Union Perspectives

People who receive Social Security, Medicare, government and union pensions and healthcare now, and the people who hope to receive these same benefits have an opportunity to show the politicians and oligarchies who want to take all of this away, this includes the minimum wage. To send a clear message on Jan. 20 to these greedy individuals, you must hit them where it hurts most—their pocket books. Call in sick from work, don’t spend any money any where, and don’t watch the Donald Trump show otherwise known as an inauguration had he been legitimately elected by the people and not the electoral college. Yo can buy whatever you need the day before and you know the media and social media will be all a buzz about the Trump show the next day so you won’t miss anything. This is a do or die situation we’re in. Trump, the Tweeter in chief, has lined his cabinet with the worst possible people he could find and they are going to rape and pillage this country for their own gain. If you thought G...

A national strike is called for Jan. 20. If successful, this national strike would be the first in our country’s history. In 1908, author Jack London published a multi-layered narrative that showed a vision of the future, which is now a step away from reality with Donald Trump being given the presidency and the people he has selected for his cabinet members. We are not the only ones facing dire circumstances. It is happening all around the world where the plutocratic class is squashing the proletariats, but the proletarians have not figured out the con job that was done to them. Now, the proletarians need to show the plutocrats who has the real power by engaging in a national strike on Jan. 20, which means not working, not spending money, and not watching the inauguration on television. This will not only scare the crap out of the plutocrats, but it will show that we will not stand ideally by while they take our Social Security, Medicare, pensions, voting rights, and the right to ...

Labor, unions, $15 an hour minimum wage, pensions, and safe working conditions are all under attack here in the U.S. and around the world. In the U.S., the Republicans have put out a bill to gut Social Security and raise the retirement age to 69 years old. The anti-worker people are coming for everything President Franklin D. Roosevelt accomplished. They want to destroy Social Security and Medicare. This is what Newt Gingrich, former speaker of the House, told an audience at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank. Donald Trump, who was handed the presidency by the electoral collage, is lining his cabinet with other like-minded people as himself. Trump has recruited corporate individuals that he promised his followers he would banish from Capitol Hill. Trump filled the Secretary of State position with an Exxon Mobil executive; for the head of the Treasury; Trump chose an executive from Goldman Sachs; Secretary of Labor is a fast food executive; he chose an anti-gay person ...

Why do the American people let our policies be determined by think tanks, instead of the people who we elect and pay to make our policies? Just who are the people in the think tanks and who do they represent? Most are conservative who represent the largest defense companies and are now pushing our nuclear weapons and U.S. security policies of strategy. This was being pushed by Michaela Dodge, who works for the Heritage Foundation think tank, but just who in the hell is she? Who is she to be deciding that the U.S. needs more nuclear weapons and to modernize the nukes that we have, and yet we and our elected officials look at the ideology of the think tanks as gospel. Most of the time the think tank participants are just carrying the water for the large corporations that fund the think tanks, which is in the multimillions of dollars. So, do you think we get unbiased and information in which to support or not support their findings? Think tanks should be looked at as no more than a ...

The unintended consequences from the loss of unions here and worldwide--is that the trade unions trained its workers and the workers were getting a living wage healthcare, and a pension--will be felt by all of us. Unions usually trained its members for four to five years and then they were journeymen, who could expect good wages and continued training as needed. At the end of their working careers, workers, who were usually between the ages 52 and 55, had a living-wage pension to live on--now this is threatened on both fronts--union pensions and Social Security. When workers turned 62, they could receive Social Security and Medicare, which they paid into. They would not need much government assistance, in fact, they could be contributors to the social infrastructure as volunteers. But this is in an ideal world. We live in a GOP-anti-union world where the money people made it their dream to destroy the unions, and the union members stood by and allowed it to happen. The state-by-sta...

With the Trump election, we here in the U.S. must brace ourselves for privatization of our security and government services. Also, there will be a huge push in union busting activities and we will see more states pushing right-to-work laws, which will smash unions by reducing union dues. We are seeing this in Australia, Britain, Greece, and Israel. These trends are now driving violations of labor laws, which is responsible for underpaying workers, and now Israel has the highest poverty level among developed nations, and it has the highest level of inequality among children. Privatization is the fastest path to the bottom of the economic ladder. The model set by President Ronald Reagan and Britain’s Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, who both followed the hardline economist and privatization nutcase Milton Friedman, who has been one of the ones who have widened the inequality gap here in the U.S. and the world over. With the Trump election, we will see privatization and wars on ster...

Workers engaged in the “Gig” job should study the playbook of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), also known as the Wobblies. They fought for free speech and one big worldwide union with a cooperative common wealth, which would be free of class and national distinction. The Wobblies were founded in 1905 and are still around today. The Gig workers should consider joining the IWW since most of the Wobblies were part-time workers and travelled the country looking for work. The 9-to-5 jobs that a worker could retire from are just about gone. Four out of 10 Americans now make a living through nontraditional work schedules. There are a large group of freelance, contract, part time, temporary, virtual shared, and patched-together work. All that the workers fought for since the 1880s and the 21st century have been lost and we are now back to a kind of scavenger economy and existence. Forbes magazine predicted that by 2020, 50 percent of the American labor force will work at least p...