Union Perspectives

Wage Slaves Should Have More Control over the Banks --- It is we, the taxpayers, who will have to pony up the cash once again to bail out the banks’ gambling losses. Maybe we should be the ones who are in charge of the banks through our government, the ones who are supposed to represent us proletarians, wage slaves. With the government in control, maybe there would be some money to kick start our economy and get the workers back to work. Having the government in charge of the banks would allow us to keep an eye on what the Wall Street people, mostly bankers, are doing with our money and then maybe they would quit gambling with it. If the government fires the bankers or makes them go back to using their own money when gambling then they might be a little more frugal in their deals or investments. That’s how it used to be and why we haven’t had this kind of a collapse in a long time -- since the 1920s when there were no regulations to enforced. This was called laise-faire capitalism....

Plan A was to organize labor into a nationwide labor union for all working wage slaves. The labor movement went from aggressively organized to playing defense, and we are getting our butts handed to us. Why? Union busting. We have now come full circle. Union busting started in the 1800 by organizations like the Pinkertons, the Baldwin-Felts, and people like James A. Farley and Pearl Bergoff. Called the kings of the strike breakers and they made millions in this line of work; but overtime workers got some relief in laws meant to protect workers like those of the National Labor Relations Board, Wagner Act, Oppressive Labor Act (Senate Bill 1970) by senators Lafollette and Thomas, who were the drivers of this bill. It worked to help labor for a time, then in the mid-1940 things started to go downhill for labor when the new union busters came on scene. People like Charles Vance, owner of International Asset Protection Team, Special Response Corporation, Hoffmaster Associates, and ManPow...

The result was an exhaustion of our troops and the huge loss of our capital and respect. The same results of the Air Traffic Controllers loss. With both of these losses we have embolden the GOP anti-worker bullies, which will now give them ahead start in momentum for the November elections. It’s like giving one runner a 50-yard head start in a 100-yard race and the only way the other runner can win is if the first runner trips and falls down. How are we going to trip up the GOP runner and where are we going to get the troops and money to do battle? I think first we must look at what we have been doing wrong, who do we want to lead us into battle, and what is their strategy to win? There is no doubt that we were suckered into trying to recall Walker, and not sticking to a plan of changing who sits in the Wisconsin state Assembly and Senate. We went for revenge instead of voting out the Republican Assembly and Senate state members. There was some success in the Senate, but labor let th...

Why are the unions finding themselves alone in the fight for survival, and hated by both the oligarchies and the lower class? The reason is that the unions are the only organization standing in the way of total domination of the wage slaves by the 1%. Once unions are completely eliminated, the 1% will own the courts and government for years to come. The low wage workers were left behind in the earning power and resent those of us who have benefitted from union representation. Where is the help for the unions? For sure not the 1%, so what is left? The nonunion workers, who are not usually friendly toward union workers, perceive union workers as part of the 1% because, in their eyes, we union workers receive good wages, pensions, healthcare and paid vacations. We unions must fight for them, the low wage, nonunion slaves, and help float the ship up for all proletarian workers. They, the nonunion low-wage slaves, are the only resource left for the unions. Auto union president Walter Reu...

Wisconsin will be the turning point in which workers will either prosper or decline on the issues of pay, pensions, healthcare, vacations and all the other worker gains over the last 100 years. The GOP and wage slaves are at a crossroads and if the GOP wins then the dominoes will start falling state by state, which will put the workers in the position, the only option, of having to fight in the streets. We have already lost the U.S. Supreme Court, which is where all appealed cases end up, and they will and have already ruled against the workers. The only thing left will be the streets, which will not be good because the GOP/oligarchies will be able to identify the leaders and jail or, like in the 1800s-1930s, just kill them by trumped-up charges or by mob violence. Some of our labor leaders who were eliminated this way were Joe Hill, Big Bill Haywood, Walter Reuther, Eugene Debbs and Martin Luther King Jr., just to name a few. This is the old anti-union playbook and this worked time...

At this time some of labors best victories have occurred outside the protections of the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB). Some labor organizations, like the National Domestic Workers Alliance or workers centers are achieving wins through activism without identifying as union at all. Farm workers have also had success by working, pressuring, and sometimes boycotting. This sounds a lot like the old IWW Wobblies, who would not engage in labor contracts, because like the Service Employees International Union’s contract which ties their hands and prevents them from doing a secondary boycotts. The NLRB, at this time, is a deterrent to labor rather than a help. If the employers have a way to quash an organizing campaign they do not care if they break the NLRB laws because the win versus the imposed fine is no deterrent to the corporations. The NLRB laws need to be rewritten or done away with. Major unions have abandoned government-run elections in favor of comprehensive attack that l...

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...