Welcome to the Working Class Struggle: More Tea Breaks

A strike at a UK refinery has been a major controversy of late and has caused a number of sympathy strikes that have only served to exacerbate the fragile economic environment. All sorts of intense rhetoric was flying about depicting the issue as one of deep economic and social importance. Turns out, a government-funded panel has discovered, the dispute boiled down to "tea breaks." (For the Anglo-phobic or Amero-centric among you, this would be equivalent to "coffee breaks.") You see, the companies doing the work were able to offer it to their clients more affordably, not because they were importing low-skilled coolies from dirt poor countries or employing substandard materials, but because they allowed fewer tea breaks. It was actually cheaper to bring workers from the other side of Europe and house them, than it was to hire the locals, all due to overgenerous perks. Why couldn't a British company get the work and hire locals to perform the jobs? The tea breaks are compulsory, as mandated by a union agreement. Of course, the unions would never admit they overreached. Instead the law is wrong, and doesn't "put working people first." Kind of like our "jobs bank."

Will the struggle of the working man ever end?