Public employee unions are usually in the news for not such good reasons. Like how they were beaten in Wisconsin by Governor and now-Presidential candidate Scott Walker, who “took them on” because they refused certain of the concessions that they demanded. Or because some abusive police officer was reinstated after the union went to bat on his behalf.
But unions have played a very important role in all of our lives. They really did bring us the five day work week, and overtime, and vacation and personal time, child labor laws, health benefits, unemployment insurance, workplace safety, and all kinds of other benefits that we now take for granted.
And yes, over the years, unions have made strategic mistakes, sometimes been unreasonable, and sometimes were overtaken by corruption. As if corporations have not been. Evan Horowitz has a nice piece in the Boston Globe on the state of labor unions today.
On this, our annual labor day, it might not be such a bad thing to appreciate the things that unions have brought us, and to give them a second look.