Squaring Off for the UnionAbout a year ago, I was in a supermarket, checking out with a box of wild grape Pop-Tarts and a block of cheddar cheese. The employees at that particular supermarket are unionized, and contract negotiations were stalled. I paid cash, and I noticed the girl who was bagging my two items was wearing a button on her company-issued, logo-ed polo shirt. "I don't want to strike," the button read. "But I will if I have to." She was a small girl, and I can call her "girl" because I was 52 last year and she looked maybe 22. Three earrings in her right ear. Two in her left. Dyed blond hair in a ponytail. Fingernails painted navy blue. "I read your button," I said to her. "Yeah?" she said, turning her chin up a fraction of an inch, leaning her head back a little. "If you strike, this store won't get a nickel from me or anyone in my family until it's over," I told her. "Tell your boss." "Thank you," she said. It was a nice little exchange, but what I liked best wasn't what I said and it wasn't her "thank you," either. No. I liked the little tilt of her chin. It was defiant. In the phrase commonly used in barroom conversation, she "squared off on me." I'm sure lots of other shoppers had seen her button, and some of them had probably told her she was "lucky to have a job," or that unions had ruined the American economy, or that union members were greedy idiots who expected too much. So, seeing a guy my age, a grumpy-looking guy, she figured she knew what was coming. And I'm 6 feet 1, 210. She was 5 feet 2, maybe 115. But she squared me off, the same way one man will square off another man just before the first punch comes looping through the air. I don't give a damn to live in a country where people are "happy to have a job," and I don't give a damn for people who won't square you off every now and then. I like a country where you can tell the boss to go to hell every so often.
And, yeah, I'm a union member right now, but I've worked union and non-union jobs because I wasn't raised to turn down work. I'm 53 years old, and I got my first job when I was 15, and I've never in my life cashed an unemployment check. I've never crossed anyone's picket line. My father never belonged to a union in his life, and he wouldn't cross a picket line, either. My father, by the way, was a boss, a department head at a large corporation, but he taught me that anyone who works is as good as anyone else who works, and he knew the names of the janitors in his office building. And the bosses have their unions, too. A chamber of commerce is a union for bosses. So are national associations of contractors or paper producers or small-business people. The little blond girl bagging my Pop-Tarts was wearing a button on her chest, and she owned that button, and she owned a piece of her union, and she squared off on a big, ugly old man because she wanted to keep what she owned, same as we all do. I admire that. It's tough, and it's a little impolite, and it's a refusal to bow down. Americans have a reputation for tough, impolite refusal to bow down. Up in Wisconsin, the teachers are out in the streets, and I'm with them. I think their union should be smart enough to take a pay cut if they have to, but I think they own their bargaining rights, same as that little blond girl owned that little button on her shirt and the beating heart in her body. But I'll tell you something. Any unionized government employee anywhere who has ever crossed a private-sector picket line or voted for a politician with an anti-labor stance should have known it wouldn't stop with the grocery-baggers and the meat-cutters and the roofers and the carpenters. You today. Me tomorrow. Square off. To find out more about Marc Munroe Dion and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit www.creators.com. COPYRIGHT 2011 BY CREATORS.COM 
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