Their efforts, with others, led to a 50-year economic stimulus that put money into middle class, where it was spent, not squirrelled away, creating the largest and longest period of economic growth ever seen. With the destruction in the 1980s of what unions began here, bit by bit, we see the these gains lost and the shrinking of the middle class and the polarization of wealth and poverty.

Ironically, the politically conservative foundational principle that unions are universally bad, ends up increasing the size of the federal government as most of whom would become the spending middle class remain at the bottom, with more relying on government safety nets than would have been otherwise if unions were still a force.

Congress shot down the minimum wage this week with the same effect--allow companies to keep swaths of workers below poverty line thus burdening the taxpayer rather than the company for basic needs. This will inevitably grow the government--and the wealth of the people who run the companies as we pick up the tab.

Smisek's "labor is not needed for this merger" is a classic--and possibly fatal--disrespecting of workers and labor. I guess this country will have to fall into another Great Depression before voters realize how they've been robbed by the wealthy buying politicians who are anti-labor.