Dental Plan - Lisa needs braces

I was thinking about unions today. Well, actually I was talking about unions today. Then I started thinking about the Simpsons quote that I almost used as the basis for my thesis -

You can't treat the working man this way. One day, we'll form a union
and get the fair and equitable treatment we deserve! Then we'll go too far, and get corrupt and shiftless, and the Japanese will eat us alive.

Do we still need unions? I mean I understand that some companies it just makes sense and for factories and mines and other places like that it makes sense to make sure that there aren't safety violations (well, we all know there still are, let's look at the Westray Mine disaster). Most unions just seem keen on political action that has little or nothing to do with the workplace. I don't currently belong to a union. I have belonged to a union in the past. I fought with my union guy, he didn't reply to my emails. Here was my biggest concern - they were saying that we should take part of the time from our tutorials or sessions with students to talk about why we disagree with war. To me, this is asking me not to do my job properly. It's also telling me that I should have certain political positions because I belong to the union. I don't like being told what to think. We then received many emails asking us to take action
against some group or other and take certain political stands. I emailed my union rep and told him that a) I don't like being told what to think, b) I don't like my union dues to go toward political movements that I may not agree with just because the people
in charge of the union believe in them and c) I don't like being told by my union, which I have to belong to because of my JOB, telling me not to perform that JOB properly. I then continued on into some well thought out arguments about the fact that telling me to oppose the war in Iraq because it would be supporting the US and supporting the US is supporting capitalism and capitalism is inherently evil is a somewhat flawed line of reasoning. I also went on to point out that as a program with a large number of international students, they were more than likely telling people that they were inherently evil as capitalists. I resisted the urge to mercilessly mock
arts students with the time to send out union messages while doing a graduate
degree...I thought that showed a fair bit of restraint on my part.