Labor Day 2025

Welcome to Labor day, or as we refer to it this year: August 32nd, the earliest Labor Day there can be. The chances of rain tomorrow are being put at 70% so rather than smoking something, we'll be having a pretty typical meal like we do every day, on our regular keto way of eating.  Since it seems the vast majority of stores are open, I could use to make a run to the nearest Office Supplies store for a printer ink cartridge.  Yeah, I know that's exciting.  

One of the reasons I shifted away from writing about the political/social side of life that so many fellow bloggers talk about all the time is that it's such an odd combination of important, and yet insanely boring to talk about all the time.  I get tired of the same handful of stories all the time, even if "all the time" simply means today or this week.  "Someone somewhere" decides what the story of the week is going to be and we get bombarded with versions and derivatives of that group of stories until the next story of the week gets chosen.  I get bored with seeing them on TV, I get bored with hearing them, and I get bored writing the same things.  

One of the things that's in the pile of stuff that cycles by endlessly are trade unions.  While Florida has been a "right to work" state for my entire working life, both Mrs. Graybeard and I worked in places where union membership might have not been legally required, rather it was more like a necessary evil we had to put up with.  

I know I've written this concept down before and won't bother linking to myself, but I've been involved with specifying components the company I was working for was going to buy long enough to realize that companies don't buy anything without negotiating a price.  You may get an offer for $X dollars and be insulted or you may be grateful, but in things I was involved with, we might buy components that were custom designed for us that both the component sellers and we the buyers would negotiate a price for.  Unions started in negotiating working conditions, classically hours of work versus pay per hour.  It may not seem fully logical at first glance but while I personally don't want to work in a unionized workplace, I can see the argument for having a professional negotiating your pay.  The argument against that is you have to pay the negotiator, too.  

The advent of unions was complicated immediately by violence.  The first blood spilled by union activists apparently goes back to the Haymarket Square massacre in 1886, in which:

... striking union workers threw a bomb at Chicago police, killing eight police officers and countless civilians, after being incited to their lethal rampage by socialist Samuel Fielden (not unlike how Marty Lamb was beaten after the crowd of unionists was inflamed to violence by “progressive” Rep. Capuano) [Note: explanation of the Rep. Capuano reference in that linked article just above - SiG]

Because of their enormous influence in the Democratic Party, unions have specifically gotten themselves exempted from laws the rest of society must follow.  You probably know about the exemptions from the anti-trust laws, and extortion laws, and that they tried to exempt themselves from Obamacare.  This is an exceptionally brief introduction to the history of union violence against anyone they regard as "in their way."  

Unions are progressively more desperate because membership in non-government employee unions has been dropping since the late 1950s.  Only government workers' unions are growing, where no true negotiation takes place because there are no parties at the table risking anything.  Unions like the NEA, AFT and the SEIU are the beneficiaries of fat government contracts.  They get more union dues which they siphon off to contribute to getting Evil Party politicians elected who will negotiate new, fat contracts with them.  Of course an alternate way of saying that is unions only survive where there isn't a free market but the expenses they cause are paid for by the taxpayers or society at large and don't come out of the pockets of the negotiators on the other side of the table.  

Despite the rhetoric, the unions aren't trying to make anyone's lives better except for their own.  If members get some crumbs that make their life better, that's nice.  For the non-unionized workers, who have to pay them their higher wages, too bad.  As the saying goes, FUJIGM.  

Well, this is wandering far off the topic of celebrating Labor Day, so I hope you have an enjoyable day no matter how you celebrate or mark the day.