Happy Labor Day

Like many of you, I'll be sharing BBQ with friends and having a dip in the cement pond filled with chemicals in my back yard. There is another reason to commemorate, though, and it has nothing to do with the "thugs" that supposedly run unions today. Thanks to labor unions, we have:

child labor laws
retirement plans
a public education system
days off
holidays off
a 40-hour work week
workplace safety laws
workers compensation for injury
product safety laws
the concept of pay AND benefits
several generations of children who had post-secondary education opportunities
oh, and the American Middle Class.

As labor unions get weaker after 30 years of direct attack, everything you see in my list above is now in peril. And, no, I've never belonged to a union, and to my knowledge, nobody in my family ever has either. I'm just a historian.

Happy Labor Day