Union Perspectives

If passed, Assembly Bill 257 would give the 725,000 franchise fast food employees real bargaining power. The Service Employees International Union is pushing this bill, which would give unions a foothold into the low wage, no benefits industry where unionization has long been elusive. California has been a proving ground for the unions’ efforts to advocate for low wage, no benefit workers. Los Angeles adopted a $15 an hour minimum wage in 2015, and the state followed suit in 2016. There has been some success as these workers wake up to the fact that they hold the true power in their jobs, without them, the franchise holders have nothing. At Starbucks, the employees are voting on unionizing at more and more stores across the country. The difference is, Starbucks is owned by one corporation that does not have franchises. The Assembly Bill covers franchised workers and gives these employees a direct voice with their employers. does have to answer to the National Labor Relations Board....

The only power the working class has is the power to produce wealth—for someone else. The unions’ purpose is to organize the workers to control the use of their labor so that they will be able to stop the production of wealth except upon terms dictated by the workers themselves. This can be done by just putting their hands in their pockets until their terms are met. It looks like the workers are now seeing that they can have unions and even workers at the big corporations, who pay low wages like Starbucks and Amazon. And the more wins there are the more will come for it’s not uncommon for people to want to be on the winning side. So, who will be next? Will it be Walmart, McDonald’s, or Tesla? There will never be a better time for workers in our life time to make gains for workers. The stars have aligned in the workers favor and we can credit the pandemic, which showed the weaknesses that company owners actually have; and in all adversity there can be opportunities to take advantage of,...

The consequences of losing your county government to anti-government maga people is that, one: they don’t like or want unions in government jobs; they want to control all of the county jobs, such as the elections department, so they can get their hands on your ballots. They want to control the county school boards and the county school superintendent’s office and dedicate what is taught. They also want to control of the Shasta County District Attorney’s office and the Health Department. How can this be done? One way is just by buying the County supervisors with lots of money from outside our county. In Shasta County’s case, it was and is out of state money, which supported a recall of three supervisors, which were all Republicans members, but were not maga trump people. Two of these supervisors were not recalled, but have vowed not to run again and one was recalled, giving the maga supervisors a majority vote of three to two vote to fire the County’s Health Officer, and they will not ...

The dream of Eugene Debs and the rest of the old union warriors fighting for unions are back. The working people have awoken to the Have Nots and Have Littles and are willing to take on the big boys and win by just staying together and using the existing labor laws to their benefit, knowing the old union organizers bleed in their fight to achieve these protections. Six Starbucks stores in New York signed cards to unionize in the last two days and employees at the Amazon warehouse in Staten Island, New York put the first crack in giant’s shield by becoming the first warehouse to unionize. The working people, which some call the working poor, have seen that they can win and who does not want to be on the winning team? All unions need to be supporting each other for a win for one union is a win for all unions. This opportunity results in a life time of changes for the Have Nots and Have Littles. It did for me. Our union leaders at the AFL/CIO should not lose this momentum that we have at...

Union Theological Seminary (UTS), thought to be a progressive institution that promotes racial justice and care for its workers, is being accused to union busting tactics against the security guards, who make $17 an hour living in New York. During the worst part of this pandemic, while other employees were hunkered down in the safety of their homes, the guards were expected to keep working to save the Seminary grounds. However, when the guards contracted Covid-19, the institution did not support them. One guard was hospitalized with his Covid and missed a month of work. He says the institution did not support him in any way, especially financially. The guards get one week of paid vacation, he was in the hospital four weeks. The guards were essential enough to remain on the job, but not essential when they inevitably became sick. Once healed, this guard began organizing his co-workers to unionize. His efforts paid off with a 95 percent return of signed cards, they can now petition to un...

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...

Finally the Building Trades have taken a look back at union history and have seen how union shops have started, which was mostly by union members who wanted to be their own boss. These people already knew what the union was about and knew the trade, and if treated properly, they’d become good union shops. One way to get a union sheet metal shop in their area is for workers to start their own shop. It’s not as hard as it might seem. I started out as a so-call shop boy and then I became a journeyman sheet metal worker. After gaining some experience a friend and I opened our own sheet metal shop. We did stripe malls, custom houses, housing tracts, and multi-story apartments. We were and stayed union and had good union workers. It’s not as complicated as it might seem. The person who hired me as a shop boy was a sheet metal worker and started his shop, True Temp in Ventura County. Then there was a shop started by a worker in Oxnard-Ventura County, and there were four shops started by sh...