REALITY: JOE BIDEN IS, AND HAS ALWAYS BEEN, A BRIBES SUCKING CLOSET REPUBLICAN!
JOE BIDEN'S MASSIVE INVASION OF AMERICA BY 'CHEAP' LABOR ILLEGALS IS NOT BECAUSE HE CARES ABOUT THE POOR MEXICANS, IT IS TO KEEP WAGES DEPRESSED.
In the American working class, life is increasingly
defined by intense and unrestrained exploitation by
corporate employers whose profits soar as wages fall
and families struggle more and more to keep up with
inflation and the rising cost of living. Wages for
workers who belong to a union increased in 2021 by
far less (3.3 percent) than both the rate of inflation
(officially 9 percent) and the increase for non-union
workers (5.3 percent).
“Protect and enrich.” This is a perfect encapsulation of the Clinton Foundation and the Obama book and television deals. Then there is the Biden family corruption, followed closely behind by similar abuses of power and office by the Warren and Sanders families, as Peter Schweizer described in his recent book “Profiles in Corruption.” These names just scratch the surface of government corruption.
Even before his election, Biden pledged to be the “most pro-union president in American history.” He was always speaking to two audiences. On the one hand, he wanted to lead workers to believe that his administration would be partial to their interests. This rested on the false premise that the trade union apparatus, controlled by well heeled bureaucracies sitting on tens of billions of dollars in assets and functioning as little more than an industrial police, represents workers’ interests, even in a limited fashion. But to the trade union bureaucracy, this was a signal that he wanted to close ranks with them in order to suppress what has become, after two years of social catastrophe unleashed by the pandemic and its political consequences, the explosive growth of social opposition.
Biden is consciously pursuing a policy of corporatism, that is, the integration of the union apparatus into management and the state. In one critical industry after another, from the West Coast docks to the refinery industry to the railroads, Biden is working with the trade union bureaucracy to block strikes, force workers to work without contracts, or enforce new contracts far below the rate of inflation. Meanwhile, Biden allows profiteering without limit, fueling runaway price increases. This is to say nothing of the handling of the coronavirus pandemic, in which they have allowed more than 1 million Americans to die for the good of the “economy.”
Arizona AG warns BlackRock to halt potential collusion
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lg8fYnDOvYs
The Biden White House caters to the rich just as Obama's did
By Jack Hellner
BlackRock has $10 trillion under management and holds great power with Biden's White House. It is a big pusher of the green agenda. The green agenda is destroying America with rampant inflation, especially the poor, the middle class, and small businesses, but BlackRock has done great.
Presidential Emergency Board ruling on railroads: The Biden administration declares war on the working class
Tuesday’s Presidential Emergency Board ruling against railroad workers is a declaration of war against the working class by the Biden administration.
Railroad workers have been without a contract for nearly three years. The White House-appointed board recommended a new deal that would keep wages below inflation, remove of a cap on individual health care contributions and uphold the unilateral control by management of attendance policies.
The ruling has prompted a furious response from railroad workers, who have been pushed to the brink by brutal working schedules and wage stagnation. Unbearable conditions have driven roughly 20 percent of the workforce out of the Class I railroads since 2019, cutting expenses and driving up profit margins for the railroads, already the most profitable industry in the country.
To the provocative statement made by railroad management to the PEB that workers should have “no claim in the share in the [profits],” because record profits do not come from labor, workers have responded appropriately: That therefore management can have no objection to workers striking in defense of their interests, since corporate profits would, according to their ridiculous theory, continue unimpeded.
The ruling is an object lesson in the class character of the state, the Democratic Party and behind them, the pro-corporate trade unions.
The rail unions had campaigned for the appointment of a PEB for months, claiming to workers that Biden would intervene as a neutral arbiter to resolve the dispute, and that “national interests” might even compel him to rule in workers’ favor. Instead, Biden’s PEB sided with the companies on virtually every point.
For nearly two days, the unions kept a guilty silence about the report. Thursday afternoon, SMART-TD finally issued a dishonest statement proclaiming its “disappointment” in the PEB and that it “shared” workers’ “frustration.” This is absurd. Whatever their lying claims to workers, the unions executives cannot be surprised by the outcome, because this PEB has not acted any differently than any others in the past. Indeed, the chair of the board was the same as the one that intervened in the national rail contract in 2011, after which the unions also had feigned “disappointment.”
At the same time, SMART-TD’s statement repeated lying talking points from management that the 22 percent wage increase over five years, roughly half the rate of current inflation, is the largest pay hike in decades. The aim of this statement is to shield the union executives from responsibility while they work to ram through a sellout along the lines proposed by the board.
Nearly two centuries ago in the Communist Manifesto, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels defined the state, not as a neutral body standing above society, but as a political instrument of class domination, “a committee for managing the common affairs of the whole bourgeoisie.” Tuesday’s ruling provides fresh proof that few “managing committees” in the world are as ruthless in the pursuit of the interests of the corporate oligarchy than the one that sits in Washington, D.C.
The president’s power to appoint a PEB is provided under the Railway Labor Act (RLA), which effectively bans strikes on the railroads by smothering workers with never-ending injunctions, mandatory mediation and “cooling off periods.” Since it was passed in 1926, 17 successive administrations over 96 years, both Democratic and Republican, have left the law intact and regularly used its provisions against railroaders.
The law itself was a direct response to the powerful railroad strikes that took place in the half-century that preceded its adoption. Congress was not only concerned with corralling the immense economic power of railroad workers but, in the decade following the Russian Revolution, with suppressing a center of labor radicalism in the United States.
Many of the earlier strikes, including the Great Railway Strike of 1877 and the Pullman Strike of 1894, were led by socialists. Railroad worker and Pullman Strike leader Eugene Debs first encountered the writings of Marx in prison following the government suppression of the strike; he went on to become the most popular socialist orator and political leader of his day.
The PEB ruling is intimately connected to the reckless military provocations by American imperialism against Russia and China. The same week as the PEB report was issued, massive explosions rocked the Russian-claimed territory of Crimea, the product of Ukrainian operations that undoubtedly involved substantial US technical assistance.
The day after the ruling, Washington announced it was opening trade negotiations with Taiwan, which China regards as a rebel province and has said it would go to war over to prevent formal independence. In a desperate bid to shore up its world hegemony against its rivals, the American ruling class is barreling recklessly towards World War III.
No imperialist power can wage war abroad without also waging war against the working class at home. In the lead-up to every major war in modern history, the first priority of war planners has always been to secure the “home front,” blocking strikes and enforcing labor discipline.
In this, the trade union officials, based on class compromise and collaboration, are lining up with “their own” ruling class in the name of “national unity.” As Leon Trotsky once observed, “In time of war or revolution, when the bourgeoisie is plunged into exceptional difficulties, trade union leaders usually become bourgeois ministers.”
Even before his election, Biden pledged to be the “most pro-union president in American history.” He was always speaking to two audiences. On the one hand, he wanted to lead workers to believe that his administration would be partial to their interests. This rested on the false premise that the trade union apparatus, controlled by well heeled bureaucracies sitting on tens of billions of dollars in assets and functioning as little more than an industrial police, represents workers’ interests, even in a limited fashion. But to the trade union bureaucracy, this was a signal that he wanted to close ranks with them in order to suppress what has become, after two years of social catastrophe unleashed by the pandemic and its political consequences, the explosive growth of social opposition.
Biden is consciously pursuing a policy of corporatism, that is, the integration of the union apparatus into management and the state. In one critical industry after another, from the West Coast docks to the refinery industry to the railroads, Biden is working with the trade union bureaucracy to block strikes, force workers to work without contracts, or enforce new contracts far below the rate of inflation. Meanwhile, Biden allows profiteering without limit, fueling runaway price increases. This is to say nothing of the handling of the coronavirus pandemic, in which they have allowed more than 1 million Americans to die for the good of the “economy.”
The more the ruling class rushes headlong into war to defend its interests, the more it is compelled to push the American working class to the limit, and vice versa. American workers must be made to “sacrifice” for conflicts that they have had no input in, do not understand, and would not support if they did. Meanwhile, the pent-up social anger must be redirected outward to officially designated foreign adversaries, accelerating the drive to war.
A colossal showdown is being prepared, not only in the railroad industry but around the country. Support for strike action, regardless of what the RLA or the White House says, is overwhelming. Workers feel they no longer have any other choice.
If, as seems likely at this point, workers vote down the contract proposed by the PEB, then only Congress, for now controlled by the Democrats, can intervene to prevent a strike from taking place. This would occur right before the midterm elections, setting the stage for an escalating political crisis in which the class struggle explodes into the foreground.
This movement is emerging, even in its initial stages, as a global force. There have been massive struggles around the world by workers in critical freight infrastructure, including the nationwide strikes by British rail workers and impending strikes on the British docks, dockworker strikes which have already taken place in Germany and Greece, strikes by airline workers at Ryanair, strikes by truckers in South Korea and massive protests in Sri Lanka over the cost of living, which forced the president to flee the country.
This enormous potential power must find an independent outlet. Workers must find the means to break out of the straitjackets of the Democratic Party, anti-labor laws such as the RLA and the union bureaucracy. In the first instance, this means the formation of new organizations, rank-and-file committees, mobilizing workers independently.
A central element in this is the campaign by Will Lehman for United Auto Workers president, on a platform of the abolition of the corrupt bureaucracy and the establishment of workers’ power. In a statement published on Wednesday, Lehman called for workers in the UAW, throughout the US and internationally to support the struggle of rail workers, and for rail workers to establish their own organizations as part of the International Workers Alliance of Rank-and-File Committees.
But above all, workers must recognize that they are locked in a life-and-death political struggle. The question is far more than workers getting their “fair share.” Who makes these decisions? Who runs society? The capitalist profit interest is incompatible not only with the needs of a modern society, but even maintaining human life and dignity. In its place, workers must fight for socialism, the democratic organization of society by the working class itself, in the interests of human need and not private gain.
Tuesday’s Presidential Emergency Board ruling against railroad workers is a declaration of war against the working class by the Biden administration.
Railroad workers have been without a contract for nearly three years. The White House-appointed board recommended a new deal that would keep wages below inflation, remove of a cap on individual health care contributions and uphold the unilateral control by management of attendance policies.
The ruling has prompted a furious response from railroad workers, who have been pushed to the brink by brutal working schedules and wage stagnation. Unbearable conditions have driven roughly 20 percent of the workforce out of the Class I railroads since 2019, cutting expenses and driving up profit margins for the railroads, already the most profitable industry in the country.
To the provocative statement made by railroad management to the PEB that workers should have “no claim in the share in the [profits],” because record profits do not come from labor, workers have responded appropriately: That therefore management can have no objection to workers striking in defense of their interests, since corporate profits would, according to their ridiculous theory, continue unimpeded.
The ruling is an object lesson in the class character of the state, the Democratic Party and behind them, the pro-corporate trade unions.
The rail unions had campaigned for the appointment of a PEB for months, claiming to workers that Biden would intervene as a neutral arbiter to resolve the dispute, and that “national interests” might even compel him to rule in workers’ favor. Instead, Biden’s PEB sided with the companies on virtually every point.
For nearly two days, the unions kept a guilty silence about the report. Thursday afternoon, SMART-TD finally issued a dishonest statement proclaiming its “disappointment” in the PEB and that it “shared” workers’ “frustration.” This is absurd. Whatever their lying claims to workers, the unions executives cannot be surprised by the outcome, because this PEB has not acted any differently than any others in the past. Indeed, the chair of the board was the same as the one that intervened in the national rail contract in 2011, after which the unions also had feigned “disappointment.”
At the same time, SMART-TD’s statement repeated lying talking points from management that the 22 percent wage increase over five years, roughly half the rate of current inflation, is the largest pay hike in decades. The aim of this statement is to shield the union executives from responsibility while they work to ram through a sellout along the lines proposed by the board.
Nearly two centuries ago in the Communist Manifesto, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels defined the state, not as a neutral body standing above society, but as a political instrument of class domination, “a committee for managing the common affairs of the whole bourgeoisie.” Tuesday’s ruling provides fresh proof that few “managing committees” in the world are as ruthless in the pursuit of the interests of the corporate oligarchy than the one that sits in Washington, D.C.
The president’s power to appoint a PEB is provided under the Railway Labor Act (RLA), which effectively bans strikes on the railroads by smothering workers with never-ending injunctions, mandatory mediation and “cooling off periods.” Since it was passed in 1926, 17 successive administrations over 96 years, both Democratic and Republican, have left the law intact and regularly used its provisions against railroaders.
The law itself was a direct response to the powerful railroad strikes that took place in the half-century that preceded its adoption. Congress was not only concerned with corralling the immense economic power of railroad workers but, in the decade following the Russian Revolution, with suppressing a center of labor radicalism in the United States.
Many of the earlier strikes, including the Great Railway Strike of 1877 and the Pullman Strike of 1894, were led by socialists. Railroad worker and Pullman Strike leader Eugene Debs first encountered the writings of Marx in prison following the government suppression of the strike; he went on to become the most popular socialist orator and political leader of his day.
The PEB ruling is intimately connected to the reckless military provocations by American imperialism against Russia and China. The same week as the PEB report was issued, massive explosions rocked the Russian-claimed territory of Crimea, the product of Ukrainian operations that undoubtedly involved substantial US technical assistance.
The day after the ruling, Washington announced it was opening trade negotiations with Taiwan, which China regards as a rebel province and has said it would go to war over to prevent formal independence. In a desperate bid to shore up its world hegemony against its rivals, the American ruling class is barreling recklessly towards World War III.
No imperialist power can wage war abroad without also waging war against the working class at home. In the lead-up to every major war in modern history, the first priority of war planners has always been to secure the “home front,” blocking strikes and enforcing labor discipline.
In this, the trade union officials, based on class compromise and collaboration, are lining up with “their own” ruling class in the name of “national unity.” As Leon Trotsky once observed, “In time of war or revolution, when the bourgeoisie is plunged into exceptional difficulties, trade union leaders usually become bourgeois ministers.”
Even before his election, Biden pledged to be the “most pro-union president in American history.” He was always speaking to two audiences. On the one hand, he wanted to lead workers to believe that his administration would be partial to their interests. This rested on the false premise that the trade union apparatus, controlled by well heeled bureaucracies sitting on tens of billions of dollars in assets and functioning as little more than an industrial police, represents workers’ interests, even in a limited fashion. But to the trade union bureaucracy, this was a signal that he wanted to close ranks with them in order to suppress what has become, after two years of social catastrophe unleashed by the pandemic and its political consequences, the explosive growth of social opposition.
Biden is consciously pursuing a policy of corporatism, that is, the integration of the union apparatus into management and the state. In one critical industry after another, from the West Coast docks to the refinery industry to the railroads, Biden is working with the trade union bureaucracy to block strikes, force workers to work without contracts, or enforce new contracts far below the rate of inflation. Meanwhile, Biden allows profiteering without limit, fueling runaway price increases. This is to say nothing of the handling of the coronavirus pandemic, in which they have allowed more than 1 million Americans to die for the good of the “economy.”
The more the ruling class rushes headlong into war to defend its interests, the more it is compelled to push the American working class to the limit, and vice versa. American workers must be made to “sacrifice” for conflicts that they have had no input in, do not understand, and would not support if they did. Meanwhile, the pent-up social anger must be redirected outward to officially designated foreign adversaries, accelerating the drive to war.
A colossal showdown is being prepared, not only in the railroad industry but around the country. Support for strike action, regardless of what the RLA or the White House says, is overwhelming. Workers feel they no longer have any other choice.
If, as seems likely at this point, workers vote down the contract proposed by the PEB, then only Congress, for now controlled by the Democrats, can intervene to prevent a strike from taking place. This would occur right before the midterm elections, setting the stage for an escalating political crisis in which the class struggle explodes into the foreground.
This movement is emerging, even in its initial stages, as a global force. There have been massive struggles around the world by workers in critical freight infrastructure, including the nationwide strikes by British rail workers and impending strikes on the British docks, dockworker strikes which have already taken place in Germany and Greece, strikes by airline workers at Ryanair, strikes by truckers in South Korea and massive protests in Sri Lanka over the cost of living, which forced the president to flee the country.
This enormous potential power must find an independent outlet. Workers must find the means to break out of the straitjackets of the Democratic Party, anti-labor laws such as the RLA and the union bureaucracy. In the first instance, this means the formation of new organizations, rank-and-file committees, mobilizing workers independently.
A central element in this is the campaign by Will Lehman for United Auto Workers president, on a platform of the abolition of the corrupt bureaucracy and the establishment of workers’ power. In a statement published on Wednesday, Lehman called for workers in the UAW, throughout the US and internationally to support the struggle of rail workers, and for rail workers to establish their own organizations as part of the International Workers Alliance of Rank-and-File Committees.
But above all, workers must recognize that they are locked in a life-and-death political struggle. The question is far more than workers getting their “fair share.” Who makes these decisions? Who runs society? The capitalist profit interest is incompatible not only with the needs of a modern society, but even maintaining human life and dignity. In its place, workers must fight for socialism, the democratic organization of society by the working class itself, in the interests of human need and not private gain.
Miller on GOP candidates avoiding immigration, crime: Push messages where there is 'nowhere to hide'
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S70-QBV6FoE
JOE BIDEN GETS MILLIONS OF ILLEGALS OVER THE BORDERS AND SCATTERED ALL OVER AMERICA. THE NEXT TIME YOU SEEM THEM THEY WILL BE IN YOUR JOB.
Unbelievable' video shows border agents opening gate to migrants
BREAKDOWN OF LAW AND ORDER SPREADS ACROSS AMERICA
Street takeover turns into violent store takeover
The culture of power and money lust of the American Corporate Community and its major players — BlackRock (JOE BIDEN’S BIGGEST BRIBESTER WHICH OPERATES OUT OF THE BIDEN WHITE HOUSE UNDER BLACKROCK EMPLOYEE, GAMER LAWYER BRIAN DEESE), Goldman Sachs, Bridgewater, Google, Microsoft, Intel, Twitter, and Musk — and, of course, Gates — that draws them to a plutocracy that would never hesitate to betray America for a financial advantage or an opportunity to be a part of a global powerhouse oligarchy complicit with and colluding with malefactor government tyrannies. (avarice, cupidity, and rapaciousness)
THE DEMOCRAT PARTY OF BRIBES SUCKERS.. destroying America as fast as they destroyed America’s borders.
https://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2022/04/the-democrat-party-of-corruption-and.html
American Corporate Community and its major players — BlackRock (JOE BIDEN’S BIGGEST BRIBSTER), Goldman Sachs, Bridgewater, Google, Microsoft, Intel, Twitter, and Musk — and, of course, Gates — that draws them to a plutocracy that would never hesitate to betray America for a financial advantage or an opportunity to be a part of a global powerhouse oligarchy complicit with and colluding with malefactor government tyrannies. (avarice, cupidity, and rapaciousness) JOHN DALE DUNN
“Our entire crony capitalist system, Democrat and Republican alike, has become a kleptocracy approaching par with third-world hell-holes. This is the way a great country is raided by its elite.” ---- Karen McQuillan
THE DEMOCRAT PARTY OF BRIBES SUCKERS AND THEIR PARASITE BANKSTERS
https://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2022/06/joe-bidens-paymasters-at-blackrock.html
Jesse Watters: The Biden family business
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NjCflVde7Gs
VIDEO
JOE BIDEN'S MASSIVE DESTRUCTION OF AMERICA'S ECONOMY AND BORDER
America's Economy WILL Collapse... Here's WHY
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I55LhaVhjbw
BLOG EDITOR: BIDEN'S CRONY BLACKROCK IS ONE OF THE BIGGEST OPERATORS OF INVESTMENT PROPERTIES WHICH HAS CONTRIBUTED TO THE MASSIVE OVER-PRICING OF HOMES NATIONWIDE. ONE BLACKROCK PURCHASE OF RENTALS EXCEEDED $41 BILLION.
Consumers’ Research launched a new campaign exposing how BlackRock weaponizes Americans’ retirement funds to wage war on the American fossil fuel industry, which raises energy and housing costs.
Gutfeld: Forgive us if we actually care about Biden's corruption and collusion
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=roy4xyo1Aok
VIDEO
Ralph Nader: Biden's First Year Proves He Is Still a "Corporate Socialist" Beholden to Big Business
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2jTIUtjkDss&t=28s
Hauser also didn’t like the prevalence of Big Law talent on the Department of Justice team, which signaled to him that the Biden administration could go soft on corporate malefactors. Alexander Nazaryan
There is nothing unexpected about the emerging right-wing, pro-war, pro-Wall Street composition of the incoming Biden administration. Biden himself spent decades in Washington as a corrupt bag-man for wealthy interests in the state of Delaware, the legal headquarters of hundreds of thousands of corporations that take advantage of its business-friendly laws.
Report: Families Fleeing Democrat-Run Portland Due to Homeless Camps, Crime
Families in Democrat-run Portland are fleeing the city due to out-of-control homelessness and crime, according to a report.
Homeless camps across the Peninsula Crossing Trail in North Portland — located approximately eight miles from downtown — have changed what once was a desirable neighborhood into an unsafe area, causing some longtime residents to either leave or consider it.
“It’s the first time in a long time that we’ve actually seriously thought about moving,” Greg Dilkes, who has lived in North Portland for thirty years, told KGW 8.
The uptick in crime has also caused local residents to feel unsafe even when doing simple activities such as walking, the local news outlet noted.
“Every day if you go from one end of the street to the other, you’re confronting some very difficult situations, people in really dire straits,” said Mark Smith, whose backyard is next to a homeless encampment.
“For Sale” signs have become a common sight in the North Portland neighborhood, as one resident told the local news outlet they know of three families that have left due to the rampant homelessness.
Real estate broker Lauren Iaquinta has observed that residents who decide to leave the city generally are headed to the suburbs.
“Most people don’t want to have to worry about if they can leave their car parked in their driveway overnight without maybe having it broken into,” she told KGW 8.
The real estate broker also noted she has to vet areas that do not have homeless camps in order not to dissuade clients she works with.
The growing homeless problem has recently forced Starbucks to shut down some of its locations in the City of Roses, along with other Democrat-run American cities, due to rampant crime and homelessness, Breitbart News reported.
Starbucks CEO Howard Shultz blamed city and state leaders for the closure, saying they “have abdicated their responsibility in fighting crime.”
Portland experienced a massive spike in its homicide rate from 2019 to 2021, recording a 207 percent increase. During that same timeframe, frequent ANTIFA riots were also occurring in the downtown area.
You can follow Ethan Letkeman on Twitter at @EthanLetkeman.
The American trade unions and the parasites who run them
In the American working class, life is increasingly defined by intense and unrestrained exploitation by corporate employers whose profits soar as wages fall and families struggle more and more to keep up with inflation and the rising cost of living. Wages for workers who belong to a union increased in 2021 by far less (3.3 percent) than both the rate of inflation (officially 9 percent) and the increase for non-union workers (5.3 percent).
In an earlier period, the level of workplace exploitation was restrained in a limited way by the trade unions, which workers had built as defensive organizations through powerful and bitter strikes and struggles involving millions of workers. Today, unions represent only 6 percent of those employed in non-government industry. Even where unions exist, there is hardly any restraint on the level of exploitation workers confront at work or in society at large.
A new report published by Radish Research, “Labor’s Fortress of Finance,” aggregates data on union finances that sheds light on both the anti-working class character of the trade unions today and the parasitic role played by the tens of thousands of executives who staff them.
The data makes clear that the trade unions are not organizations of the working class. They have been transformed into organizations that rob workers of billions of dollars in dues money in order to enrich bureaucrats who live comfortable lives in the richest 10 percent of American society. They suppress the class struggle and form a critical part of the Democratic Party and the imperialist state.
According to the federal filings of 14,000 unions, including local, state and national bodies, American trade unions had $35.8 billion in assets in 2020, greater than the gross domestic product of over half the countries on earth. In 2020 alone, as hundreds of thousands of workers were dying of COVID-19, the trade unions increased their assets by $2.7 billion after subtracting operating costs, almost equal to the 2020 annual profit of Air BnB.
Eighty-five percent of the unions’ revenue comes from dues money ($15.5 billion in 2020 alone), a figure that represents a massive annual transfer of wealth from the working class to the upper middle class. In addition, the unions make tremendous sums through various other parasitic operations, including interest on investments, ($509 million in 2020), rent ($262 million), and royalties and grants ($2 billion).
The 2020 asset increase “was not a one-off event, but a consistent long-term pattern,” the report explains. “Since 2010, organized labor has generated large surpluses, netting over $18.5 billion over the last eleven years, or $1.7 billion annually on average.” From 2010 to 2020, the unions lost 465,000 members while total revenues surged 28 percent, from $14.3 billion to $18.3 billion. The report notes, “The revenue increase was driven by higher membership dues per member, rising from $818 per member in 2010 to $1,091 in 2020. In addition, significant increases in investment (+46%), rental (+47%) and miscellaneous income (+24%) contributed to the overall rise in revenues.”
The unions spend tens of billions of dollars, not on improving the conditions of the workers they represent, but on an apparatus of staffers who workers never see nor hear from. The unions spent $15.6 billion in 2020, overwhelmingly on wages and benefits to tens of thousands of union staff. In most cases, these officials are simply Democratic Party staffers whose work campaigning for Democratic politicians is essentially involuntarily subsidized by the working class.
The report explains, “average annual compensation [of union staffers] increased by 37% since 2010” and that “management occupations increased by 28% from 7,360 to 9,390 employees.”
According to 2020 data, “over 10,000 officers and employees received a gross salary over $125,000, putting them in the top ten percentile of income in the US (this does not include the generous health, pension, and other benefits typically provided by unions).”
Hundreds of these union staffers serve on the payroll of the AFL-CIO’s Solidarity Center, a CIA-front organization that advances the interests of American imperialist foreign policy around the world through election meddling, disinformation and the suppression of the class struggle.
By comparison, the unions spend next to nothing on strike pay, averaging just $70 million per year since 2010, or less than one half of one percent of revenue per year. To the executives, a dollar spent to increase the power of workers on strike is a dollar out of their own pay. The interests of the union executives are not aligned with but are antagonistic to the interests of the workers themselves. Time after time, the unions isolate workers on strike and force them to accept terms favorable to the companies.
Remarkably, these numbers significantly understate the assets of the trade unions and their executives. The report does not include unions that consist solely of public employees, because these unions are not required to file federal reports of their assets, income and expenses, although mixed unions like the SEIU must file. Nor does the report include the value of private and public union pension funds, which are worth an estimated $7 trillion.
If nothing is done to reverse these trends, the report notes that the trade unions’ assets would rise from $35.8 billion to $75.6 billion in 2030, even as the unions will be expected to lose another 800,000 members. In other words, tens of thousands of union executives plan to steal several tens of billions of dollars more from workers dues money in the years to come in order to enrich themselves.
To challenge the domination of the corporations over every aspect of life, the working class can and must harness its tremendous potential economic power and break free of the stranglehold imposed upon it by the unions.
The campaign of Pennsylvania Mack Trucks worker Will Lehman for UAW president is a critical step in this struggle.
The bulk of the UAW’s leadership, including two recent presidents, have been convicted for accepting corporate bribes in exchange for selling out autoworkers. But the UAW corruption is only the most brazen expression of the relationship between the AFL-CIO and corporate management, and autoworkers, like their counterparts in other industries, have confronted decades of attacks on wages and living conditions overseen by the companies and unions.
For this reason, Lehman explained in a statement following his nomination at last months’ UAW convention that his campaign is aimed at “building a rank-and-file movement against the entire pro-corporate UAW apparatus.”
Lehman has won support for his demand to place the assets of the UAW out of the control of the apparatus and under the democratic control of the workers themselves, where it can be used not to enrich the bureaucracy but to fight the corporations and give power to the working class.
This means not replacing one bureaucrat with another, but building a mass movement of workers internationally and across industry to “fight for what we need, not what the corporations and UAW bureaucrats say is possible. Such a fight cannot and will not be carried out by the corporate toadies making six-figure salaries in Solidarity House. The bureaucratic apparatus that exists only to suppress our struggles cannot be reformed. It must be swept away.”
Lehman’s campaign will face fierce opposition from all those within the apparatus who stand to lose their jobs and salaries when the workers take back power. For this reason, not a single member of the Democratic Socialists of America nominated Lehman at the convention and not a single pseudo-left publication has written about his campaign. These individuals and tendencies represent the same affluent upper-middle class to which the union executives themselves belong.
A rebellion is brewing in the working class on a global scale, exacerbated by the pandemic and US imperialist war provocations against Russia and China. The coming rebellion will find political expression through the building of the International Workers Alliance of Rank-and-file Committees (IWA-RFC), an international network of worker-controlled, democratic organizations aimed at breaking the isolation imposed by the national trade unions. Through the IWA-RFC, the working class can and will launch a global fight against the global corporations and the governments that serve their interests, and trigger an international counteroffensive against decades of social counterrevolution.
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