So are you saying, Peter, that all the volunteers doing this heroic work are "union" workers?

I suspect that the volunteers in this and any other disaster will come from all sorts of very high calibre "humans" as you put it, whether union or not, probably some with particular expertise in the work that needs to be done, but also others who are just plain heroic individuals.

They are all heros in my eye, whether union or not, and I wonder why the connection to "unions" even came up in this case? That's about the last thing that came to my mind while watching this horrible tragedy --- whether or not those heros trying to contain this monster were "unionized".

I read the article and nowhere does he say, or even infer, that only unionised workers are the ones involved, so, Palomino, the answer to your first question is, "No!"

I also think you have completely missed the point. The article was about the perception and accusations made by opponents of unions that unionised workers are only concerned with their own welfare, are self centred and selfish, when the observable facts flatly contradicts that propaganda. Whether the majority, the minority or even a single person among those putting their lives on the line for the safety of the general public in Japan are unionised, makes little difference, since even a single worker doing that would prove that anti-union propaganda of that sort are just blatent lies.

The fact is that many unionised workers do similar daily in unsafe workplaces, while out of the glare of publicity. This is different in that the people concerned know full well what will happen to them, so they are akin to soldiers on a battlefield.

Perhaps some are non-union, perhaps not. It doesn't matter. The contrast between these workers behavior and the behavior of the Wisconsin politicians and others of like ilk is stark. That is the point.

The Fukushima 50 are actually 180 men who who rotate through the work in groups of 50.

As they say, these are people who are similar to other workers who are willing to do high risk work - crab fishers, hand fallers, soldiers, etc.

There is one interesting aspect to this. Older workers are more sought after than young workers for the simple reasons that the older the individual, the more likely it is that they will die of old age than the results of radiation exposure.

Of course, like a 9/11 building collapse, all bets are off if there is a further explosion, which is excactly why they are there to try to avoid that.

Yes, these are heroes.

http://abcnews.go.com/International/japan-nuclear-crisis-nrc-spent-fuel-pool-unit/story?id=13146516&page=2

"Yet it is precisely these workers who run our mills, staff our hospitals and schools, and operate our rail, air and other forms of infrastructure. Without them, our society could not function."

I am sorry, but to bring these workers, into this story, whether union or not is totally misplaced. Those workers, during their normal daily routines, do not even remotely equate to the 180 or more people who are dealing with the nuclear plant situations.

The entire story is out of place and out of scale. In fact, by making that comparison, Peter and Dawn are showing total disrespect for the individuals who are doing the work of trying to contain possible mega nuclear disaster in Japan.

It is much like the often misguided analogies to the Jewish holocaust. Totally insensitive to scale of events and scale of dedication.

Right on Gus.

Human beings have so many flaws but sometimes the actions of individuals such as these brave workers show us how good we can be.