There is little or no doubt in my mind that unions are evil, the socialist manifestation of a step towards totalitarian government based on traditional Marxist principals and a class warfare agenda. What rational and productive individual could sponsor any powerful entity that appears to be malevolently detrimental society. Rewarding seniority over merit. Maintaining the status quo rather than innovate. Demanding work rules which differentiate and divide singular tasks in order to require more unionized workers. To demand ever increasing wages and benefits without a corresponding increase in efficiency and productivity. Unions and their mismanaged pension programs are the proximate cause of huge municipal and state deficits. Unions corrupt the political process and remove “We the People” from the political process.

So, I was struck by the dangerous absurdity of an article titled “6 Ways to Juice Up the Labor Movement.”

6 Ways to Juice Up the Labor Movement

Some of the smartest organizers and thinkers we know give us their suggestions on how to build a reinvigorated, vibrant labor movement.

1. Stephen Lerner, architect of the Justice for Janitors campaign

“It's time to reinvent the strike—the strike as guerrilla warfare,” says Lerner. The strike is the traditional weapon of organized workers, but employers have gotten pretty good at beating those strikes. But in his work with Justice for Janitors, Lerner learned that bosses weren't ready for short, quick strikes. “If you look at the strike as a way to make them pay a price for how they treat you, you do short strikes, in and out strikes,” he notes. “

The second thing Lerner suggests is a re-politicization of bargaining. “We need bargaining not to just be about workers but what's good for the community,” he says, “So that we're bargaining for broader issues, especially in the public sector. So that it's not bargaining for the few, it's bargaining for the many.” Chicago's teachers, he notes, raised the issue of the city divesting from banks that were foreclosing on people. “We need to make it so that people see that when those workers win, we all win, rather than they're negotiating for something we don't have.”

We have seen the deleterious effects of strikes on major industries – where the executives of General Motors would do almost anything to avoid a strike – including accept many of the self-destructive union contracts and work rules which led to the demise as a paragon of capitalism. Now General Motors is a union pension fund with a car company as a funding vehicle (pun intended).

Additionally, we see that unions subvert the capitalist mandate that the corporation’s fiduciary duty is to its shareholders, with community relations being a function of recruiting and retaining good workers. Using corporations as instruments of public policy – as were done with Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and General Motors with their “green electric vehicles that nobody wants” is counterproductive and anti-competitive. Disadvantaging the corporation who now needs to serve multiple and competing masters.

1. Jonathan Westin, executive director, New York Communities for Change, organizer of recent fast food strikes

“We believe that the future of the labor movement is really organizing low wage service sector jobs. These are the jobs we're stuck with, we need to make them livable jobs,” says Westin, whose organization, despite not being a labor union, has been organizing low-wage workers across New York City, from McDonald's and Wendy's to grocery stores and car washes.

Wonderful. Has anyone noticed that teenagers and minorities are among the most unemployed in our nation. Unionizing low wage jobs only raises costs, reduces efficiencies and will result in pricing companies out of the marketplace with continuing pension burdens, healthcare and arcane work rules. McDonald’s is a company engineered for a massive labor turnover, sometimes as high as 200% or more. The system allows the production of a uniform product at an acceptable price. Adding work rules and additional costs is likely to drive business downward until the company becomes General Motors.

1. Ruth Milkman, Professor of Sociology at the CUNY Graduate Center,  Academic Director at the Joseph S. Murphy Institute for Worker Education and Labor Studies

“Don't mourn, organize!” says Milkman, whose research has focused both on the American auto industry and recently, on low-wage immigrant workers.  “Forget the NLRB system,” she continues; that system has become largely dysfunctional for the workers who are covered by it, and for many it's simply not a question—they're not included in its protections, so they have to find other solutions.

“This is the time to rebuild from the bottom up, with a focus on low-wage workers, both immigrants and the U.S. born,” Milkman says.  “Organizing should be based on alliances with community groups, faith leaders, and pro-labor elected officials, drawing on the full spectrum of historical strategies and tactics.”

How many people have noticed that the unions openly accept illegal aliens in the work force. Illegal aliens who dilute the workforce and disadvantage existing union members. It’s like a friend of mine who was complaining that his Hollywood union opened their membership roles to grab $4000 per person and insured that there would be even less work for the members who were already facing work shortages. The union does what they need to do in order to keep membership high and those pension funds rolling in. Few consider union bosses as fat-cat CEOs who are living large. Because mostly they hide their retreats and eschew obvious displays of prosperity.

1. Bill Fletcher Jr., longtime organizer and author most recently of “They're Bankrupting Us” And 20 Other Myths About Unions

“We're living with the consequences of a movement that ceased being an economic justice movement,” Fletcher says. To get back to those roots, he's advocating some serious change and rebuilding for labor.

In Michigan, for instance, Fletcher points out the need for internal as well as external organizing, for really explaining to members what unions are all about, and the nature of an economic justice movement. “We need leadership that truly gets neoliberal globalization,” he notes. From there, he points out, it's important to teach members as well.

Internally, he believes that unions need to re-examine their structure, evaluate positions, committees, and connect them to the overall mission of the union. Externally, too, he calls for a reevaluation of central labor councils and other forms of geographic organization—organizing across a city or metropolitan area. “What these central labor councils allowed us to do was position organizing as an economic development strategy.”

What portion of an employee’s time should be spent on activities that do not benefit the company – internal organizing? “Neoliberal globalization” is just another fancy word pair for international socialism and communism.

Beyond that, he's calling for leadership that is willing to take risks—including knowing when to step down—and to build new alliances. “We need new leadership that understands that alliances are not about hiring the Hessians. This tendency of some unions to believe that alliances with other forces is about funding those groups to do what we want them to do.”

As far as politics, Fletcher says, “The strategy that I've advocated for a number of years is not a go-it-alone labor electoral strategy. It basically is labor playing a role with key community based organizations in developing a platform and organizational form for doing electoral work inside and outside the Democratic party.” It's about organizing politically in neighborhoods and communities where union members are and building leverage that way rather than depending on a party.

This isn’t your parent’s democrat party – it is now been infiltrated by socialists and communists – a clear and present danger to the United States and the American lifestyle. By gaining political support, we see unions destroying America from within – something predicted by the Soviet Union’s leadership and something that was laughed off at the time. Truth-be-told, Joseph McCarthy may have been an odious and obnoxious man, but history has proven him correct. The government has been infiltrated by our enemies and some day they will simply say – look, we’re already here and you work for us.

1. Jane McAlevey, longtime organizer and author of Raising Expectations (And Raising Hell)

McAlevey points out that the entire structure of work has changed over recent years. That means that there are many workers who don't see how unions could work for them, and who have to be reintroduced to the entire concept of unions. “The way that unions can keep any kind of skin in the game is by rethinking their relationship to their own rank and file and rethinking their relationship to their broader community,” she says.

This kind of work can be done, she notes, and must be done—the same way unions put together a Get-Out-The-Vote machine for presidential elections.

Workers should be taught to understand that joining a union is committing financial and social suicide over a longer period of time. There are no union success cases and nobody willingly runs toward a union to help manage their labor force, increase their productivity, reduce their costs and improve their global competitiveness. And we know that “get-out-the-vote” means only for the compromised democrat party.

1. Eric Robertson & Ben Speight, Teamsters Local 728, Georgia

When it comes to organizing under so-called “right to work” laws, Robertson and Speight know all about it. “What Scott Walker tried to do in Wisconsin is our status quo here. In Georgia, there's no recourse. You can literally be told 'I'm firing you for that union button, get out.' There's no board to petition for unfair labor practices. The only ability we have to organize is the discretion of the employer,” Speight says.

“Labor has to think far beyond the confines of what has been permitted for us to organize,” Speight says. “The solutions to labor's challenges now come from a recognition that we can only truly grow at the scale that's needed to bring about balance in our society and economy if we're able to compel owners to drop their weapons.”. That either comes through comprehensive labor law reform that brings in workers traditionally excluded from the protections of the NLRA, or, he notes, through massive action from working people and allies, making it impossible for owners to keep operating their businesses until they deal fairly with workers. It's time for mass action, Speight says. “There's the old saying that you can have collective bargaining at the table or have it in the streets.”

Source: 6 Ways to Juice Up the Labor Movement | Alternet

Each employee has the ability to seek a solution to their grievances with any number of government agencies or private lawyers willing to litigate on their behalf. If a company’s labor practices are truly egregious, there is the media, the court of public opinion and the class action lawsuit.

Compel owners to drop their weapons? Yes, folks it is a war – and the enemy wants to use our government to disarm us. Sounds like the labor version of gun control. Make everyone dependent on the government and the unions until all freedom of choice is gone forever.

Bottom line …

Our nation has been infiltrated by our ideological enemies – the socialists and communists – and the longer they foment dissatisfaction and dissent, the more they are able to divide and conquer. We will no longer be “One Nation Under God, standing for Justice and Liberty for ALL,” we will be serfs on the government’s plantation managed by our union overseers. The democrats and the unions are a clear and present danger to America and our way of life. Wake up people – the truth is before your very eyes.

I wonder if Spike Lee and the members of the Marxist Black Caucus, ever considers that their beloved socialists will actually re-implement slavery affecting the entire nation in modern times?

-- steve

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