The Goals of Labor Aren’t Thwarted by Changing Laws to Allow Flexible Hours

It only takes an occasional reading of Harry (love those unions) Bernstein’s labor column to remind me why unions have fallen into such disfavor in recent years.

Bernstein’s latest lament concerns the proposal to allow a 12-hour workday in our state. Nearly all of the other states already have such a provision, which allows workers to decide if they would prefer to work for three days and have four days off and miss rush hour drive-time.

Never mind that the choice would be up to the worker and that it would also help alleviate everyone’s rush hour. No, Bernstein wants to keep that choice out of the hands of the worker because he knows what’s best.

You remember this kind of thinking, don’t you? Remember union-required firemen on trains long after there was nothing to fire? Remember the steelworkers’ union refusing to budge on a new contract even when they knew it would result in an immediate plant closure? The Japanese will be forever grateful for those $20-an-hour U.S. auto workers chasing all that business overseas. Yes, those were the golden days of labor unionism.

JIM KIPPEN

Huntington Beach