As another Labor Day signals the unofficial end to the summer and, this year, the unofficial beginning to the November election season, we want to remind our readers of all the wonderful things that private-sector labor unions have brought about for ALL workers in this country, including:

• The minimum wage;
• The 8-hour work day;
• Overtime pay;
• Holiday pay;
• The 40-hour work week/work-free weekends;
• Social Security;
• Paid (and unpaid) sick leave;
• Paid vacations;
• Paid work breaks, including lunch;
• Child labor laws;
• Pensions, including 401(k)s;
• Unemployment insurance;
• Workplace safety;
• Employee and family health insurance;
• Collective bargaining rights;
• Anti-discrimination laws; and
• Whistleblower protection laws.

Not surprisingly, NONE of the foregoing was brought about by public-sector unions – those late-blooming organizations that have colluded and conspired with crooked Illinois politicians (redundancy intended) to give us:

• Automatic, non-merit based raises unrelated to performance;
• Underfunded constitutionally-guaranteed defined-benefit pensions;
• Every holiday off;
• 185-day work years (for, e.g., D-64 teachers);
• No accountability for under-performance or outright failure; and
• Virtual impossibility of being significantly disciplined or fired.

When it comes to the private sector, labor and capital have been able to strike an uneasy – albeit not always equal – balance of supply and demand, increasingly distorted by the unfair competitive effects of globalization.

In the public sector here in Illinois, however, unionized labor has come to dominate capital (i.e., tax dollars) specifically because of public-sector labor’s unique immunity to both the laws of supply and demand and the unfair competition of globalization.

So as we have done in the past, we praise the private-sector trade unionism that created a middle class and gave us the highest standard of living in the world. And we caution against public-sector faux-unionism that, in approximately 30 years of collusion with our corrupt Democratic politicians and their RINO co-conspirators, has driven Illinois to the economic and social bottom of the 50 states of the Union.

And we encourage our fellow citizens to not go gently into that dark night our corrupt politicians and their co-conspirators have created; and from which they have prospered.

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