Labor Relations: A Retrospective

It is Labor Day today, in case you were unaware. Even if you think it isn't Labor Day because as you're reading this it's Wednesday or it's October or something gay like that, I promise it's Labor Day.

Do NOT go to your job.

YOU HAVE EARNED THIS.

Labor Day is a special day for me. It's a holiday that combines history and economics (two of my favorite topics) as well as laziness and alcoholism (my two defining virtues.) I'm saddened every year, though, by people who don't understand what we are commemorating every September the Xth/st/rd. To help the dummies out, and to provide myself with something to write about, I present a brief history of labor relations over the past 150 years.

Before 150 years ago, there were no unions and there was no collective bargaining. This was largely due to the fact that most unskilled workers hadn't entered kindergarten yet, and thus were unable to hold a pencil properly to draft demands. Also, slavery. But this all changed when a certain man came along.

Samu"OWL" Gompers

Samuowl Gompers is most widely known as the guy who kind of reminds people of the guy who owns the bank in It's a Wonderful Life, but is most important for creating the AFowL, or, the American Federation (owl) of Labor. It began as a collective of likeminded individuals who would gather together and pour buckets of water on factory workers who would accidentaly burst aflame during their 16 hour shifts. The organization grew in prominence and influence during the remainder of the 19th century, but the greatest strides were made when progressive psychopath Theodore Roosevelt was elected president. Roosevelt and Gompers, who first met as members in the think-tank tasked with finding a way to murder William McKinley, were kindred spirits in the sense that they were both self-serving war mongers. Roosevelt was different, however, in that he was truly, truly insane. He was an aging, tactless oaf who refused to act in any way that was not an extreme, but is remembered as a truly great man by uneducated people because he was able to intimidate a Dane into eventually carving a giant likeness of his head into the side of a mountain. Roosevelt was inexplicably progresssive, however, and raised the standards of work safety to the levels that they are held to today.

EVERYTHING WAS FIXED.

Of course, in 1914, the Ludlow Massacre happened. Miners in a small Colorado town had become part of the United Mine Workers of America, and had begun striking, asking that the Colorado Fuel and Iron Company obey federal laws. This, of course, was a ridiculous demand, and prompted John Rockefeller Jr., who had been eating a joint of lamb with his bare hands minutes prior, to order the Colorado National Guard to end the strike. Upon arrival, the soldiers, armed with nothing but guns, were forced to open fire on the angry civilians. The national guard has been demonized, perhaps unfairly, in years since, largely due to their use of controversial tactics like shooting machine guns indiscriminately through the tents of families, facilitating the deaths of women and children, and killing American citizens.

In fact, here's a fun postcard that was distributed in the aftermath of the firefight.

AT LEAST THAT MADE EVERYTHING BETTER.

Nothing happened for a while, until another man appeared on the scene.

Jimmy "HOOO"ffa

Jimmy Hoooffa led the modern AFL-CIO from 1957 to 1964, taking time off only when in prison. The Office of the Attorney General spent a lot of time observing Hooooffa, who would often suffer bouts of insomnia which many believe could have been attributed to Robert Kennedy's penchant for leaving tape recordings of his laughter on loop in Hoooffa's air vents. Hoooffa was sentenced to 13 years on Monster Island in 1964, forcing him to abdicate his position as King of the Teamsters.

In 1970-whatever, befuddled man-ogre Richard Nixon visited Hoooffa's crude, jungle mansion to discuss the trajectory of his exile. Nixon and Hoooffa became fast friends upon realizing that they were both greasy and unsettling. A deal was struck between the two. Nixon would commute the remainder of Hoooffa's exile in exchange for Hoooffa commanding his constantly mobile army of truckers to target Nixon's enemies, and trap them in high octane games of cat and mouse on the treacherous highways of America. The only one who was safe from the fiercely loyal truckers and their twisted games of 100 mile an hour chicken was John Lennon, who had a helicopter that was purchased, ironically, under the advice of Nixon himself, who had heard somewhere that helicopters were super dangerous. Nixon was re-elected in 1972, and Hoooffa was awarded a pension from the AFL-CIO. However, his years of exile had changed him. Hoooffa returned to Monster Island in 1975, never to be seen again. (Well, not quite, actually. He returned to America briefly in the 1990's after being summoned by two New England children. The film Jumanji is an imagining of what the partnership might have looked like.)

In recent years, unions have been called many nasty names. Of course, unions are largely to blame for many of the economic ills that only exist because of Obama, like inflation and people not having money. If it weren't for unions and Obama, these things wouldn't exist.

Perhaps I should break it down for you.

My obese, southern wife likes to wear scrubs; not because she is a nurse, but because they are cheap, comfortable, disposable, and hide her many protuberances in an adequately flattering way. However, the scrub workers of the world have just unionized. Scrubs started out at 20 dollars a pop. But suddenly, the union decides it wants face masks for the line workers so that they stop breathing in fiber. Also, the union decides that there should be illuminated fire exits. If that weren't enough, the union might even decide that the workers deserve to take breaks after 6 hours of work, when they really should be making scrubs for my obese, southern wife. If you factor in all the extravagances, you suddenly realize that your obese, southern wife is spending 21 dollars (!?) on a set of scrubs. This prompts me, the obese, southern husband to assert that 60 thousand a year is not enough to meet my standard of living, thereby making my boss pay me more, which fuels the ungodly cycle of ratcheting wages and escalating prices.

This is a shameful extortion of innocent, obese, southern people. Ever since the progressive movement at the turn of the century, greedy unions have been making sure that everybody is entitled to reasonable hours, fair wages, safe working conditions, and secure retirement.

The unions must be stopped.

So let's celebrate this Labor Day by forgetting it ever stood for anything in the first place! (It is tradition, after all.)