Live Better
With the U.S. elections coming up, God and I thought it might be a good time to remind you of some bits of history. One of the things that I run into in my profession is a lot of smart people that are adamantly against anything union. They’ve heard lots of stories about the excesses of unions and the corruption that goes on in some unions and they never really stop to think that part of why they’ve heard those stories so much and heard so little of what the unions have done that was good, is that they get most of their stories through the mainstream media, media run by big corporations that have nothing to gain from well organized labor.
I’d just like to remind people of some of the things that union members fought for, and even died for, in the past. Things like forty hour work weeks. Things like paid vacations. Things like eliminating (or at least reducing) abusive child labor. People in America take these things for granted and assume we could never go back.
“Never” is a very foolish word. Like Democracy and Freedom, some things must be fought for again and again.
I saw a car not long ago that didn’t seem really clear on the issue. They had two bumper stickers. One which read, “Live Better, Work Union,” and the other was in support of Ron Paul for President. In case you don’t know enough about Ron Paul to see the cognitive dissonance displayed by the juxtaposition of these stickers, imagine a a car with two bumper stickers, one says “Meat is Murder” and the other “I’d Rather be Hunting.” Either the owner of that car couldn’t be bothered to learn much about the politicians they supported, or they were just too ironic to be allowed to live. I’ll leave it to you to decide which.
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