I did not know, and do not want to know, and my father was always kind to his workers, who did not need to unionize.
This kind of statement, especially from an adult in this day and age, is not a sweet excuse but actually a refusal to look at reality and to change it.
It really means:
I do not care about what happened or is happening, I only care about feeling innocent and virtuous as an individual.
ADDENDUM: I should write about my mother in relation to this. One of the ways in which she was a good mother was that she did not try to teach this, but tried to teach against it despite having been taught a great deal of this herself.
Axé.