It was good to see a union leader for the meat plant workers on MSNBC.

[shockey80]

He said something that we all know is true. He said Trump has no idea how a meat plant runs. He said Trump can sign all the orders he wants and it will not change this. He said if 20% of the workers are out sick the plant cannot function.

My father loaded trucks at a meat plant for thirty years. It went out of business around 1980. The owner died and the new owners ruined it.

When I was young my father told me stories about their Union President. They had a pretty good union. The Union President was a full blooded Italian who had a wicked temper. My dad told me when he got mad you could hear him screaming throughout the plant.

He protected his workers and this guy meant business. If a supervisor mistreated a worker he would pull the workers off the trucks. He would shut it down. My dad said the original owner, who was a good guy, would have to come down to the docks and settle the Union president down.

If that guy was the union president at one of these meat packing plants he would not be putting up with the bullshit that going on at the plants today. He would have pulled his workers out and not in a friendly way. Times have changed. We used to fight like bulls when being led to slaughter, now we fight like sheep when being led to slaughter.

[mopinko]

1. yup. i saw that. the woman from the flight attendant's union is great, too.

name escapes me, but she has been on o'donnell a lot.
she laid that framework for the ppp for the airline industry, and it got picked up for the rest of the bill.
she is so strong. speaks so clearly. no nonsense.

[CTyankee]

2. my friend, a retired plumber who was a big union man and shop steward said exactly the same

thing you did about your father's union president. He is shaken and puzzled by the reticence of some unions now to shrink away from such confrontations when they are needed to protect the health and safety of workers. He went into full rant on the phone with me the other day. Poor guy: he is old, his back permanently affected because of years of lifting heavy equipment, and is now using a walker to get around. I told him he should be proud of his efforts to protect his workers safety and health.