Ed De Boer’s nostalgic trip down memory lane in his Sept. 20 letter “Unions root of nation’s problems,” implies that employee unions have caused the recession, the high rate of unemployment, and worst of all: the cost of a postage stamp increasing from 3 cents to a whopping 44 cents since 1936.
I don’t know how De Boer makes his living, but I’d be willing to guess that whatever money he’s made in his lifetime was made on the backs of union workers. Organized labor can take credit for non-union members making the wages they scrape by with. Factories ship jobs overseas so they can increase the bottom line, using sweat-shop workers to create wealth for the few, not because they can’t afford to pay American workers, all the while enjoying the tax breaks and loopholes. As for the public-sector unions that rely on tax revenues, the teachers, firefighters, police and more, is De Boer willing to stand up and say they don’t earn every cent they make? He’s right that those jobs can’t be shipped out. I hope his house doesn’t start on fire while he writes his union-bashing letters.
Jane Sturm
BATTLE GROUND
