Union Perspectives

The biggest fear the GOP and Trump have are Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, financial and climate regulations, and social changes opening the door to people of color. Sanders and Warren will push an anti-corruption and anti-inequality programs and Medicare for All with a $15 an hour minimum wage. They should also be looking at a UBI (universal basic income). Rising the minimum wage to $15 an hour will not stop the inequality, but I UBI would help. The GOP will counter by accusing Sanders and Warren of being scary Democratic Socialists, which Sanders and Warren should wear the title as a badge of honor and point out the obvious—all the socialist-type programs the U.S, already has in place, such as Social Security (which we pay into), Medicare, Medicaid/MediCal, law enforcement, fire and rescue services, and schools. The GOP and its followers will deliberately conflate socialism with communism, which is a misnomer. Communism and socialism may have some similarities, sharing of the cou...

UBI (universal basic income) is gaining traction in the U.S. and worldwide. Support for a UBI is no longer the working person’s dream, but economists and finance writers are now writing in favor of redistributing the wealth in a fair way. Naysayers will always be against a UBI because they’re blabbering the ultra wealthy’s rhetoric, ignoring that a UBI keeps the capitalist system thriving while creating jobs to fill the spending by the people. Capitalism is driven by 76 percent of the majority of people, who actually spend their money instead of hoarding it. Capitalists say because they create something or take risks with other people’s money they should be able to hang onto all of their wealth, but what they fail to admit to is if they didn’t have people’s money to speculate with or the average person didn’t buy their products, they wouldn’t have their wealth. The UBI concept was dubbed “helicopter money” by the GOP financial guru Milton Friedman some 50 years ago when he said putti...

Time to look at what a $3,000 a month universal basic income (UBI) would do. People would still work, maybe go back to school to improve upon their skills, which would make them a better employee, or maybe some would even start their own business. Some would even take a vacation and spend money to supporting the local economy, spend time with their families or volunteer as a firefighter-first responder, kids sports like Little League or Pop Warner teams, or get involved in local politics, like school or water or fire boards. These are just a few of the things people could do if they had a little extra cash from a UBI. At this time, we have 41 million Americans living below the poverty level. This would end poverty and poverty wages. Wages would go up because people would be spending more, which would mean more jobs to replace the products bought. The UBI idea is not new. The concept was started in England’s Tudor period (1485-1603) basically that every person was to receive a guara...

Is today’s I.C.E. Bone Spur Trump’s equivalent to Hitler’s Brownshirts, which was turned into Hitler’s private army of street thugs? Is I.C.E. the old U.S.’ Silvershirts, who can now threaten and intimidate people at will by splitting up families, even taking children from babies to teens from their parents. They have begun to deport people who have been here, living lawful, peaceful lives some for up to thirty years, some who served honorably in the military and others who are legal immigrants and were awaiting citizenship. Yet Trump’s in-laws quest for citizenship was fast tracked while Trump is denying citizenship to others. These I.C.E. people have a vast statutory power, a chilling new directive from the top inside America’s unfolding immigration tragedy. I.C.E. is the fastest growing bureaucracy than any agency in peacetime. The I.C.E. enforcers are Trump’s private army and they love him because these people are among the less educated, have profound inferiority complexes, an...

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 ...

What do the jobs look like today compared to the past? One is very few jobs today will last until retirement. Another is jobs today will probably be lost to automation of some type. All workers should have skills in a profession and a trade of some sort. Most jobs today do not pay enough for one person to support a family, which was not true in 1950s—1980s. It was in the 1980s—the Nixon and Reagan years when unions came under attacked by the anti-union GOP and amped up in the 1990s when the corporate Democrats helped the GOP—in the Clinton years. The work available today is becoming more gig jobs or part-time jobs than full-time work. It’s only part-time jobs coming out of labor centers like the temp agencies, Labor Ready, Adecco or Professional Staffing Solutions. The temp agencies convince company owners that they will save money them by doing all the paperwork connected to employees, and, in return, the company pays the hired workers and the temp agency. If a hired workers gets $1...

The anti-union-right wingers have capitalized on how to vilify any one who stands in their way to get richer and gain more power. In the 1980s, Ronald Reagan succeeded in making liberals feel ashamed of the word “liberal” and fearful of being associated with socialism. When that worked so well, the GOP started vilifying the word “union” in as many ways as unions drive up the costs of construction, that unions are just corporations and all union leaders’ want is your money in the form of dues. This effort worked so well they convinced unsuspecting workers to vote against their own best interests. Today, the workers are starting to see through all the rhetoric of the anti-working establishment. The teachers have started a new trend by winning higher wages and other benefits. Now, there are others feeling like they can win higher wages, such as $15 to $24 an hour. This will, in turn, be a good thing for elections turn outs to put the right people in office who will support workers, worke...