Looks like there’s a labor dispute outside the Santa Monica Place construction site. The sidewalks were crowded with surly construction workers blocking pedestrian traffic (Yes, I am trying to jog here).

I wouldn’t exactly call it organized, although they did seem to all know that they didn’t have to work today.

I rarely feel so conflicted and so intensely about a subject as I do about “organized” labor. On the one hand, I really like the 40-hour work week. And I’m glad we don’t have child labor in this country. These are both gifts of the organized labor movement.

On the other hand, the labor movement seems to have run amok in the US. It seems we have created a trade barrier; only, instead of creating it between us and another country, we’ve created it within our own economy as a blockade between the market and one of our nation’s great resources of production.

It makes sense, I just think maybe labor is a little too powerful for its own good. It might be wise to have a better check to better balance it.