U.S. Steel wins Supreme Court labor fight

[Atman]

22. My wife dealt with this at the first unionize hospital she worked at*.

*At which she worked. My apologies to the teachers union!

One of the first work stories she told me upon returning home from her new job (a couple of decades ago) was about a spill in a patient's room. The patient (now they call them "clients&quot knocked a liquid off his bedstand. It hit the trash can, spilling the contents on the floor. They sent in a worker who cleaned up the solid trash, but left the liquid on the floor. He said union rules forbade him from touching liquid spills. That was not his job.

NOW WAIT -- BEFORE YOU FLAME --

I know some lurkers are already lunging for the keyboard, and even some DUers want to be outraged. But consider this...what are "liquids" in a hospital? My wife had a bag of blood explode in a patient's room, showering her Carrie-style. She had to go through HIV testing for a very long time until she was considered okay. What is a grunt-level worker supposed to do when confronted with bodily fluids and nasty stuff on the floor of a sick patient's room? Believe me, if it were up to the bean counters, if it were up to the management, that grunt would just mop up the effluvia, toss it in a red trash bag, and hope he lived to get his Fifth Anniversary pin.

It's complicated to the average Joe struggling to pay his own rent. He/she sees the unionized worker as getting all these special privileges that he/she doesn't get. But the GOP has been BRILLIANT at framing the argument. Those damned union workers are taking money from you! They're killing the job market for you! But I seldom hear from Democrats (except for me and the people I work with, tilting at GOP windmills) screaming from the mountaintop, showing workers the history; they don't need LESS unions, as the bosses say, they need MORE unions. They need to fight back. Stop cowering behind the Walmart cash register because you're scared of missing the rent.

Democrats are sorely lacking on educating our voting base. The GOP on the other hand, doesn't need to worry. They have Fox "News." They have a built-in base of dumbness who will fear ANYONE who doesn't attend their Sunday worship. Anyone who doesn't look like them or talk like them. The lowest common denominator. The GOP party leaders know this. They know it all too well. It is their Trump card (sic).