While the history of the American labor movement is filled to overflowing with examples of conspicuous courage and unwavering solidarity, labor's history is also littered with examples of ethnic and racial biases.
Portraying the '50s as intellectually stunted not only misses the point, it wildly misrepresents what really happened. Not only was the decade not an era of mindless conformity, it was the diametric opposite.
Although the word "iconic" tends to be overused these days, the term certainly applied to Mother Jones. For roughly 60 years she was the working man's spiritual leader and benefactor -- part Madonna, part mediator, part rabble-rouser -- a labor icon in every sense of the word.
The case can be made that the two assumptions most responsible for the political quagmire in Afghanistan are: (1) that clean-shaven men who wear ties...
Given the notoriety of the Reagan blood vial, several other historical bodily souvenirs have already been placed on the market.
The only realistic hope one has of working in a safe industrial environment is to join a union. By and large, union jobs are safer than non-union jobs. And given that a union's sole concern is the welfare of its members, why wouldn't they be?
