It's Labor Day. Do you care?

[senseandsensibility]

I posted a thread about Labor Day exactly a year ago on DU that got no response. I re-posted it. Still no response. I changed the title to some guilt-inducing hyperbole and got a fair number of responses. It was exhausting.

DU, it shouldn't be so difficult to engage members of a progressive message board in a discussion of workers' rights, especially when we are suffering through the "administration" of one of the all time enemies of workers' rights ever to rule over this great country. Does everyone realize that * wants to take us back to the old days?

He wants to strip us of all safety regulations, our pensions, our forty hour work week, overtime and minimum wage. He makes no secret of this. He's already started. Do you care?

If you do, please post here. I would also like you to tell about a worker that you know, a real man or woman that makes this country better.

My nomination is the migrant farm worker. I see them all around me in California. They're harvesting peppers and corn in the rapidly disappearing farmland around my house. They do so in above one hundred degree weather, wearing long pants and long sleeved shirts to protect them from the sun. Some of these workers look like they're fifty or older. They live in shacks on the landowners' property. They work all day in the shadows of the homes they will never be able to afford. They are workers. They deserve rights. And I will be thinking of them and of all of America's great workers tomorrow. Will you join me?

[niyad]

1. I am listening to an endlessly repeating commercial on my favourite local

jazz station coming from some xian right-wing organization, saying that "labour day" is a time to honour the lord, with the usual bs. have already got a call in to the station, protesting. I understand about freedom of speech and advertising dollars, but I want to scream.

at least the local independent paper is pointing out how much we owe the unions for whatever few, precious rights workers might still have under this big-business, screw-the-workers administratin.

[senseandsensibility]

3. What ?

I honestly don't understand that commercial, but I know that repukes hate Labor Day and all it stands for.

[MADem]

2. I'll nominate the newly-unemployed from New Orleans

Those laborers who are evacuating NOLA, who lived paycheck to paycheck, and could not buy bus tickets for a weekday evacuation because Greyhound doesn't take credit and the eagle doesn't fly till Friday.

[senseandsensibility]

4. Thanks for your nomination

It's excellent. I have been thinking about the working people and unemployed in NO all week. They remind me of the Oakies in The Grapes of Wrath. Repukes consider them trash.

[LaPera]

5. A day for republicans to celebrate the crushing of America's Labor UNION!

And slowly it goes. ALL republicans hate Unions, every republican.

FACT; is workers rights goes completely against republican ideology.

[senseandsensibility]

6. You are so right, my friend

They are the enemy of ALL workers, and not just the unionized ones.

[StellaBlue]

7. I admit I don't know the history of why Labor Day is when it is

But I think we should have Labor Day the same day as EVERYONE ELSE in the world, May 1, to show international solidarity among all working people.

In Europe there are mass demos and parades on Labo(u)r Day. What do we do?

The thing that pisses me off is that laborers don't get the day off. On Labor Day, boycott (if you're not already!) fast food joints, convenience stores, Wal-Mart, strip malls, all retail, etc. THOSE are the laborers! THEY don't get the day off! I say keep the lawyers and businessmen at work with no secretaries and let the secretaries and retail workers alone off!!!

Ditto for Christmas Day. Anyone who shops or goes out to eat (?!) on Christmas Day gets a slap from me. If no one shopped, no one would have to work! And this from an athiest.

[mongo]

8. My one employee has been off since Friday

and won't be in until Tue eve. That makes 50 working hours in a row for my wife and I.

He makes several dollars an hour over minimum wage too.

If we could afford insurance for us, we'd get it for him too.

[LaPera]

9. I agree with you. Republicans, (and they are in power) don't want any

worker solidarity, especially internationally.

They are so afraid their profit margin will be affected by fair wages, worker safety and health benefits for workers...

The republicans and the media they own, keep people believing May 1st, "May-Day" is about communism.

Anything, that they believe as a threat to their profits is blamed on that dastardly communisium...

So fucking what?

[senseandsensibility]

10. You make a good point

I agree with you. I already boycott all those places, but ESPECIALLY on Labor Day it is important.

[HereSince1628]

13. Unfortunately, the poor work everyday they can.

A Holiday or Sunday or late night differential can make a big difference on their generally tiny pay checks.

I too think that labor day should be May 1 but of course that date became recognized as a Marxist/Leninist/Maoist holiday date. And that legacy isn't going away although most of the communism and socialism they represented have.

[moof]

11. Do realize that Monday is Labor Day ?

[jpgray]

12. That's what I thought

:shrug:

[senseandsensibility]

14. Yes I do

I suppose I wasn't technically correct when I said "It's Labor Day." So it's Labor Day Week-end. Better? That's not really the point, is it? How about some nominations of working men and women?

[moof]

19. Sorry to rain on your parade but what use is a union to slaves

not that labor should be relagated to the back burner but in case you missed it America has been taken over quite literally by corporate leaders. Until people take back their right to valid vote counts it seems a waste of time to lament loss of power in the city when the whole country is in a black out.

[donco6]

15. I was going to mention that.

But you beat me to it.

[Morning Dew]

16. mini rant

I'll be thinking of the local AMFA workers who are on strike Northworst Airlines) and cursing their union pilot and union flight attendant brothers and sisters who shat on them in their time of need for solidarity.

With so many people on the face of this planet, our labor is worth just about zilch to big business.

[Lars39]

17. New UNION forming for NonUnion Workers and Retirees

http://www.workingamerica.org/home.cfm

[senseandsensibility]

18. Thanks!

Good info!:)

[Lindsay]

20. I do care.

My grandfather was a member of the Typographical Workers Union. He started out as a printer at a newspaper in the 1920s. He eventually became the president of the local, and was in Washington during WWII on the War Labor Board.

But I'm even prouder of my father, who was with the Retail Clerks Union. He started out as a waiter, then went to work in a grocery store. After the interruption for WWII, he went on to become the business manager of the local. And he spent his tenure working with the NAACP to get African Americans into the union.

I'm a liberal born and bred, so Labor Day means a lot to me.