It’s Labor Day! And you know what that means…no, not hot dogs and barbecue and all the soporific consumption The Man wants you to practice. It’s a day of righteous anger.
Remember the Ludlow Massacre, when the corporate bosses joined hands with the police and military to slaughter men, women, and children with gatling guns and cavalry because they dared to strike for reasonable working hours and the right to not live in thrall to the company store. Woody Guthrie wrote a song about it.
And you all know about Joe Hill, right? Executed on a trumped up murder charge for inspiring the labor movement with sacrilegious songs that mocked capitalism.
You have to listen to his music — not only was it pro-labor, it was radically anti-clerical. Atheism has always been political, progressive, and opposed to injustice.
Remember:
Workers of the world, awaken!
Rise in all your splendid might;
Take the wealth that you are making,
It belongs to you by right.
Never forget, either, that Republicans hate unions, and Democrats lately haven’t been much better. Don’t trust anyone who loves gods more than they do labor. Don’t be fooled by the “right to work” rhetoric — that’s more about right to oppress.
Since you so kindly gave us a Trevor Moore song not too long ago, I’ll repay the favour with a fitting song of his: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7D-6zbSf_J4
That said, is this another case of the USA doing things “their own way” because that’s how it has to be? Labour Day as I know it is on May 1st.
Saganite @ 1:
A little labor on your part can go a long way in providing you with answers, y’know.
I wish I could go somewhere else on Labor Day weekend, in my town, it’s an excuse for drunken fireworks revelry.
…Workers of the World? You know, only the US and Canada have their Labour Day in September. Basically all of the rest of the world celebrates International Workers’ Day. On Mayday, the first of May.
So yeah, get that in order, you two.
re 1:
sympathies.
The Labor Day of America is so strong here (Boston area) that we were taught, in school, (ie propagandized) that May 1 (Mayday) is the day of ##Communism##.(with no other nuance to the date other than Marx&Lenin).
Rather than a fixed date of the year to celebrate, Labor Dar is defined as “first MONDAY of September”.
I assume, making it the first 3-day-weekend for the “workers”. That concept has become so popular, every holiday has started shuffling around to fall on their closest monday to make more 3daywknds
and from my mother’s great state of Maine, four years ago:
Governor LaPage ordered a mural taken down from the Department of Labor because he deemed it too pro-workers. It wasn’t down for long.
http://dismagazine.com/discussion/16516/censorship-corporate-values-and-the-destruction-of-the-american-working-middle-class/
Not celebrating today- too busy working.
Got one of those kinds of jobs (home care) where you don’t get holidays.
Microraptor @ 7:
I work for myself, and I’ll be working today.
Labor day is when all the cars caked with playa start returning from Burning Man.
And you know Roy Zimmerman has to have a song about it. You did know that, right? Anyway, here it is:
Do you have protests on Labor Day? We usually do. Syndicates/unions organize marches for workers’ rights.
Sadly, these last few years some of the strongest unions have become very political, so it kinda falls flat when you hear the same man yelling “We won’t accept [X]*” just so he could sign that the syndicate he leads agrees with the government on [X]* a month later.
Caine,
I sympathize. Public celebrations are really not my thing, public drunnkeness scares me a bit and fireworks are more often just annoying with next to nothing pretty to see.
* usually a pay cut for teachers or medical workers, or declining to give them a pay rise that has been promised ever since the last pay cut that was supposed to last only for a short while
An SLC lawyer has asked for a pardon for Joe Hill, but it’s doubtful it will happen. The descendants of the murder victims are stubbornly maintaining his guilt, even though evidence has surfaced confirming Hill’s side of things. (See the wiki for that.)
In a goodbye letter prior to his execution, he wrote:
Having lived in Utah, I wouldn’t want to be found dead there either. Joe Hill’s final will:
Don’t forget Sacco and Vanzetti when talking about those murdered by US courts carrying out the will of US Capitalism, and remember that Mumia Abu Ja,al is still in prison on trumped up murder charges.
If I’m not mistaken, I once heard Peter, Paul & Mary do a different version of “Pie in the Sky.” The chorus started with “Work and slave every day.” I don’t remember what came after that, except that the last line was “You’ll get pie in the sky when you die.” Can’t find it on YouTube, though.
re 14:
my google-fu not adequate to meet the challenge of googling those lyrics for us. My google fu says P,P&M never did Pie in the Sky. Closest match being Yuppies in the Sky.
maybe not PPM but some other folksiers, or maybe a bootleg rec of a live PPM concert?
[bein labor day, got nuthin to do. hayah]
Labor Day, the day when all the white collar workers have BBQs and the minimum wage slaves go back to work as usual to make sure that those white collars can still buy their charcoal and beer.
Nail on the head, Knight in Sour Armor. Unfortunately, that’s the same even in some more socialist countries than US.
I get things like public transportation (as long as workers are fairly payed for working on a holiday!), but shops, bars or restaurants? I mean, I wouldn’t really mind it if it was trully voluntay and people were fairly remunerated, but it never is that way.
@ #14 Georgia Sam
I never heard Peter, Paul, and Mary do it, but I remember Johnny Cash doing “Pie in the Sky.” It was a different song than the Joe Hill one, written by Roseanne Cash. Lyrics are here.
There’s also David Allan Coe’s “Take This Job And Shove It”. Johnny Paycheck’s cover is better known but Coe wrote the song.
Cross posted from the Moments of Political Madness thread.
Today being Labor Day, it was appropriate for President Obama to announce his executive order that requires all federal contractors to provide to employees at least seven days of paid sick leave.
Paid sick leave is common in most developed countries, but not in the USA. Because the USA has a Republican-dominated House of Congress, a bill introduced in March of 2013 to provide more workplace protections has never made it out of committee. As we’ve seen on other issues, President Obama is reduced to making what changes he can via executive orders that affect federal government employees and contractors.
Low income jobs are more likely to be jobs that offer no paid sick days. Once again, we have a feminist issue since low-income jobs are dominated by a female work force.. Once again, we have an Hispanic issue, since low income Hispanic workers “have less access to paid sick leave and family leave than any other racial group.” Link
Some states have passed laws requiring paid sick leave, and some cities have also done so. New York City, Portland (OR), Pittsburg, Seattle, San Francisco, the State of Connecticut, and New Jersey have paid sick leave laws. Our federal government lags behind thanks to a loud and largely illogical group of right-wingers in Congress.
Also cross posted from the Moments of Political Madness thread:
Supporting unions, (instead of breaking up unions as Scott Walker has done), turns out to be a feminist issue. Supporting unions = supporting women.
Link
Hmmm, also an Hispanic issue. And, it turns out, a healthcare issue. Women workers represented by unions are more likely to have benefits like health insurance. Greater financial security and health benefits, sounds good to me.
I’ve always been partial to Dick Gaughan’s rendition of Ludlow Massacre.
Lynna, OM @20
Also this group of right-wingers has an extremely liberal medical insurance plan and they don’t have to get permission from anyone to take as much time off as they want for any reason.
@Al Dente 23.
Well of course. You wouldn’t expect rich people to play by the same rules they impose on everyone else.
1934 West Coast Waterfront Strike, May to July, 1934. 6 dead. 150 arrested. Harry Bridges remained a force in this town through the 80s.
Then there’s the 1944 Port Chicago disaster which killed 320 and injured 390. This was a labor issue because the explosion was the result of poor training and safety practices. The government brought in untrained recruits to load explosives. They were set unrealistic goals and pushed by junior officers who were gambling on the outcome. Of course, a mistake happened. A month after the explosion, the military had not addressed any of the issues that led to the explosion, so a group of 50 of these workers mutinied and were subsequently convicted and sentenced for it. Fortunately they only served a year or so. This particular incident is often overlooked in America’s long history of labor disasters, officially because it was a military operation, but very likely because most of the victims and mutineers were black. Over 200 blacks were killed, and 230 injured.
Dick Gaughan’s version of anything. Pound a Week Rise, The Worker’s Song….
Ack! https://youtu.be/nrdl4ijru8o.
Come all of you workers who toil night and day
By hand and by brain to earn your pay
Who for centuries long past for no more than your bread
Have bled for your countries and counted your dead
In the factories and mills, in the shipyards and mines
We’ve often been told to keep up with the times
For our skills are not needed, they’ve streamlined the job
And with sliderule and stopwatch our pride they have robbed
But when the sky darkens and the prospect is war
Who’s given a gun and then pushed to the fore
And expected to die for the land of our birth
When we’ve never owned one handful of earth?
We’re the first ones to starve the first ones to die
The first ones in line for that pie-in-the-sky
And always the last when the cream is shared out
For the worker is working when the fat cat’s about
All of these things the worker has done
From tilling the fields to carrying the gun
We’ve been yoked to the plough since time first began
And always expected to carry the can
I wonder at the unadulterated wage slavery that is US working practice. Does anyone really benefit other than the employers in your society? Do you all still believe that you will all be millionaires when your luck changes / hard work is recognised? Dream on.
Chris Phillips @ 29:
Do you believe that all Americans are that ignorant? Do you believe it’s alright to be so insulting as to use still believe, as if every American is born with that belief implanted?
Al Dente, #23
Other than security, I think politicians should have wages and benefits that reflect the average wages and benefits for their communities. At the federal level, it should be representative of the national average; for state politicians, the state average; and so on.
I wonder what would happen if this is how the system worked. Would nobody run for office or would people who actually give a shit about governing fairly run?
Chris Phillips appears to be blithely unaware of where he is posting.
CP, speaking as a nonUSAnian myself I can’t help but wonder – have you ever actually read the blog? Bothered to notice what anyone says here? Or does being arrogant and obnoxious just come naturally to you?
@Saad #31:
This Spectator article offers some points to consider: high wages are seen as a return on investment by some. No wonder they’re happy to award themselves a 10% pay rise when the rest of us get nowt…
On the other hand, some MPs look at it another way, accepting only the average pay of someone in their constituency or staying on the same wage as they earned in their prior job.
Chris Phillips @29:
Why are you assuming that anyone here believes that?
If you are buying a hotdog from a cart on labor day, at least one person ISN’T getting labor day off. In fact, most blue collar workers never get labor day off.