How Unions Destroy Their Own
The Article: How The Unions Destroy Their Own — As Viewed By A Life-Long Union Supporter by Rick Ungar in Forbes.
The Text: My connection to the union movement has deep rootsāroots planted in my being while growing up in a northeastern Ohio steel town. It was a place and a time where the protections and earning opportunities made possible by the union resulted in an era of middle class creation and social advancement for the many blue collar workers that formed the very heart of Youngstown, Ohio.
Men and women who were willing to work hard on the day or night shift were spurred on by the knowledge that their union was also working hard to insure that the working class would earn not only enough money to care for their families, but would have enough left over at the end of the week to put some aside for the college tuition that would insure that their own kids would not have to spend their life in the steel mills.
While these union workers may have been toiling away in manual labor jobs that required more brawn than brain, they were anything but stupidāand their union leaders clearly understood this. So much was this the case that, to this day, I swear that I learned far, far more from the men and women I encountered working in the steel mills during my summer breaks from college than I ever learned inside a classroom.
