We had enjoyed a long leisurely Labor Day weekend but by Tuesday morning it was time to get back to work.

But, still lounging in her bathrobe, Marge lingered over her coffee.

It turned out that the Tuesday following Labor Day was one of those furlough days that state workers like Marge have suddenly had tacked on to the beginning or end of their holidays.

We are all making sacrifices during this bad economic spell so I can live with my spouse receiving furlough days, cost of living freezes and increased medical insurance premiums.

When the state's bottom line improves, I would expect the benefits to be restored.

Of course, much of the reason government employees workers have these benefits is they belong to labor unions.

You can see why employers like to call all the shots.

But what's surprising is most private sector employees seem to align with their bosses-- against their own interests. Sorta like a version of Stockholm syndrome.

Many workers have been told unions are corrupt or act thuggishly.

That attitude is based on old stereotypes. It's been 25 years since Jimmy Hoffa disappeared.

When I first started covering local schools, the Highline Education Association president was a kindergarten teacher. If you crossed him, the worst he could do was make you take a "time-out."

I have always looked at belonging to a union as having someone to stick up for you in the workplace. We don't even begrudge allowing a torture killer to have a defense attorney.

(Don't worry. I'm not going to start passing out union sign-up cards. I'm just sayin'....)

In our rugged individualist society, the notion is that a worker will be compensated for what he or she is worth. But now there are five unemployed workers for every open job.

And how much more should the CEO make than the typical employee? Twenty times? One hundred times? Three hundred times? As much as he can get? We've already undergone wealth redistribution as the gap has risen dramatically.

So are those mean all-powerful unions forcing poor powerless companies to pay exorbitant wages and benefits? I remember how my salary was determined during my quarter-century stint as a "guild' member at the Seattle Times.

It was arrived at after long arduous hard-fought negotiations between my union representatives and company officials. It usually came right down to the end in a nerve-wracking finale just before a threatened strike/lockout. Maybe basing pay on the cost-of-living index is a better way to go.

In my later years, the union and company negotiated mileage pay cuts and a "pay for performance" system where managers determined who got raises and who did not.

Fortunately I got out before both sides employed the nuclear option that resulted in a long strike.

Once on the outside, I could manage a chuckle when contrasting how my salary and publisher Frank Blethen's compensation were determined. In a Wall Street Journal profile, the writer revealed when Blethen was thwarted in his effort to give himself a big raise, he fired the compensation board.

Boy, don't you wish you could have done that?

As the Seattle Times has proudly proclaimed in giant ads, the Blethen Family is now deep into its fourth generation of family control over the newspaper.

"All in favor of giving Uncle Frank a raise say, 'Aye.' "

One last point:
It's fun to poke at the big metropolitan daily but we have to give credit to the Blethens for preserving serious journalism in our area.
Anti-government foundations insist public employees have surpassed private employees in wages for similar jobs. Public unions, of course, contend the opposite.

Fortunately, the Seattle Times still has the resources to conduct a detailed impartial investigation.

Here's the paper's conclusion: "In eight of the 12 largest categories of state employees, median wages were below the pay of counterparts working elsewhere. In nearly all categories, wage ranges for state employees tracked or lagged behind their nonstate counterparts; the lone exception was college and university administrators."

However, state employees earned an average of $54,079 in 2007 while private sector workers averaged $49,777, the investigators reported. That includes not only salary but also employer contributions to retirement plans, health insurance, and social security.

But the reporters point out that the state's payroll includes more high-earning occupations like finance specialists and fewer low-paying private industry jobs like restaurant servers.