Workers unite

I am not much for modern-day unions. As hard left as I am, I cringe at the pay, for example, some receive to make cars that nobody wants anyway. 

But 100 years ago, industry ruled. The dollar was all that mattered, and workers had no power. Unions changed that--insisting on child labor standards, pushing for living wages, forcing companies to recognize and support workers maimed or killed in dangerous work zones such as coal mines and cotton mills.

Nowhere was the battle between haves and have-nots as fierce as in the coal fields of Appalachia. Here is my favorite scene from "Matewan," John Sayles' 1987 film about the war between the company and union organizers there. Chris Cooper's character, a Communist sent to the coal fields to organize a union, tells white men wary of black and immigrant workers that color and nationality do not divide. "There ain't but two sides to this world--them that work and them that don't."