My Dad was a tirebuilder, and proud member of the United Rubber Workers of America for 30 years.  Every three years, prompted by their union bosses, their minions were coerced into going on strike for more wages and benefits. Every three years, he would drag me down to union HQ in Pottstown, PA for his assigned midnight to 3  A.M. Saturday night picketing shift.   Somewhere in my teens, they walked out and stayed out for thirteen straight weeks.  In the end, they all got an additional dime an hour, which in my best smartypants teen attitude, I pointed out that it would take about four years to recover the thirteen weeks of lost income.   My dad was not very pleased with me or with my pithy and observant  analysis.

So, last week, 40,000 phoners from Verizon in the Northeast USA walked out of their jobs, prompted  by their overpaid and politically liberal union bosses.   Somehow dissatisfied with their average $68,000 average salaries, these morons now march the streets of Baltimore and Philly and Boston begging for the public’s sympathies. But golly, look what has happened .   The company’s management ranks, aka “the scabs” have been filling in quite nicely with only modest service and repair and customer service disruption.  Even more than I hope and pray that the Phillies lose every baseball game, and that Notre Dame loses every football game until I go to heaven,  my life would be nearly complete if these greedy union dudes would permanently lose their jobs in favor of replacements who would be thrilled to  be hired to such cushy jobs.  Sorry for the Schadenfreude, but I really hated watching my dad picket, and really wish the unions would disappear.                                WHAT THE HECK

Postlude or postmortem or whatever……… my Dad’s tire factory finally closed and moved to non-union Mississippi in 1985 to escape the cumbersome work rules and constant wage/benefit pressure of the URW.   The cost to the community was 3,000 jobs.