Busting unions.

Editor,

Labor unions gave workers the 8-hour day, the 40-hour week, paid vacation, sick leave, pensions, employer-paid health insurance.

Today's workers know nothing about the child laborers, as young as 10 years old, who worked 12 or 14 hours a day in the textile mills in New England in the 19th century tending the machines because their small bodies allowed them to crawl around in them and thread the bobbins. Today's workers don't know about the fingers, hands, and arms that those children lost making factory owners money.

Of course the right wing demonizes whatever shreds of the American labor movement survive. Individual workers are helpless up against the power of big money. It is only through organizing that workers can fight for decent working conditions and fair wages.

Today's workers don't know about miners who were gunned down by the National Guard or longshoremen murdered by the police in the 1930's fighting for the rights you take for granted today.

Fine. Give it all up without a whimper. Your kids will be on the barricades when conditions in this country get too harsh for them to stand.

Re: "Strained States Turning to Laws to Curb Labor Unions" (1/4/2011)