[gas0linealley]

You must think that Congress was in a gift giving mood one day and decided to bestow gifts on American workers, things of which the workers themselves had never dreamed.

Had it not been for the political power of unions, Congress would not have given working conditions a second thought.

As far as your example of locomotives is concerned, there were good reasons to have two men in the engine, that had nothing to do with feeding a boiler.

[SoCal Pubbie]

"You must think that Congress was in a gift giving mood one day ...

Uh, no. First, let's strike off medical benefits, that had nothing to do with Unions and only relates to Congress at all in a tangential way, as in going around it.

Second, a shorter work day. Yes, unions fought for it. For their own members only. The changing conditions of the industrial revolution drove a general demand in society at large for a shorter working day. The United Mine Workers won an eight hour day for their workers in 1898 but Ford's still worked nine as late as 1914 when Henry Ford HIMSELF, without a union, raised pay and shortened hours to keep better workers. This is a phenomenon that would have occurred with or without Unions. Better companies would find success with better employees making higher wages and working fewer hour more efficiently.

Third, paid holidays. Yes, Unions fought for them. They always fight for less work and more pay. But paid holidays are, and have been, almost universal. I've never belonged to a Union and I get them off too. Or I used to. I work for myself now.

Fourth, child labor was outlawed not because of Unions but because the Great Depression had made people so desperate for work that adults would work for child wages rather than starve.

Finally, you should go back a read a little about Unions and the railroads. The 1937 Diesel Agreement specified a fireman on every locomotive over 90,000 pounds. If the reasons to keep a fireman were so good, why would the extra weight matter, and why had the Union ignored streetcars and light rail locos before then? Why did railroads have to permanently attach extra diesel units rather than use couplers? To stave off Union demands that each B unit, though controlled in the A cab, was a separate locomotive. That would have meant EIGHT engineers and firemen in a four diesel lash up in place of the two employees in the Mallet the diesels replaced.

Now why, a few years later, did the Unions start demanding TWO engineers and TWO firemen in each unit? Feather bedding, of course, which the Unions excel at. It took TWENTY SEVEN years for the fight to end with a Supreme Court decision in March 1963.

"Since the original 1937 agreement, four fact-finding boards and a presidential commission had studied the request for an extra fireman. All had found no need for one fireman on a diesel, let alone two."

- Professor Maury Klein

If the reasons were so good how come no one screams for them now?