag etiquette because there is one and you’re violating it. And, why do you feel the need to rev your diesel engines like some obnoxious middle schooler? What’s with morbidly obese males carrying lots of guns like they could actually operate the weapons if in a stressful fight or flight situation. Playing Army with your friends is not the same thing as being in an actual gunfight so stop trying to intimidate people by wearing every gun you own. All you’re doing is showing the world you’re a gullible trump supporting low IQ uneducated wannabe. These are the o...

Labor unions need to recruit fighters, and educate them about union history. We don’t just need more membership, we need educated fighters who understand how politics work, how politicians and corporate media manipulate what the working people are told. They need to understand the GOP and the Democratic parties and who supports these politicians and who donates money to them. The Art of War says you must understand your enemy as well as yourself in order to win any fight against that enemy. This is the time for union members to think critical thinking skills, to examine what they are told and to critique systems of power, culture and political assumptions; to ask the broader questions of meaning and morality once sustained by the humanities. The unions formerly concentrated on the class struggle, and in those days unions filled its leadership with people who sought broad social and political changes and rights for the working class, but now these positions have been transformed into n...

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...

For the universal basic income (UBI) to work it must be for all—the very poor to the very rich and those in-between. If the rich do not want the UBI, they can opt out and used elsewhere. If all received UBI, no group of people can be named or vilified for taking the money. The unions should want a UBI because if there were a UBI, unions could focus on work place safety, training, productivity, healthcare and pensions. The unions would no longer be vilified for wanting higher wages than the nonunion workers. The unions need to get behind the UBI as part of their strategy for the future and their survival. Union employees could possibly start their own business like I did when I received the GI Bill money to go to school. The GI Bill provided enough for me to go to school, buy groceries while working for a sheet metal union job during the day. The people who are going to fight against a UBI would like to divide workers, unemployed, rich, race, poor, gender, lifestyle, union and nonun...

Where is the outrage? Why are the old Fox television viewers not outraged over the gas prices, which are now more than $3.99 and higher a gallon? Food is also escalating in prices, as are the cost of heating and cooling our homes and businesses. Most of the Fox watchers are Social Security pensioners with limited income, which, thanks to Ronald Reagan, is taxed—again. Even with Medicare, most have to drive to the doctor’s appointment and gas at $3.99 a gallon, leaves less in the food and housing budget. All you hear from these old people is crickets about why this is happening. Think back to when President Obama was in office and how loud they screamed about gas prices and how he wore a tan suit—all because they were spoon fed outrage from Fox entertainment news. How are these people paying the difference in these rate increases? Is it by credit cards, skimping on their medications, applying for other government assistance programs, like Meals on Wheels, relying on family members or ...

When Trump said he was going to make America great again, he was referring to his own bank account not yours. While he and his grifter family members are making millions at our expense, the 90 percent of us are circling the drain. What a lot of Trump’s supporters don’t understand, is that at the behest of the GOP, he is deliberately putting people in top positions to run our programs into the ground to bankrupt the country so we can no longer afford the programs President Franklin D. Roosevelt put into place that dragged us out of the Great Depression in the 1930s. The greed of Trump and the rich knows no bounds, and they are eating their seed corn by attacking unions and minimum wage. For those not familiar with this old saying, it simply means that every seed you sow has the potential to either be eaten right then or planted for next year's crop. As a farmer, you must ensure you have enough seed corn to replant your fields, but if you eat your seed corn, you’ve got nothing to pl...

Now is time for all unions, AFL-CIO, to step up and put their differences aside just like former president of the United Automobile Workers (UAW) and the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) Walter Reuther dreamed of. It’s time for unions to do something bold, like Medicare for all and free education. Unions were the leaders in all these areas, consider child labor laws, free speech laws, pensions, and unemployment benefits when people were out of work; and the Social Security we have today. All of these things will go away if we do not come together and fight. At this time, it is workers’ unions against the corporations and the very, very rich, who would like to break our unions and even take away the minimum wage. We even know what their play book is on how the GOP is going to do this. The tax breaks Trump gave the rich has put us into debt is step one, step two is Trump and the GOP spends as much money as they can on the military complex, making many of the rich even richer...

The question is do we want war and low wages and no pension, no healthcare and high debt or do we want safe and well-built infrastructure and less inequality? The workers are now fighting over things that take the attention off of what the workers really need and the GOP cult is very good at distraction and they own or have control of most of the media. They control most of the think tanks whose jobs are to crank out anti-union, anti-worker propaganda daily, which are talking and print points. There is only the unions who can counter this, but we have been splintered by the anti-union propaganda. Our unions, the AFL, which are mainly building trades, and the CIO, which are mainly some types of government unions, need to put their petty differences aside and work together. All unions need to organize all the workers from blue collar to white. To show the power all workers have they need to just not show up for one day and then start making demands for better worker rights. This show ...

Most of us know what we don’t like or see as wrong, but what we lack is leaders with a vision on how to fix or support new policies. So far, only the Bern man has the whole platform consisting of climate change, wage inequity, universal  healthcare, fair pensions, Social Security, union support, free education, fixing inequality, housing for all, fixing the damage caused by the Trump administration and many concerns. Adding to this list should be a universal basic income for all; state banks in the states that want them; legalization of drugs with addiction treatment instead of prisons; end the private prison industry; fix the immigration mess; implement a legislation mandating corporations pay for the use of our Commons; reform and reinvest in our public education and allow parents to pay for private or charter schools if they want their children to attend such schools; cut defense spending and use that money toward infrastructure improvement to create employment opportunities for ou...

The class divide is creating a class warfare that is pitting your children against the rich children, who will have more money, better healthcare, education, food, housing, entertainment, vacations and finding a rich, well-educated mate than their poorer cohorts. If the rich should run afoul of the law, they can hire the best attorneys and not have to rely on court appointed attorneys. HBO had a documentary by Marc Levin called “Class Divide” which looked at this phenomenon with the perfect example — 10th Avenue and 26th Street — which showed an elite school, called Avenues, on one side of the street, and on the other side was the public housing development, Chelsea-Elliot Houses, home to 2,500 people, most from the working poor. Now, the “Used to be Middle Class” children and their families are facing a similar situation as the government looks to cut funding to education, Social Security, Medicare/Medicaid, unemployment, disability insurance, government aide programs, geography and...

So, we let the GOP have a tax bill that gave the very rich at the top billions and us at the bottom very little. The tax gives away to the rich was a win-win for the GOP to pay back their large donors, and now they can say there is no money for safety net programs or returning the money to Social Security that Congress and presidents Lyndon B. Johnson, Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush “borrowed” or used as a piggy bank to fund their bad policies: Johnson and Bush the war, Reagan tax breaks for the wealthy who didn’t need it. They raided the program we paid for, and Medicare/Medicaid. Congress needs to pay the people back and with interest and then keep their hands off our money. The GOP likes to call Social Security and Medicare entitlement spending, but if you check your pay stub you’ll see the deductions for these programs and that we pay taxes on the Social Security as we receive it. The GOP also lie and say that these programs are the root of the worsening federal fiscal problems...