https://buy-zithromax.online buy kamagra usa https://antibiotics.top buy stromectol online https://deutschland-doxycycline.com https://ivermectin-apotheke.com kaufen cialis https://2-pharmaceuticals.com buy antibiotics online Online Pharmacy vermectin apotheke buy stromectol europe buy zithromax online https://kaufen-cialis.com levitra usa https://stromectol-apotheke.com buy doxycycline online https://buy-ivermectin.online https://stromectol-europe.com stromectol apotheke https://buyamoxil24x7.online deutschland doxycycline https://buy-stromectol.online https://doxycycline365.online https://levitra-usa.com buy ivermectin online buy amoxil online https://buykamagrausa.net

Labor Day

Today, in the United States, we commemorate (with a holiday and everything!) and celebrate the economic and social contributions of workers in the US. Sure, that’s kind of considered passe these days, as the GOP fights to dismember the remnants of organized Labor in the US, and the Democrats make vague protesting noises and wave their hands feebly (note to President Obama — a front page note at whitehouse.gov about Labor Day might have been nice …).  The American Worker is lauded these in the ideal abstract as the Guy Who Can Do Anything, and rise from rags to riches and all that … but in practice, with Washington more focused on debt reduction than job creation, with unemployment remaining high and stagnant, with continued pushes for agreements that push jobs overseas, with attacks on the Minimum Wage, and attacks on labor agreements, and attacks on  …

… well, it’s a very, very hard time for American workers.  And the future is not looking all that bright.

Now, let’s not deify the American Labor Movement.  It’s a human institution or twelve, and thus subject to all the foibles and failings of any such. Union leadership has been corrupted at times by the same power that business leadership is corrupted by. Labor movements are sometimes just as likely to take on an arbitrarily confrontational mode as to look for a way for everyone (and their own long-term employment) to win.  Union contracts have sometimes gone beyond protecting basic benefits and safety for workers, and into Bizarro Worlds of entitlement and protecting the lazy and incompetent (I could tell you stories …).

But, like I said, that’s humanity.  Business and Capitalism are just as prone to move from bold entrepreneurialism that enriches the community and provides jobs for workers to tax-sheltered vehicles for earning another yacht or twelve for someone who inherited a billion or two from Dear Old Dad and is perpetuating it by shifting all the Deadly Poison Mining and Manufacture to sweatshop workers in Malaysia where they don’t worry if kids are born with two heads.

Let’s instead remember what the labor movement — and focus on workers as the producers of weath and representatives of America — have brought us.  Enjoy a 5 day work week?  Glad for overtime laws?  Pleased that your kids are in school rather than working in factories full of lots of exposed parts to cripple and kill them?  Glad you’re not working in a factory full of exposed parts to cripple and kill you? Happy that you can get time off (even if it’s unpaid) when your baby is born or your parents are ill?

Then thank the organized labor movement (and the politicians that responded to it).  Because we know that in a “state of nature” economy, too many employers will exploit and underpay and endanger and mistreat their employees any way they can get away with it for short-term, immediate profits.  We know this because that’s the way it used to be before organized labor.

Sure, it’s weak beer compared to labor protections elsewhere (and while some might mock, it’s not clear that the US economy is doing any better than, say, Europe’s).  But it’s something to remember and be thankful for on this Labor Day.

Some other thoughts …

“The story of the labor movement needs to be taught in every school in this land. … America is a living testimonial to what free men and women, organized in free democratic trade unions can do to make a better life … we ought to be proud of it!”

Hubert Humphrey, Speech, Minnesota State AFL-CIO Convention (1977)

“Wherever there are in any country uncultivated lands and unemployed poor, it is clear that the laws of property have been extended as to violate natural right. The earth is given as a common stock for man to labor and live on.”

Thomas Jefferson, Letter to James Madison (28 Oct 1785)

“If all the cars in the United States were placed end to end, it would probably be Labor Day Weekend.”

Doug Larson

We  have an ideal in this country that hard work will be rewarded.  That dedication to earning one’s pay will and doing right by one’s employer will mean one’s employer does right by you.

To the extent that organized labor interferes with or short-circuits that ideal, it has perhaps outlived its purpose.  To the extent that business betrays that ideal, organized labor — and public policy focus on the regular American worker — is still very much needed.

67 view(s)  

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *