My grandfather was a coal miner who lost his job after the 1929 crash. He got his WWI vet’s bonus in 1935, went back to work as a boiler operator, and bought a house.
He never joined a union and if I mentioned John L. Lewis he would spit on the ground (schoolbooks made the UMW head out to be a saint). Voted against FDR, too.
Now thug boss Trumka is weighing in against Trump. The war never ends. We’re in civil war whether we believe it or not.
Only a few of us are aware of that. The others not only don’t know. They do not want to know.
Your grandpa was a real American. I had a great-uncle in Cleveland...worked in the lumber mill...had a leg sliced off in a horrible accident . Did he lay down and die? No way! He found a different kind of employment. That used to be The American Way!
This problem has been going on since WWII. I need to do some searching but this I can tell you:
My dad was a mining engineer, primarily gold. He worked all over the the northern aspects of Nevada and northern Ca in the 1930’s. He got a good job in the Philippine Islands, asked my mom to join him, they married and had two kids, one born just before the war in 1939 and another just before we were put into concentration camp in Santo Tomas about 4 years later. Three and half years later after internment we were liberated. He was never able to get another job as a mining engineer because he had to join a Union. He never carped or complained as far as I know about anything (not in front of us kids anyway ) but he had very bitter and harsh words for Unions which he never joined and never supported. The few times he talked about them, he sounded like he was living today. He knew the Unions are dictating every single aspect of their members lives. work and human life.
I wonder how one disarticulates a structure like the Unions?