[AlexW]

"BTW...I bet that boy has never worked one day inside a steel mill. He's a paid soft handed flack probably on a cushy contract with a buddy or relative in the union hierarchy."

I am going back to about 1960...My uncle owned and operated a
plastic injection molding company in Mineola, NY.
He and his wife were on call 24 hours a day, working their fingers to the bone, before he sold the business and retired to a mountain top ranch in Arkansas.
During his last year, the union picketed his factory.

Now, uncle Buck is a small but wiry guy who would not take anything of of anyone.
He walked up to one picketer one morning...grabbed his hand, turned it over, and said " You G******, Son of a B****, You never worked a g****** day in your life...Now get the H*** away from here, or I will beat the H*** out of you.

[nuke rocketeer]

When I was working in Toledo a couple of years ago, I struck up a conversation with a guy standing on a corner holding a going-out-of-business sign for a local store. He told me that he was a 'professional' picketer and protester. He told me that when a union went on strike or a local democritter politician needed a crowd he could not draw naturally for the TV cameras, they would hire people like him. If a "public interest" group needed a crowd to protest some imaginary problem, they would hire them to come in. I did a little research after that and found out that a lot of money is spent by unions and liberal political groups on hiring these people.