Spreading misery via unions

The union workers at Moncure Plywood had no idea when they walked off the job in July that they would be on the picket line through the tropical storms of fall, the chill of winter -- and the near-collapse of the U.S. economy.

Now, after seven months of picketing beside a rural road in Chatham County, they find themselves at the center of a rare and protracted labor dispute, fighting for shorter work weeks, lower health-care costs and other workplace rights in the worst of economic conditions.

Laid-off workers from other factories flocked to take their jobs, (is anyone really surprised? - ed.) and in the past few months, the company has shed a third of its work force as the market for furniture dries up. The striking workers -- many of whom spent 30 or 40 years mixing glue, sorting wood or driving forklifts -- are faced with searching for jobs in the worst economy in a century.

The largely black work force of Moncure Plywood, which makes high-quality wood used mostly in furniture, unionized in 1968 at the peak of the civil rights movement. For years, the plant provided the best jobs in the region for young blacks who wanted to leave behind impoverished farms.

The union wages gave them a shot at the middle class, unlike the jobs their parents held cleaning houses or schools.

"I saw my mama and daddy struggle," said Charles Raines, who took a job in the plant 40 years ago.

"I wanted to do better, and I did. I refuse to go back to the '50s and '60s." ...

"We had two choices," Cameron said. "We could be treated like slaves, (ahem -- slaves were not paid for their work and didn't enter the middle class - ed.) or we could stand up and fight."