Oh Industry

May you live in interesting times. Whether or not this is an ancient Chinese curse or an invention by a 1950's science fiction writer doesn't really matter. What matters is that interesting times do occur. It does happen that a powerful union can be hell-bent on forcing a whole region's employers to put money into an inadequately-controlled employee security scheme which happens to be the brain-child of one of the union's leaders. It does happen that workers in one company are forced to take industrial action because of the dictates of a powerful union, even though they already have wages and conditions far in excess of their colleagues in other companies. It does happen that non-unionised employees have to try to achieve their company-set goals and keep the company profitable even during periods of industrial unrest.
I just wish these tensions (however interesting) wouldn't get in the way of the technical challenges of a science/engineering position.