Telling our veterans about the Employee Free Choice Act and John McCain’s record

Had to say something, so I was reading through the NY Times article about how the AFL-CIO has launched a Veterans Vs. McCain website and when readin the comments I just had to chime in, from the NY Times, “Union Veterans’ Group Starts Ad Campaign Against McCain“
(7/11/08):

Wow, reading through I can see the paid for posts, yes that’s right, today’s Big Law firm fat cats pay people to post on major news sites spreading bull misinforming people about The Employee Free Choice Act, the one true good piece of legislation that will allow people, that’s right American working people, to decide if they want to be in a union by signing a card. If more than 50% sign they get a union. The current method allows these union avoidance law firms to swoop in and divide and conquer the work force in the interim before the vaunted “secret ballot” election, using any means necessary, whether legal or not, by the time the election is over they deal with the legalities. This is a multi-billion dollar industry. Union avoidance and busting, a bunch of lawyers who spread the misinformation, and terrorize workers in their business see the passage of The Employee Free Choice Act as a tremendous loss to their cash cow, when was the last time you saw a “non-profit” so adamantly oppose legislation under the guise of taking away our democracy, where obviously money is no object, creating and running TV ad’s at will, that takes BIG money, even bigger than the AFL launching this campaign. Don’t let the billion dollar lawyers tell you how to think. They have owned the NLRB for the past 8 years under the guidance of a Bush appointee, Robert Battista, who has thoroughly contracted the power of all workers and given even more power to multi-national corporations who are ruling our world. He has done such a good job that when his appointment as the chairman came up this year, he decided to refuse in order to join one of the biggest union busting law firms in the world, that’s a fact that Main Stream Media doesn’t speak about.

And yes, Mr.McCain, who would make us all pay for our own health insurance with taxed money, and feed us into the hands of the big insurance companies is not the choice for any American worker, union or otherwise.

He also opposed the new GI Bill. I have been writing about the new GI Bill for quite some time and was completely surprised that this maverick veteran, ex-pow, would allow our returning vets to not get the care they needed, to not get funding to higher education, to not get the mental health care they needed. While both Republicans and Democrats supported the GIBILL 2008, McCain threatened cloture, and Bush threatened Veto, until a few weeks ago. This bill will allow our returning veterans a chance to become workers, company owners, supervisors, and modern day heroes, not the Vietnam era bill that flooded our country with homeless returnees. McCain did not want this! Bush did not want this! The military industrial complex did not want this! We the American people wanted this!

As a labor writer, do I staunchly back Obama? absolutely not, I despise the current 2 party system, I despise the fact that MSM censored the candidates I would have easily voted for in favor of the ones they could control through campaign finance. But Obama has a better chance of helping working people here in our country, and is a little less of a world eating profiteer that the reagan/bush/clinton/bush travesty that has lead us to where we are today. Especially if we, as working American’s hold Obama accountable if lected, remember, if you have 1 term in office, you will want another.

We can change the world a bit if Obama is elected, we can not if McCain is.

All of you here are among the Americans who can read independent news on the internet, do it, don’t just read the NY Times(no offense Mr.Greenhouse, I read your stuff, and it has been heading in a much better direction lately), don’t just read USA Today, spread yourself out onto Mother Jones, The Man Common blog, Peoples Weekly World, UTNE Reader, Consumers Union, Corp Watch, the list goes on, see the social interests links on my site. We have many issues, if this country continues on its path of separatism, the powers that be will take it all away from our little satellite groups at a whim.

As far as unions destroying America’s workplace, keep thinking that way.

Did the unions allow our industry to go to Haiti, where the people eat dirt sandwiches and the ones who are lucky enough to work in the former US Made Levi’s factory make about $2 a week, yeah blame the unions for that, or the other place where they make Levi’s, Bangladesh, where even the school teachers and policemen have to wait on thousand people lines to get government subsidized rice because they are paid so poorly, or in Vietnam, home of sneakers that were made her, where workers work 12 hours a day and recently went on strike to make a whopping $62 a month, instead of their current $58.

Yeah, the unions killed American jobs, yep

Open your eyes.

Gotta run, going to attend a function of the Wounded Warriors Project, where my friend, a retired union Steamfitter, who, along with a retired Firefighter, sell shirts and help our severely wounded returning vets do things they wouldn’t think they were capable to do.

Today they are scuba diving, yeah, that’s right, guys and girls with no legs going scuba diving, and union workers help, not because we want to, because in our hearts, just like running down to the trade center site after 9/11, we have to.

Joe
Joe’s Union Review
http://joesunionreview.com

— Posted by JoeUnionReview

Ed Ott, Executive Director of NY Central Labor Council: Lifting the bottom can avert the collapse of the middle class

“Unless we lift the floor, the ceiling is going to collapse,” “Some of the mainstream labor movement is all about fending for yourself as opposed to working together to raise conditions across the board for all workers.” –Bhairavi Desai, executive director of the Taxi Workers Alliance

Patrick Andrade for The New York Times
All union workers’ gains are vulnerable, says Ed Ott of the New York City Central Labor Council.

From “Labor Needs to Improve Conditions for Nonunion Workers, Official Warns” By Steven Greenhouse in the NY Times (excerpt 6/23/08) :

Ed Ott, the executive director of the New York City Central Labor Council, an umbrella group for the city’s labor unions, has an unexpected and unnerving warning for New York’s more than one million union members.

He warns that their wages and living standards will be threatened unless the city’s unions do far more to lift the incomes and living standards of the city’s nonunion working poor, including restaurant workers, supermarket cashiers and taxi drivers.

“Going forward, if we don’t raise the standards for the lowest-paid workers in the city, and there are literally hundreds of thousands of them, our own levels that we achieved — of wages, pensions and time off — they’re not sustainable,” said Mr. Ott, whose group is a federation of 400 union locals. “For a working class that is going to be making minimum wage or slightly above, what’s going to happen is that as taxpayers, that will create a social base for an attack on our own standards.”

Mr. Ott’s remarks, made in a recent speech at City University and in a follow-up interview, were an impassioned plea as well what he said was a “wake-up call” to the city’s labor movement. New York’s union movement has far more members than any other city’s, although it is widely viewed as less aggressive in unionizing and helping low-wage workers than the labor movements in Los Angeles and several other cities.

He said that many low-income workers who receive no paid vacation or sick days were bound to ask why many municipal workers are entitled to 40 days off per year — combining vacation days, personal days and sick days — in their first year on the job.

“There’s a danger that in the eyes of the majority of people we might be seen as too expensive,”

You can read the entire article at the New York Times

The bottom has lowered

I have always said that labor should be working from the bottom up, but at the time it was Burger King and McDonald’s that were the bottom. Labor was ineffectual against the multi-billion dollar anti-union lawyers and campaigns against organizing in that sector. I always felt that if we didn’t start at the bottom, get those into unions and covered with medical(BK, Mickey D’s, etc. routinely keep their employees part timers keeping them at a tier without benefits), actually be able to get a career out if those type of jobs, we would always be at a disadvantage.

The onslaught against the American worker by the employers and corporations, and the total inefficient immigration policies and utter neglect of legal policies of governing bodies that are supposed to stop the illegal emigration into the US have created a new divide between workers in the US. The bottom has fallen further.

Big money rules the governing agencies, and it seems that only when a company who has tolerated, in fact encouraged, the use of illegal immigrant labor, is in fear of a union organizing drive is when ICE pops up at the door, is it a coincidence?

Take a look around, give me an ICE investigator for a day and I can point out many, many workplaces where workers are undocumented. How do i know? I ask. Even in the bagel store I shop in the workers are getting paid $7 an hour for 12 hours work with no overtime pay. Would they want to unionize? Hell, they are getting a lot more than the average warehouse worker in Brooklyn who gets less than $4 an hour for 80+ hours a week, and are in a less dangerous occupation than a cement laborer who is lucky if he makes $10 an hour and is afraid to speak up on safety issues.

Middle class tolerates investing against it’s own interests

Remember when these employers do not provide the simplest necessities, such as workers compensation insurance, and the employee is told to go to the emergency room and say it happened on the soccer field, the burden of payment winds up directly on the tax payer. This is just one case in point.

The bottom line is that the legitimate working class are directly subsidizing the employers legally bound responsibilities, while creating a tremendous wedge between workers on both sides of the equation.

So how bad is it going to get?

If we don’t act, it can get worse, in fact the writings on the wall, theres bills and laws sprouting up across the country that are making the slave class a legal entity.

Did you know that in Kansas, there is a bill that has been passed before its Senate that will exclude punishment for the employers of undocumented workers, but would fine a union who lets the worker into it’s ranks. You got that? They do not blame the employers, they want to stop anyone from helping the workers.

Of course it took the vote of 19 Republicans in Kansas to pass the bill, you can read the entire article here entitled “KS: State passes bill that will encourage more illegal immigration and punishes unions who try to help the workers“(4/20/08):

This is a new low for the Kansas Senate. A majority of them are happy to turn a blind eye to the hiring of illegal aliens and will use immigration reform to bust unions.

So here is the scenario:

• An employer, knowing that he will not be punished for hiring an illegal, puts the illegal alien to work side by side with unionized American workers.
• The union, believing that the employer would not hire illegal aliens (that is illegal, you know), signs the employee up as a member of the union.
• The union is now subject to criminal action and fines even though the union has no ability to verify the legal status of a worker

How much longer before this type of law spreads into your state?

The bought off politicians are speaking drivel about border fences and absolutely doing nothing in reality about it, creating a wedge issue for the upcoming election, while the last 8 years has proven that the current administration has encouraged the slave class here in the United States.

Over 140 years after the Emancipation Proclamation, and 40 years after the death of Martin Luther King, there is more slavery in the United States than ever before, whether it be working without absolutely no rights, visa and legal immigration systems that deny employees a voice, credit debt that you shouldn’t have been issued in the first place or the indentured servitude that usually flies under the radar.

Remember the surest form of conquest is divide and conquer, and multi-national corporations which control the main-stream media help to further the agenda. Human nature, fear and ignorance add to it.

Ed Ott says what he means, and acts on it. How many of you out there are going to try and change the world? How many of you are going to stand up on your feet and fight before you will be dragged down to the bottom and live on your knees?

Turn off the TV and open your mind

“By means of shrewd lies, unremittingly repeated, it is possible to make people believe that heaven is hell – and hell heaven. The greater the lie, the more readily it will be believed.” – Adolph Hitler

“If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State.” – Joseph Goebbels, Hitlers propagandist