Labor of Love

Having worked in Human Resources and Human Resource Systems for my entire career, I have to admit to having a lot of disdain for unions in my past...however...

We Need Unions Now More Than Ever!
Unions originally started to allow workers to come together and have some leverage with their employer when negotiating fair working conditions, salaries and as unions started to get more and more influential, they were able to get benefits for employees.

For a number of years, employers, in general, were doing a decent job of treating their employees well, and in large part, unions started to be less and less necessary.  More so, unions seemed to have more of a disruptive influence to business and started to work more toward self-preservation than supporting employees in their collective bargaining with the employer.

Now that CEO's and Wall Street are all about sucking every dollar from businesses, even if it might mean the demise of a business or even the total economy, unions are going to be more and more necessary to help fight for workers.

Hard to know the answer to the greedy and power-hungry...whether it's CEO greediness or union management greediness.

Hope you had a great Labor Day (even if you're not in the States)!

Current Knitting
I was able to finish a project.  Yes, the Susan G. Komen Race For The Cure Socks for People That Fucking HATE Pink are finished!

I love how these socks came out.  Someone asked if I had a pattern for these socks and I don't.  I can say, they're knit on US1 needles (2.25 mm) on a total of 68 stitches.  They're toe-up, using the figure-eight cast-on, starting with 24 stitches and increasing up to 68.  The heel was designed on the needles based on a description of Wendy Johnson's heel (or so I was told), and the stitch pattern is from the Basic Sock pattern from The Knitting Man(ual) by Kristin Spurkland.  Her stitch pattern is a 9 stitch repeat, so I had to take out 4 stitches to make it fit the 68 stitches.

Barb suggested some ways of having the socks stay up better, but I would much rather have them slouch a bit, and if Thaddeus doesn't want that, then I will wear them...lol (okay, so it was just a grin!).