Journal Sentinel Community Columnist Al Smith shares some apocalyptic words about the proposal to require employers in Milwaukee to provide paid sick leave to all employees.

In truth, I think a requirement limited to Milwaukee is a bad idea that could backfire; I’d like to see a statewide mandate, or better yet (dreaming here), a national one. But that’s not Smith’s problem with the plan.

Our noble columnist ratchets up the class-war rhetoric, opening by informing us that “leftists … never stop coming up with new ideas to steal other people’s money” and sarcastically inquiring why 9to5 isn’t also demanding that all workers get company cars. Gee, Al, I dunno, maybe they’re holding out for corporate jets?

I might have more patience with Smith’s failure to understand the difference between paid sick leave and a company car, or with his complaints about confiscating people’s wealth, if I hadn’t recently finished reading an advance copy of Mystic River author Dennis Lehane’s new book, The Given Day, a historical novel about the years 1918-19 which focuses on labor unrest, climaxing with the disastrous Boston Police Strike of 1919. (Don’t look for it in stores yet, as it’s not coming out until late September, but you can pre-order it here.)

This isn’t a book review, so I won’t be going into detail, but I will say that, though flawed, the book is well worth reading, and not just because it provides a salutary reminder of what workers and labor organizers had to face less than a century ago — it’s also an entertaining story. (Before Patrick McIlheran’s Reality Patrol arrests me, I do understand the difference between fact and fiction, but there’s a great deal of verifiable historical fact behind this fiction.)

In the same way that the TV series Mad Men reminds us why we need feminism, The Given Day vividly illustrates the need for labor unions (and laws protecting the right to organize). Of course, if the last several decades hadn’t seen the systematic dismantling of organized labor, most Milwaukee workers would be unionized, and a proposal like 9to5’s would be unnecessary.

But it’s Smith’s rhetoric that reminds me most viscerally of the novel, and of the real-life anti-labor forces from which it draws its inspiration. Smith compares requiring sick leave with mob lootings of people’s homes, and clearly thinks those stuck in dead-end jobs with no benefits deserve their fate, given his casual admonition that if they don’t like it, they should “expand their skill set.” Those who opposed organized labor also compared workers’ demands to theft, and were similarly contemptuous of those who were anything but grateful to have employment, no matter how terrible the pay and conditions.

To move away from the fictional past to the semi-fictional present, Smith hauls out the old “tax hell” nonsense. This tired idea bears even less scrutiny given MillerCoors’s recent decision to leave Milwaukee for Chicago — not exactly known for its low-tax, low-regulation environment — in part because of Chicago’s transit system, the kind of improvement for Milwaukee that those of Smith’s ilk rabidly oppose.

It seems that conservatives have really taken to this idea of a Second Gilded Age. One little hint, guys: Mark Twain coined the term “Gilded Age,” and it wasn’t complimentary.