How do you break the middle-class chains forged by brand Bullies?

You guarantee franchised business staffs’ civil and employment rights.

This, in turn, protects every franchisee’s investment rights.

That’s the deal: a living wage and an adequate ROI for everyone. What’s good for the goose, is good for the gander: Freedom for all through collective bargaining franchisees and franchisees’ employees.

My staff and I eat from the same bowl. Our shared adversary (the franchisor) steals the whole dish.

“I will let my staff become unionized if that is their wish. I will negotiate in good faith with their legal representatives and fire any of my managers that go against this management decision. I wish to be my employees’ partner not their master.

I give my employees what they need to live, knowing that they and their union will help me achieve what I need to stay in business as a franchise.

My staff and I are partners who are both protected by experts in negotiation and power relationships.”

The intelligence, toughness and strength that organized labour brings to the negotiating table is only feared by one stakeholder: the franchisor. Their propaganda and self-loathing is there for everyone to see.

• Stop playing the fool.
• Get Smart :: Get WikidFranchise.org and break the brainwashing.

Your staff wants you to succeed financially and personally. They want you to be in business next year. They would like to have a decent wages, health care and retirement savings. They don’t begrudge you and your family making a living: in fact, they’d like to be part of the American Dream too one day.

Who stands in the way of both of you you making those dreams a reality?

Franchisees: You decide.

• Survive on your knees (alone) or Stand Together.
• No one ever raised themselves up (with dignity) by pushing others down.

Help those who will help you: today and tomorrow. Protect them and they will protect you.

History is a great teacher. Now everyone knows that the labor movement did not diminish the strength of the nation but enlarged it. By raising the living standards of millions, labor miraculously created a market for industry and lifted the whole nation to undreamed of levels of production. Those who attack labor forget these simple truths, but history remembers them.

Martin Luther King Jr., Speaking to the AFL-CIO on December 11, 1961.

The President of the United States and the AFL-CIO video.

I’m junk but I’m still holding up this little wild bouquet

I’ll miss newspapers when they’re gone.

McLuhan said you didn’t read a newspaper, you step into one, like taking a bath.

President-elect Obama will be visiting Canada soon. The Toronto Star reports that CBC Radio is holding a poll to select some songs to give to the President as a gift from all Canadians (CBC shuffles Obama’s iPod).

Here’s one of our best. A quirky, abridged version but Is it possible to to hear too much of The Voice?

I love the country but I can’t stand the scene.
And I’m neither left or right
I’m just staying home tonight,
getting lost in that hopeless little screen.
But I’m stubborn as those garbage bags
that Time cannot decay,
I’m junk but I’m still holding up this little wild bouquet:
Democracy is coming to the U.S.A.

Democracy, Leonard Cohen

It’s coming through a hole in the air,
from those nights in Tiananmen Square.
It’s coming from the feel
that this ain’t exactly real,
or it’s real, but it ain’t exactly there.
From the wars against disorder,
from the sirens night and day,
from the fires of the homeless,
from the ashes of the gay:
Democracy is coming to the U.S.A.

It’s coming from the sorrow in the street,
the holy places where the races meet;
from the homicidal bitchin’
that goes down in every kitchen
to determine who will serve and who will eat.
It’s coming to America first,
the cradle of the best and of the worst.
It’s here they got the range
and the machinery of change
and it’s here they got the spiritual thirst.

It’s here the family’s broken
and it’s here the lonely say
that the heart has got to open
in a fundamental way:
Democracy is coming to the U.S.A.

I’m sentimental, if you know what I mean
I love the country but I can’t stand the scene.
And I’m neither left or right
I’m just staying home tonight,
getting lost in that hopeless little screen.
But I’m stubborn as those garbage bags
that Time cannot decay,
I’m junk but I’m still holding up this little wild bouquet:
Democracy is coming to the U.S.A.

Sail on, sail on
O mighty Ship of State!
To the Shores of Need
Past the Reefs of Greed
Through the Squalls of Hate

Unused verse:

It ain’t comin’ to us European-style,
Concentration camp behind the smile;
It ain’t comin’ from the east
With its temporary feast
As Count Dracula comes strolling down the aisle. (source)