Many Paths: Unions are needed to get us back on track

My middle name is Henry. That was my maternal grandfather’s name. He was an underground coal miner. He described it as a hard life, for him and his family. He had a shed out back where he spent a good deal of this time. I remember him rolling cigarettes, reading cheap paperbacks, and tending to a large garden.

One of my fondest memories is picking a kohlrabi and eating it with him. Always with salt. The shed was connected to the house by a long brick walk, leading up to the outhouse at the opposite end of the shed from his hideout.

The walk was lined with purple iris. Some white. It didn’t lead to Oz, but to the modest home where he and grandma lived.

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He was an early union organizer, which cost him a broken back that the company called an accident, but the miners knew otherwise.

Partly because of my grandfathers’ story and partly because my father was a union president, I have always been a life-long union sympathizer, although I have never been in a position to join a union.

Given the opportunity, I have always sided with the worker. Our labor is just about all we have to sell. Getting a living wage for our labor seems to me to be a human right. The rich have never seen it that way. Cheap labor is necessary for Capitalism to work and thrive. I never have succumbed to that notion. So, it ends up: like grandfather, like father, like son.

Each mine owned their own homes to rent the miners, which seemed in pictures to be little more than shacks.

The owners provided the taverns to drink in and the store to shop in. The miner’s paycheck seldom reached beyond the mine’s property, and often didn’t cover all their debts.

Thus, the lyrics to Tennessee Ernie’s song, “St. Peter don’t you call me cause I can’t go, I owe my soul to the company store.”

Thinking about those things reminds me how little things have changed over the years for the worker.

Millions still work for minimum wage. Countless people work 2-3 jobs just to make ends meet. The economy has little regard for the poor. The company store is today’s corporation and billionaire owners.

I didn’t understand when my grandfather described this to me so many years ago, but I do today. I wear the middle name “Henry” proudly.

It reminds me of what is important and where I come from. My wife and I have done fairly well, but I cannot for a moment forget about those who have been less fortunate. My name won’t let me.

I often hear the argument that unions become too powerful. Too powerful for what? For standing up for workers' rights and their demands for a living wage.

For equality and justice in the workplace? For questioning the need for CEO’S making hundreds of millions of dollars? Using their billions to buy spacecrafts, fancy cars, and countless politicians’.

They tell me unions get out of hand. What about corporate profits, for 2023: Exxon Mobil ($36 billion), Amazon ($30 billion), Apple ($97 billion), Blue Cross-Shield ($7.5 billion), Walmart ($147 billion), Starbucks ($24.5 billion), Microsoft ($72 billion).

Minimum wage has nothing to do with this type of greed. This is where our inflation comes from. Unions have not caused the failure of our economy, but they are sourly needed to get us back on track.

Bruce Weik was a longtime columnist for The Zephyr and is co-creator of Many Paths Galesburg since 2019.

This article originally appeared on Rockford Register Star: Many Paths: We need unions to get us back on track