

What it was like before.

Now, I was in the middle of a painful divorce. My boys went to live with me in a dank little apartment. Where there were once two viable incomes, there was now one meager one. Mine.

The snack company for which I worked had cut my route, thereby cutting my commission. They had also cut my benefits, meager as they were. I was making diddly shit, just enough to cover the bills and keep my kids' bellies full.

Sometimes I went hungry.

Sometimes I begged my mother for money.

Sometimes I begged for overtime.

And my kids needed to live in a house, with a yard. And a dog. And a decent fucking life. I wanted them to be able to go to college and find better jobs than this craptastic little potato-chip job I was holding down.

I started asking friends that worked route jobs if their companies were hiring. I finally hit paydirt when a buddy of mine called me back and set up a meeting with his linen company. "We're union," he told me, "Teamsters."

Having nothing to lose, I interviewed for the job. I was nervous, thinking about living in that little apartment for the rest of my life, never able to give my sons all the opportunities that I wanted for them.

Union Dues.

Once I passed the CDL test, I was hired!

But they didn't push me right out there.

Nope.

I spent two weeks working in the plant first. That was a part of union training. They wanted you to know what it was like for the people that washed, dried, and pressed the linen before you went out there and picked it up and dealt with customers.

Oh, that union-mandated training program. Wanting us to base our efficacy on how easy we made the plant workers' jobs.

Next I spent another two weeks riding with my supervisor. He took me along my route for two weeks, making sure I learned all my customers by name, making sure I knew the easiest way to run it.

When I got my first check I got in the truck with my supervisor and opened it. My heart fluttered. "Um...so...this is...this is for two weeks, right?"

He laughed. "No. That's what you make every week."

"Jesus," I muttered.

I had never made that much money before in my life. And it wasn't a huge salary. It wasn't extravagent. It was about 52,000 a year. And the linen company kept right on making profits. And the salary made me work hard, to feel that I'd earned it.

And finally I bought my kids a house.

And they got a dog.

And they went off to college.

And that linen company, union and all, pensions and all, is still making money. Don't believe them when they tell you what you want is too expensive, or too much. It isn't. What you want is basic, and fair, and good.

That's why you pay union dues, after all.

The Lies They Tell

Chris Christie, Governor of New Jersey, recently said, "No longer can our society endure as two classes of people--those with union pensions and healthcare, and those that foot the bill."

Ha!

The truth of the Republican dream is the actual end of that sentence, an end that they will never come right out and say:

"No longer can our society endure as two classes of people--those with union pensions and healthcare, and those that foot the bill. I dream of an America where no one has pensions or healthcare or a decent wage. I dream of an America where a single father with two sons can't send them to college so that his employer can get fat off his sweat."

Don't let anyone fool you. I wasn't an elite. Nobody footed the bill but me. I busted my ass day in and day out. I sold my vacation time so my sons could have good Christmases and college tuition. I'm the one that got out of bed and drove that old truck and picked up dirty linen day after day, sick and well, through good times and bad.

The union just made sure I got a fair shake while I was working my ass off for the company.

Make no mistake. The union saved my ass. And that's the truth.