By BERRY CRAIG
AFT Local 1360
The good folks at Union Plus posted online a list of eight reasons Americans should thank a union. Number six is paid holidays.
Millions of our union brothers and sisters are spending the Memorial Day holiday with their friends and families. They're enjoying activities like boating, golfing, fishing, gardening, picnicking, or just plain relaxing.
I've been down at the railroad tracks in Arlington, Ky., where I live, pursuing my hobby: photographing passing freight trains.
I'm what they call a rail fan. But I also answer to "train nut."
Anyway, this morning I filled up my viewfinder with a pair of black, white and red northbound Canadian National locomotives. The duo was thundering up the tracks, presumably to be coupled to freight cars.
So here's to that union train crew for keeping the goods we need coming to us even on holidays.
"Unions built the middle class," President Joe Biden said, adding that union members are "ordinary Americans doing extraordinary things. The people who break their necks every day for their families and the country they love."
So while you chow down on a hot dog or wet a fishing line or otherwise have fun on the day off, remember our union brothers and sisters at work keeping the country going in a thousand ways.