A (deeply) personal note: "Albert" is my pen name, not my actual name. Albert was my dad's brother, who was killed in his very first day on the job at Swift &

A (deeply) personal note: "Albert" is my pen name, not my actual name. Albert was my dad's brother, who was killed in his very first day on the job at Swift & Co. in the Chicago stockyards. He either fell off a scaffold, or it collapsed, I'm not sure which. Was there a meatpacker's union then, and did Albert belong to it? I don't know. Worker safety is a sine qua non of unions. In some industries, the union enforces safety regulations rigorously; in others, the workers' comp laws force the companies to watch out for it. Before unions, the companies didn't have to care, and there were no laws. As other people have pointed out here, safety laws protect everyone whether or not they belong to a union.