The Legacy of Lordstown: The Union Makes Us Strong!

It's been a while since I worked at a factory. In fact, it's been over twenty years. Before that, I had worked at a brick manufacturing plant and an outfit that made preformed concrete patios. The last plant I worked at was on the Olympic Peninsula in Washington state. My work involved running a soldering machine, placing resistors in circuit boards and doing touchup soldering on countless circuit boards manufactured for Microsoft and other technology outfits. The pay was dismal and the work came and went, depending on demand. The work was so dismal, in fact, that most of the workers looked forward to the periods of unemployment even though we knew our unemployment checks would barely cover our bulls. Just the fact that we wouldn't be facing the daily drudgery was reward in itself. Since that job, I have worked in libraries, only one of which was unionized (although I didn't qualify for union membership because I was classified temporary). Although the work is a distant cry from the drudgery of factory and restaurant work and libraries are public institutions, the job itself is not immune from the vagaries of the greater economy. Indeed, salaries of those workers without advanced degrees are usually enough to live on, but nobody I know who collects that salary is taking exotic vacations on it.

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