As a middle class guy I used to get labor. As an economics student I was okay with unions because they allowed management to budget out labor costs specifically without having to guess what a future wage would cost.
I paid my dues. I paid my dues even in Right to Work states to belong to my fire associations (Texas and Virginia) and served as President of one. The International Association of Firefighters. I paid my dues despite the fact that I knew my dues in many cases were going for things I did not support. I paid my dues and I participated in our MDA work to raise money, but I look back now and wonder why.
When I think of the MDA Telethon, I think of the Jerry Lewis Telethon, but it has now been two years since he was removed from the program and I wonder where my Labor Day entertainment has gone. It makes me wonder why an organization that profited over $2B since Jerry Lewis started hosting his fundraising appeals would move away from the character that was Jerry Lewis.
Sure, he was something to deal with. He was the punch line in a number of jokes, but he always raised money and his labors were that of love. According to tax filings, MDA received pledges of $60M in 2011, but collected only half that. Part of me is sad because this was apparently a self inflicted wound.
They removed the namesake...doesn't everyone think of Jerry's kids when they think of muscular dystrophy? I support an entirely different group, the Never Forget Foundation, who has an entirely different mission, but I still grieve for what was a good organization that killed one of its own stars. It seems like the type of thing management would do to a labor member who had poured hours of his soul into his work, but it wasn't fitting the company priorities and in the end it is the company who loses by losing its most important resource. It's human resources.
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