I’m sure this is not the way Brian McLaughlin wanted to be back on the job as a regular working stiff. But, this story in today’s Times did make me think that it probably wouldn’t hurt every union leader to do this once and a while–obviously not under these circumstances:

As he walked down West 59th Street yesterday, a burly man in a blue hard hat, he looked like thousands of other electricians in the city.

But this electrician, on lunch break from his $46-an-hour job building a luxury residential high-rise, was in no way a typical union journeyman.

He is Brian M. McLaughlin, once the city’s top labor leader and once an assemblyman from Queens, a man courted by mayors and governors until he was indicted last October, charged with stealing money from his union, from the State Assembly, even from a local Little League.

As he worked yesterday at his new job at 59th Street and 11th Avenue, Mr. McLaughlin wore a red T-shirt and dust-covered blue jeans, having put aside the expensive wool suits and silk ties of old.