It is down to two things in this country. You are either for the unions or for the corporations.

[Horse with no Name]

At the present time..the corporations own the politicians.

I would certainly support a union-backed party challenge...and all that entails.

They are organized, they are motivated, and they ARE American.

In fact, UNIONS seem to me to be the perfect vehicle to challenge the status quo.

[TransitJohn]

1. A heart felt Kick and Rec.

:kick: :patriot:

[Rochester]

2. Solidarity Forever!

[Bozita]

25. Steal this graphic ...

[dkf]

3. Unions have let their membership sink into oblivion.

It always puzzles me why they spend so much on politics instead of organizing.

[Horse with no Name]

Reagan busted the unions.

NAFTA.

War on immigrants.

Corporate bullying.

Lots of reasons that unions have been failing.

[Enthusiast]

28. You have completely lost your mind.........nt

[TxVietVet]

32. They do both at the same time. Get involved. Get organized.

If you work in the system, you can see what's going on. Don't believe all the negative you hear. It's usually either conservanazi lies or sour grapes.

[socialist_n_TN]

4. I agree. Trumpka where are you?

It's time for a Progressive Workers Party. Endorse Dems where appropriate, otherwise go after them.

[Modern_Matthew]

5. I'm for complete public control over all production, with strong central planning...

Like the Soviet's 5-year plan.

[readmoreoften]

21. I suspect youre a troll, but just in case... public ownership of the means of production is good.

5 year plans are stupid. You have to look at the material conditions on the ground which are constantly changing as the output of production changes. Strong workplace democracy and workers' self-governance is the best way to assess.

[socialist_n_TN]

23. +1 read.........

or more! :)

[mmonk]

6. They are one of an abandoned coalition that once made the party great.

We need to find another coalition. Lets put unions and civil rights groups back together and pull in the environmental movement. The corporations and their poison pill in the party have us and the American public on the ropes. It may be our only chance.

[Horse with no Name]

7. I like that! n/t

[Octafish]

8. Union.

As President Roosevelt pointed out, unions are Democratic.

[applegrove]

9. The country should be for both corporations (regulated properly) and unions.

Both corporate law and union law allow a group of people to get together and approach a market with their services so they can get a good deal and be more upwardly mobile than pure capitalism would allow. Unions are upwardly mobile for the working class. Corporations allow upward mobility for the middle class, the rich and people with good ideas. The problem is that nobody is punishing corporations when they try and undo democracy. That has to stop. The corporations need to be reregulated.

Saying it is either corporations or unions splits the vote when the democrats have traditionally only won with a big tent. Of course the GOP would love for this division to come to pass. Of course they want democrats to have a much smaller tent. Don't play into their hands.

[Horse with no Name]

11. This is a problem.

I would estimate 50% of the people in "our" party are republicans. 100% of the people in their party are republicans.

We are being completely manipulated and our message is being diluted. Even when WE have a majority, we don't. The republicans in our party have assured this.

That has to change.

This country is fucked for my generation. I accept this.

The best I can do is work towards a party that has integrity and honor and strength enough to stand up against these fuckers so that perhaps my grandchildren won't be being sold to rich people for playthings.

[applegrove]

15. The middle class saves as much as possible. A lot of those savings go into 401Ks. That is stocks in

corporations. If you want to alienate the middle class go ahead and be for the demise of corporations. You'll end up with much less than a minority. You'll be a fringe party. We need to be for reregulation of corporations. Don't alienate the middle class. Unions need to be for the middle class too. They also need to be for world trade. Right now they isolate themselves from all the unions in the less developed nations. All the economists there like that world trade has gotten countries like India, Ghana, etc. out of the lowest group of less developed nations.

[U4ikLefty]

40. READ THE ABOVE POST

Herein lies the problem with the party.

Divide & conquer.

[U4ikLefty]

41. dupe

[readmoreoften]

19. +1

[readmoreoften]

20. There is no such thing as "properly regulating corporations". Neoliberalism has destroyed all

Possibility of regulation. #2 Bosses need workers. Workers don't need bosses. There is nothing they have that we need other than the profit they took from the product we made. Their investments are just last year's stolen wages. (The greatest amount being stolen from small Chinese girls)

[JDPriestly]

10. Good idea. We should have a union-backed candidate.

That's for sure.

[Name removed]

12. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[madrchsod]

13. yup...give no quarter because they give us none

[Odin2005]

14. ORGANIZE!!!

[Leonardo Da Biker]

16. I've worked in union shops

and "merit" shops. When I worked in unions, UAW, Steelworker's, OCAW, I always felt I had a stake in my future. When bad stuff happened I always knew I wasn't alone.
When I worked in "merit" shops I always felt, AND WAS CONSTANTLY REMIONDED BY THOSE COMPANIES that I was a lone individual who was expendable at the drop of a hat. And that proved true, both ways.
Now we've got these "temp" agencies running everything. Really it's not them, it's the corprate lobbyists that got them in. They are vehemently anti union. Any company can just drop any temp at any time with a simple phone call. "Don't come in today, you're done, we have no work for you".
NO RECOURSE, YOU'RE F***ED, That's all there is to it. Gone. No legal standing to do anything about it, even less under the temp agencies than a non union worker under regular stae labor laws.

[saras]

17. You're either for life on this planet or you're for corporations.

[readmoreoften]

18. Amen! But the unions have to stop giving workers' money to the politicians.

We need to stop lobbying and start fighting.

[Leonardo Da Biker]

22. Great resposes

and I agree, organizing is key. However I can't do that. I've been employed in my current job for more than three years now as a temp. I am just grateful to be working at all. Obviously the company has no intentions of ever hiring us all on permanently. As temps we can't organize because we don't work for the plant we are "assigned to", we work for a separate company, the temp agency. Every so often we get laid off when the company claims work is slow. We know better. The production schedule comes down quarterly from the main office (a large food plant, household name) to the various managers in the different depts, actually different companies. All under one big roof, five separate companies. They know exactly how much work there is and we produce food products that are constantly in demand, not like toys that have a boom and bust cycle. Their "lack of work" claim is preposterous. They've got it all devided up, production, warehousing, shipping. Firewalls I guess. None are union. The warehouse guys tried to go Teamsters but didn't make the cut. That played out for a year and over that time, one by one so may of them got fired for being late or other stuff. These of cuorse were the pro union guys the company had pegged as "yes" votes. In the end the company won out and after they finally had the vote and it was over with they cleaned house completely. All the current warehouse guys are new and the old crew is entirely replaced.
We temps get laid off periodically. I think it is because of labor laws but I'm not sure. As temps I think they would have to hire us on permanently after a certain amount of time so when that gets close they just dump us all and stop production for awhile. The worst was 7 weekd laid off year before last going into Christmas. The kids had a pretty damn skinny Christmas that year. I think they did that for two reasons, the temp thing and the annual state tax audit. They stopped production and let the warehouse stocks dwindle to near zero so they would have very little inventory on hand for the audit and pay less taxes. Then we got called back and were worked in hyper mode to fill the warehouse again but no overtime. Never any overtime. After a lay off we all get called back to work, probably under a brand new contract between the company and the temp agency with the counter set back to zero again. Where the hell are the unions? Why don't they fight this at the state level?
I would love to get a better job but the problem is if you want to work here in New York you pretty much have to take a temp job. All of the companies around here have gone temp. Nobody hires directly off the street anymore. I'm too old to work construction anymore but inthis economy there isn't much building going on anyway and I don't want to weld anymore either for the health risks. No welding jobs to be had anyway. Not limited to industrial jobs either, its everything, the whole range of employment, all temp to hire but many like me and my co workers just stay temps forever. I am making the same wages now as almost back to day one with these people more than three years ago. It went up 50 cents after I got 6 months in.

[Bozita]

24. Good stuff, Leonardo!

Thanks for the posts.

[SidDithers]

26. You're either with us or agin' us...nt

Sid

[TheKentuckian]

34. Yup, what side are you on, boy? What side are you on?

[w8liftinglady]

27. solidarity!

My partner belongs to AFT, his BIL and sister belong to AFSCME.His next door neighbors are both retired Teamsters.there's a reason they are all able to own homes...it's called UNION WAGES AND BENEFITS!
They are a dwindling breed here in Texas.

[mrs_p]

29. KnR

from the bottom of my heart

[proud patriot]

30. Shoulder to shoulder brothers and sisters

[in_cog_ni_to]

31. Yep. Instead of the Unions giving all their money to the man who couldn't find his comfortable shoes

to put on and walk with them in their time of need, perhaps they can find a REAL Union supporter candidate. I'll support them. The Unions need to keep their money and use it on people who SUPPORT THEM!

[bhikkhu]

33. One doesn't exist without the other

...so if one wants strong unions, first you have to have sound corporations to employ them.

Its the kind of conundrum that comes up often - support business in a way that allows them a healthy profit and solid employee base and you might be criticized as "pro-business". Support a policy that favors labor and punishes corporations, and you might be lauded as a "friend of labor", even if the result is that there are no jobs. I'm not that smart about the whole thing, but it doesn't seem that the last forty years of policy, whatever policy, has worked out all that well.

Can we agree that strong corporations, good business, good jobs, skilled and productive workers, and healthy unions, should all go together?

[lonestarnot]

35. You are so fucking left!

K & FUCKING R! :bounce: YES!

[Horse with no Name]

38. Thank you!!!!!!!

:D

[Veracious]

36. Unions helped make America a wonderful place.

The master needs the slave, else he is not that master.

[cottonseed]

37. A country run by the Prison Guards Union?

I'm not so sure about that.

[defendandprotect]

39. K/R -- you can be sure soon as you mention it, they'd be trying to co-opt it ....

as Koch Bros. did with the DLC ---

We also have to beware that we don't trust union leadership which would take us

to the same places that the Dem Party and Obama have taken us!!

Everyone needs their BS meters turned waaaaaaaaaaay up !!