Labor Day actually falls ON Labor Day this year. Monday, September 1, 2014.
It was the strangest of days, it was the most predictable of days.[icopyright one button toolbar]
Happy Labor Day. Are Unions Dead?
Jonathan Cohn / The New Republic— An interview with Rich Yeselson, labor strategist and expert … Are unions dead? — No. — Explain, please. — Their power has declined enormously, obviously, but unions, especially the largest ten or so, are still significant American institutions….
Yes: who could have predicted that, having literally bought themselves the best legislatures and Supreme Court that money could buy, that unions would be systematically crushed, beginning with that old “Union President” Ronald Wilson Reagan and the flight controllers’ union, the bastards, wanting sane working conditions for insane jobs!
But consider what happened the LAST time that Labor Day actually fell on Monday, September 1:
Deja vu.
Hurricane hits Republican plans
BBC News
Monday, September 1, 2008John McCain said it was time to move beyond party politics
The US Republican party’s convention has been scaled back as nearly 2m people flee Hurricane Gustav, which is now nearing New Orleans.
Senator John McCain, due to accept his party’s nomination for president, said it was no time for party politics.
The Category Three storm is due to make landfall soon from the Gulf of Mexico….
And, when you think about it, with the exception of the George W. Bush Emergency Bailout, that was the last time the GOPs even PRETENDED to care about the shared condition of all Americans.
There’s a lesson and a warning in that, as the Official Campaign Season actually begins.
There is a lot of anger out there, and even with every distraction that Faux Nooz can throw up (and I mean that literally) in the way of cognition, too many groups have been actively harmed for the old Limbaugh Try of turning up into down, night into day, fall into spring and wrong into right to ever completely be successful.
This whole notion of “no time for party politics” is currently being danced on as sore loser John McCain openly shows a split in American foreign policy that any and all enemies can exploit.
Speak often and carry a styrofoam baseball bat seems the implicit Doctrine. But that is mere irony.
On this, Labor Day, we remember that the only “check and balance” to unrequited greed a la WalMart, IS the Union movement. But that generations of propaganda and attacks have all but crushed the labor movement in the United States of America.
It is not a coincidence that the Middle Class is vanishing at the same rate.
Whether you realize it or not, unions help you in countless ways. Union workers still hold a substantial wage and benefit premium over non-union workers. Basically, you’re more likely to be paid better, have more vacation time, a better benefit package, than if you’re not in a union. Your workplace is likely to be a lot safer (compare unionized vs. non-unionized manufacturing facilities—and coal mines.) If union standards for pay, benefits, safety and health didn’t exist, there would be no pressure on non-union employers to, at least, try to approach them. Moreover, as the National Labor Relations Act states in its preamble, unions augment worker’s purchasing power and thus boost the entire economy…
Jonathan Cohn / The New Republic
And whatever else “it” is, it is NOT the Best of Times.
Courage.
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Mr. Williams has a lively blog His Vorpal Sword. This is cross-posted from his blog.
A writer, published author, novelist, literary critic and political observer for a quarter of a quarter-century more than a quarter-century, Hart Williams has lived in the American West for his entire life. Having grown up in Wyoming, Kansas and New Mexico, a survivor of Texas and a veteran of Hollywood, Mr. Williams currently lives in Oregon, along with an astonishing amount of pollen. He has a lively blog, His Vorpal Sword (no spaces) dot com.