Unions are crucial to the middle class

Published 1:47 pm Friday, September 28, 2012

If you talk to the average person about unions, they will probably not have much good to say about them.

President Reagan’s dislike for them in the ’80s when he declared war on the air traffic controllers was the beginning of the shrinkage of the middle class. The unions in the manufacturing industry is what started the middle class.

If the people who bad-mouthed the unions ever had to work in a Right to Work state like I did as an electrician in South Dakota, they would find out they don’t have a livable wage. They would earn about half or less of the pay as in a union state.

Right to Work states have sluggish economies because people have very little money to spend. If people who dislike unions could go to work at Walmart or some other non-union shop and try to support a family, they would realize how discouraging it is.

One of the Republican plans is to encourage manufacturers to relocate to other countries by giving them tax breaks. This helps them to destroy unions, by not caring what they do to the economy and destroying the middle class. I know some union demands were sometimes in the extreme, which didn’t help their cause. People migrate to union states like I did so they can better provide for their family and not live in poverty and also to have more  purchasing power to keep the economy going.

Remember, the next time you hear someone knocking unions, they are knocking part of the middle class in some way.

Alan Shelbourn
Kingston