Bible Summary:

Moses and Aaron ask the king of Egypt to let the Israelites leave to worship God for a three-day festival in the desert. The king refuses and complains they are disrupting the work.  That day the king stops providing straw to the slaves and make them find their own while producing the same number of bricks. The king says they must be lazy if they need time off to go and offer sacrifice to their God.  As the slaves leave, they run into Moses and Aaron to complain that they have caused the king to hate the Israelites and an excuse to kill them, especially since they are more numerous than the Egyptians.

My Thoughts:

First Labor Negotiations: This is the first documented labor negotiation. It starts with a request by the negotiators, Moses and Aaron, for three days off for religious reasons. The company, the king of Egypt, refuses and adds to their workload. The people falter and complain to their negotiators.

Labor unions began shortly after the beginning of the industrial revolution in the late 1800’s when companies took advantage of workers with long hours and low pay. This time period created very wealthy people like Andrew Carnegie on the backs of cheap labor.

Today, CEOs earn 343 times more than a typical worker (see CNN Money story), an upward trend that started in the early 1990’s (see Stanford historical graph).