By Ben Velderman
EAGnews.org
    
SHARPSVILLE, Pa. – A Pennsylvania labor union has established a new, ground-breaking worker protection that rivals the 40-hour work week and the ban on child labor: the right to eat expired school food for free.   
     
Cafeteria workers in the Sharpsville Area School District have won the right to consume – at no expense – food and drinks with expired dates, as well as foods that have been reheated and are no longer fit to serve to students, reports SharonHerald.com.
    
This important new worker right was established only after the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees filed a grievance with the district in 2011, the news site reports. The district had been charging workers for the food, a practice the union says “violated established past practice.”
    
The issue was decided last month when the Sharpsville school board issued a three-page resolution granting this new right, but cautioning that workers will consume spoiled foods at their own risk.
     
All sarcasm aside, this story is important because it illustrates how petty, divisive and troublesome public employee unions really are.
    
Consider: The union’s grievance was filed in 2011 and resolved at the end of May, 2012. At the very minimum it took five months to resolve this ridiculous controversy. Sharpsville’s taxpayers should be disgusted that their superintendent and school board president actually had to waste time negotiating this matter with union representatives. 
    
Fighting for the right to dumpster dive not only affirms the combative nature of Big Labor, it also proves how intellectually barren the labor movement has become.
    
Like the old saying goes: Every great cause begins as a movement, becomes a business, and eventually degenerates into a racket.