Workers demand better jobs on May Day

[Viva_La_Revolution]

Source: Al Jazeera

Activists have marked international workers' day around the world with marches demanding more jobs, better working conditions and higher wages.

In South Korea, police said 50,000 people took part in a May Day rally in the capital, Seoul, on Sunday for better labour protections.

They also urged the government to contain rising inflation, a growing concern across much of Asia, where food and oil prices have been spiking and threatening to push millions into poverty.

Thousands of workers also marched in Taiwan, Hong Kong and the Philippines to vent their anger over the rising cost of living and growing disparities between the rich and poor.

Read more: http://english.aljazeera.net/news/asia-pacific/2011/05/20115114309235237.html

[PSPS]

1. Meantime, 'baggers in the US demand worse jobs for everyone.

I must say, the corporate media sure knows how to manipulate public opinion. Instead of demonizing those lucky enough to have a union job (or a non-union job with decent pay and benefits -- a direct result of there being union jobs,) people should be dragging CEO's out in the street for some vigilante justice. Sadly, the media has apparently convinced many people that the "solution" to their problems is that everyone's standard of living must go down. And now! (Except, of course, the billionaires who propagandize them.)

[Proletariatprincess]

2. Americans need to remember

that it was the American Labor Movement that invented the International Workers Day in Chicago 1886 in the struggle for the 8 hour day. Here is the song they sang as they marched that day:
We mean to make things over, we are tired of toil for naught,
With but bare enough to live upon, and never an hour for thought;
We want to feel the sunshine, and we want to smell the flowers,
We are sure that God has will'd it, and we mean to have eight hours.
We're summoning our forces from the shipyard, shop and mill,

Chorus
Eight hours for work, eight hours for rest, eight hours for what we will!
Eight hours for work, eight hours for rest, eight hours for what we will!

The beasts that graze the hillside, and the birds that wander free,
In the life that God has meted have a better lot than we.
Oh! hands and hearts are weary, and homes are heavy with dole;
If our life's to be filled with drudgery, what need of a human soul!
Shout, shout the lusty rally from the shipyard, shop and mill,

Chorus

The voice of God within us is calling us to stand
Erect, as is becoming to the work of his right hand,
Should he, to whom the Maker his glorious image gave,
The meanest of his creatures crouch, a bread and butter slave!
Let the shout ring down the valleys and echo from ev'ry hill,

Chorus

Ye deem they're feeble voices that are raised in Labor's cause?
But bethink ye of the torrent, and the wild tornado's laws!
We say not Toil's uprising in terror's shape will come,
Yet the world were wise to listen to the monitory hum,
Soon, soon the deep-toned rally shall all the nations thrill,

Chorus

From factories and workshops, in long and weary lines,
From all the sweltering forges, and from out the sunless mines,
Wherever toil is wasting the force of life to live,
There the bent and battered armies come to claim what God doth give,
And the blazon on their banner doth with hope the nations fill,

Chorus

Hurrah, hurrah, for Labor! for it shall arise in might;
It has filled the world with plenty, it shall fill the world with light;
Hurrah, hurrah, for Labor! it is mustering all its powers,
And shall march along to victory with the banner of Eight Hours!
Shout, shout the echoing rally till all the welkin thrill,



~~~~~~~~~
Let's remember that today American Workers are struggling to survive on part time work or being forced to work long hours without proper compensation. The early Labor struggles brought us a long way, but we have lost so much ground in our lifetimes.

[Viva_La_Revolution]

3. +1

Thank you for that.

[Hotler]

4. kicking n/t