Thanks to the huge power, political and financial, of the very rich, Americans have the shortest holidays, work the longest hours  (equated with “productivity” by economists) and in general have the worst benefits of any industrial country.  This is partly because the ruthless end of American management have anathematized unions and union members over many years (communists etc), and have in some cases unemployed violent thugs as union-busters.

Not content with successfully reducing union members to record low levels, the governor of Michigan, Rick Snyder, has announced that “workers should have the freedom to choose” whether to join a union.  Weasel words.  Hyper capitalists are generally lousy employers because companies there is no mechanism, except a unions to give employees decent working conditions. Greed and short-term-ism rule.  The hired politicians who do their will make sure that the rule of the bosses isn’t just partial, but total.  Stalin and Hitler just did it quicker.

Americans have been through all this before in the latter part of the 19th Century, when employers finally began to be restrained by unions.  Soon it will have to be done all over again. To be effective unions need most of the workers to join and to take part,  without threats and blackmail from the boss. Otherwise, it it divide and rule.

By the way,  the shipping of jobs to China has done for the unions  and has left, in the UK as well, a phalanx of de-skilled and demoralized people, mostly middle-aged and mostly men.

What  sort of country do these tin-eared, cruel and un-empathetic bosses think they are bequeathing to the next generation? They are reducing their country that they profess to love to a state of “us and and the rest”.

Epicurus  lived 2300 years ago.  He preached the common sense view that if everyone felt they had a fair deal and owned a bit of the action they were happier and worked harder.  After all these years we still haven’t learned and can still vote for a Rick Snyder and his paymasters.