Last night, President Bush was set to deliver his "State Of The Union" address. We didn't get to watch it.

However, I would suspect that unions are still pretty healthy in both the U.S. and Canada.

Here's my basic history lesson of unions, for anyone else that may have missed Bush's speech.

Way back in olden times, employers used unfair labour practices, and forced their workers into unsafe workplace conditions, often for very low pay. Some employers would even stoop so low as to use children. Truthfully, these employers would have used dog and cats, if they could have trained them to operate heavy equipment.

Unions were invented, which allowed grunts...I mean labourers...to protect both their working conditions, and their wages. And children were prevented from working for peanuts, except for family-owned businesses, traveling circuses, and professional sports concession stands (the last two examples just involve working WITH peanuts, not necessarily for them).
]
With no forward motion on machinery training for pets, they too were protected by proxy...

Which was all fine and good, when people needed to work in coal mines, fireworks factories, or sculleries, just to survive.

In modern times, unions offer protection for working conditions in places like commercial haggis manufacturing companies, or Starbucks. I suspect this is to ensure that no one will ever be forced to lift too heavy a ladle of frothed milk, or handle too many goat stomachs...

While this is possibly an over-simplified history of unions, I hope that it makes up for anyone out there (like myself) that missed the "State Of The Union" address.

Chow for now!!