Union workers already sharing in pain

In the June 19 "Our View" column, Daily Herald management asks Democrats and unions to "share pain." Excuse me, but I think Democrats, and especially union workers, have already been absorbing economic pains ever since the '80s when President Reagan launched a full-bore economic attack on union workers.

It is manufacturing (blue collar union folks, factory workers, etc.) who have steadily been eliminated for decades now. It wasn't mortgage brokers, bankers, insurance company people, investment brokers or medical provider corporations, making money hand over fist until very recently, who had made any sacrifices. Since the Herald is nonunion, I'd like to remind them of what autoworkers have suffered because of insane management schemes in Detroit. GM was basically a financial corporation which happened to own a car-making division just before it collapsed. All these blue collar and manufacturing folks have been "giving at the office" for decades. They gave part of their pay; they gave part of their health insurance; they gave up vacation time, cost-of-living adjustments, and many gave up their pension money, their physical health, and millions ultimately had their jobs shipped off to other countries as a "thank you."

Most union contracts (especially national contracts) are written very tight, and with good reason. So if the employees agreed to take extra time off, contracts must first be very clearly amended to determine exactly how taking extra time off affects a worker's vacation time, sick days, service days counting toward retirement, health insurance and employee payments toward any of these which would not be there to deduct from the paycheck if a worker gave up work day's salary. In short, things nowadays are not as simple as some people think.

Jim Peterson

Hoffman Estates