Imagine

Let us envision a scenario where the current economic fuzziness continues down the path of a true recession. The dollar keeps dropping, inflation slices through the marketplace on the back of rising oil and food prices, and consumers lose confidence. As factory orders drop, layoffs hit the local factories. Unemployment surges to levels we have seen in this country for a generation. What if 6,8,10% unemployment hits your community?

What if you were a young American struggling to provide for your family and the local parts plant begins a series of layoffs? The plant does the right thing, laying of the newly hired first. What if you were out of work and the next guy on the line who had been there a month or a year longer kept his job? What if the still employed worker was an illegal alien, or maybe just working on a green card?

I am thinking the beatings the old-time Steelworkers put on scabs at the Homestead Strike could be mild in comparison.

I am certainly not advocating such recourse, merely pointing out that I have spent my life around manufacturing and I could see such things happening.