You need to redefine your priorities when the world changes

I know a lot of the formerly conservative Republicans hated unions. You know that was because they represented big business and they hated unions. Now unions can be a terrible thing. Look at the teacher's union. A bigger bunch of grifters and groomers cannot be found outside of the editorial board of the National Review. But still and all unions can have their place in our nation and we need some of them here and now.

Look when I was a kid my uncles were in the ILA. The International Longshoreman's Union. One of the most mobbed up unions in the country. Yeah they took brides and were really corrupt. But they did protect the rank and file when it counted. When the containers came in they negotiated a contract that protected their membership and set up the badging in system that let most of them live their lives without having to go on welfare. I remember when they went on strike and there were fights with scabs. It was a tough dirty business. But there was safety in numbers and some protection for the working man.

Now they need to do the same thing to Amazon. Those workers are as exploited as any sharecropper or garment worker in a sweatshop. They need a union to hold Bezo's and the globalists feet to the fire. If we hope to become the party of the working class we need to get behind the idea of supporting unions and forcing businesses to make stuff in the USA. The time of getting butt fucked by the Chamber of Commerce and big business is over. Fuck Disney. Fuck Amazon. Fuck Twitter. Fuck Boeing. If they don't want to hire real red blooded Americans and pay them a living wage and let them be free then burn them to the ground. Addition by subraction.

We need to support unions. We just need to get the Mob to run them.

Jobs moving to Mexico

Link to news story.

"Supreme Court appears skeptical of union fees"

Los Angeles Times: The Supreme Court sounded ready Monday to deal a severe blow to public employee unions by striking down laws that require all workers to help pay for collective bargaining.

In its tone and questioning, the argument resembled more of a congressional hearing at which Republicans took one position, Democrats argued the opposite, and there appeared little chance to sway either side....

The court’s conservative majority, which has long voiced skepticism about mandatory union fees, questioned whether such a distinction was relevant.

“Everything that is collectively bargaining is within the political sphere,” Justice Antonin Scalia said.

So the key question, according to Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., is “whether or not individuals can be compelled to support political views that they disagree with.”

Meanwhile, the four Democratic appointees, playing defense, said the court should not upset the 1977 ruling.

California and 22 other mostly “blue” states have union-friendly laws requiring fair-share fees. If the court were to declare them unconstitutional, it would upset “tens of thousands” of contracts, said Justice Elena Kagan, and affect as many 10 million public employees.

Public-sector unions will take a financial hit if the court strikes down the fair-share fees, also known as agency fees. Some public employees might opt to stop paying dues entirely, confident that they will nevertheless receive the benefits of the union’s collective bargaining.

But it is unclear how badly unions will be hurt. The chief justice said he doubted unions were “going to collapse.”

The Kneebone's Connected To The Heartbone

An old family friend passed away suddenly last week of a heart attack: link

I remember Dave well and what he did for me and my family. Dave was the shop steward or chaplain there where my did worked. From the beginning, he was the guy who always made sure that the Printer's Union picnic ran smoothly every summer. The picnic happened every summer at Hoyt Park in Madison and was sponsored by the union and not by the company. Dave was there for the kids and for the grown ups. I remember competing for prizes in the gunny sack races and the eggs spoon races. We thought the prizes were generous. We kids, as we got older and outgrew the games, used to sneak off to explore the old stone quarries and the rickety old Hoyt Park ski jump, now long gone.

Dave mostly hung around the beer keg with the other printers. I stopped going to the picnics around 1976 when I was around sixteen, but my last memory of those picnics was the time I won a bottle of Korbel brandy playing bingo. "You're going to give that to your Dad, right Bruce?"

A year or two later, the newspaper and the union had a big falling out. My dad lost his job prior to the strike and he got a negotiated severance. I have all the paperwork from that time. Dave Kneebone was my dad's advocate. A year or so later, I met Dave again when my father drove me to the picket line in Madison so that I could interview workers for a high school journalism project. It was a freezing cold evening and most of the guys on the picket line wanted to keep moving rather than stop and talk to a pesky kid. But Dave remembered me and I mostly got my answers from him.

We met again briefly during the short-lived run of the Madison Press Connection. I was a volunteer upstairs in the circulation department, while Dave was always doing paste-up somewhere or seeing that the offsite printing was going well. In essence, being a printer.

David Kneebone, R.I.P.

Supreme Court: Unions Can’t Charge Fees to Certain Non-Members

"In a case that threatened the future of public employee unions, the U.S. Supreme Court on Monday ruled so-called agency fees charged to certain non-union members violate those members' First Amendment rights."

The high court stopped short of barring all public employee unions from charging agency fees to non-members. The employees in the case before the court-Illinois homecare workers-were not “full-fledged” public employees, the court said. 

Justice Elena Kagan, joined by justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer and Sonia Sotomayor, dissented. (read more)

The Supremes also ruled in favor of Hooby Looby.

National Review: While Vets Wait, VA Employees Do Union Work

"In 2012, the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs paid at least $11.4 million to 174 nurses, mental-health specialists, therapists, and other health-care professionals who, instead of caring for veterans, worked full-time doing union business."

“So many health-care providers were on that list — nurses or physical therapists or whatever they may be — when so many veterans are falling through the cracks,” a Gingrey aide tells me. “It’s kind of shocking that these paid employees wouldn’t be fully dedicated to patient care.”

In total, the VA spent at least $13.77 million on 251 salaried employees performing full-time union work. Others, who were not included on the list provided by the VA, work part-time for unions at the taxpayer expense. In fiscal year 2011, the latest on record, the VA used 998,483 hours of this “official time,” costing taxpayers more than $42 million.

In Columbia, S.C., the VA pays one health technician a $40,706 salary to work for the American Federation of Government Employees.

At that same location, CNN reported in January, a 44-year-old veteran named Barry Coates was forced to wait a year for a colonoscopy, despite intense pain, constipation, and rectal bleeding. When Coates finally got his appointment, doctors found a tumor the size of a baseball — Stage 4 colorectal cancer that had metastasized elsewhere.

Meanwhile a Fox News Poll found that "by a 50-31 percent margin, voters think enemy combatants held at Guantanamo Bay get better health care than veterans. Nearly one in five is unsure (18 percent)."

"When the French clock off at 6pm, they really mean it"

"Just in case you weren't jealous enough of the French already, what with their effortless style, lovely accents and collective will to calorie control, they have now just made it illegal to work after 6pm."

Well, sort of. Après noticing that the ability of bosses to invade their employees' home lives via smartphone at any heure of the day or night was enabling real work hours to extend further and further beyond the 35-hour week the country famously introduced in 1999, workers' unions have been fighting back. Now employers' federations and unions have signed a new, legally binding labour agreement that will require staff to switch off their phones after 6pm.

Under the deal, which affects a million employees in the technology and consultancy sectors (including the French arms of Google, Facebook, Deloitte and PwC), employees will also have to resist the temptation to look at work-related material on their computers or smartphones – or any other kind of malevolent intrusion into the time they have been nationally mandated to spend on whatever the French call la dolce vita. And companies must ensure that their employees come under no pressure to do so. Thus the spirit of the law – and of France – as well as the letter shall be observed.

the guardian

"Volkswagen Vote is Defeat for Labor in South"

"In a defeat for organized labor in the South, employees at the Volkswagen plant here voted 712 to 626 against joining the United Automobile Workers."

The loss is an especially stinging blow for U.A.W. because Volkswagen did not even oppose the unionization drive. The union’s defeat — in what was one of the most closely watched unionization votes in decades — is expected to slow, perhaps stymie, the union’s long-term plans to organize other auto plants in the South.

Standing outside the Volkswagen plant, Mike Jarvis, a three-year employee who works on the finishing line, said the majority had voted against U.A.W. because they were persuaded the union had hurt Detroit’s automakers.

“Look at what happened to the auto manufacturers in Detroit and how they struggled. They all shared one huge factor: the U.A.W.,” said Mr. Jarvis, who added that he had had bad experiences with other labor unions. “If you look at how the U.A.W’s membership has plunged, that shows they’re doing a lot wrong.”

Mike Burton, a VW worker who led the anti-union drive, said many workers felt that they were paid well and treated well without having a union and thus saw no need to have one. He said many workers objected to the U.A.W. having initially sought unionization based on what it said was having a majority of cards signed favoring a union.

“We don’t need the U.A.W. to give us rights we already have,” he said. “We can already talk to the company if we have any problems.”

This story appeared in the NY Times without a comments section for their readers.