U.S. Steel wins Supreme Court labor fight

[Shemp Howard]

19. That's an important, and telling, story.

As I mentioned in an earlier post, I worked for more than five years in a rolling mill. Like your uncle's mill, my mill is now closed. About 300 jobs were lost.

And I will attest to your uncle's story. I was, and am, solidly pro-union. Without unions, there can be no middle class. And as the unions decline, so will the middle class decline.

But I have often thought about the decline of the steel mills in my region. Based on personal experience, I'd assign 1/3 of the blame to the unions.

As you mentioned, the work rules were ridiculous. Only an electrician could change a light bulb. So if a bulb went out, that area of production had to stop until an electrician was found.

People would come to work drunk and then simply go to sleep. It was next to impossible to fire any of them. It's hard for a company to survive under conditions such as that.

As for the rest of the blame for the mill closing, I'd assign 1/3 of the blame to management. None of them cared as long as the bonuses came in. And for what it's worth, the managers were the biggest thieves in the mill!

A worker might take a wrench and walk out with it. That was bad enough. But managers would openly steal whole stacks of bricks, lumber, etc.

The last 1/3 of the blame goes to the government for allowing cheap foreign imports.