We owe Monday's holiday to the efforts of organized labor. In my family, the yin and yang of unions was ever present. My father, the supervisor of a furniture warehouse in Philadelphia and thus part of management, was bedevilled by the Teamsters union. It imposed men on the payroll whom he often found sleeping or missing and it segregated work so that truck loaders couldn't be asked to sweep the floor during downtime. When he complained to the union, he was met with veiled threats of violence.
