Before there were unions, there was no middle class. Working people didn't get to send their kids to college, few were able to own their own fucking home, nobody could take a fucking day off for a funeral or a sick day or they might lose their fucking job.
Then working people organized themselves into unions. The bosses and the companies fucking hated that. In fact, they were often overheard to say, "Fuck the UAW!!!" That's because the UAW had beaten one of the world's biggest industrial corporations when they won their battle on February 11, 1937, 44 days after they'd taken over the GM factories in Flint. Inspired by their victory, workers struck almost every other fucking industry, and union after union was born. Had World War II not begun and had FDR not died, there would have been an economic revolution that would have given everyone — everyone — a fucking decent life.
Nonetheless labor unions did create a middle class for the majority (even companies that didn't have unions were forced to pay at or near union wages in order to attract a workforce) and that middle class built a great country and a good life. You see, Rahm, when people earn a fucking good wage, they spend it on stuff, which then creates more good paying jobs, and then the middle class grows fucking big. Did you know that back when I was a kid if you had a parent making a union wage, only one parent had to work?! And they were home by 3 or 4pm, 5:30 at the latest! We had dinner together! Dad had four weeks paid vacation. We all had free health and dental care. And anyone with decent grades went to college and it didn't fucking bankrupt them. (And if you ever used the F-word, the nuns would straighten you out in ways that even you couldn't bear to hear about).
Then a Republican fired all the air traffic controllers, a Democrat gave us NAFTA and millions of jobs were moved overseas (hey, didn't you work in that White House, too? "Fuck the UAW, baby!"). Unions got scared and beaten down, a frat boy became president and, like a drunk out of control, spent all our fucking money and our children's money, too. Fuck.
And now your assistant's grandma has to work at fucking McDonald's. Ask her for pictures of what the middle class life used to look like. It was effing cool! I'll bet grandma doesn't say "Fuck the UAW!"
Actually, chances are she's a Tea Party member and doesn't remember what the Unions did for her, being indoctrinated with the equivalency in the Reagan era that Unions = Organized Crime.
As if Wall Street didn't. As if the organized crime syndicate represented by the bank$ters and the government and the Empire they now own wasn't far greater and more corrupt than anything the Unions ever did.
But people forget- especially when the main$tream hammers at them, 24/7, with a programmed message.
Hell, I just saw Petreus Caesar on the Colbert Show- he seemed pretty cool... Stephen said "Sir" and kidded with him like a regular guy. Now all those stories about dead burned bodies couldn't be true, could they? And they must've deserved it.
And so the Democratic Administration says Fuck the UAW. Teh Rahmmer must've had a good reason to say that, right? Other than keeping his lienholders at Goldman-Sachs and BP happy?
And besides, 9-11 changed everything...
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