The Importance of Labor and Labor Day
Excellent commentary and history of labor in the United States. Labor Day has had its ups and downs in this country, as have labor laws and the rights of workers. Our current Administration gives lip service to valuing workers, while eroding labor rights at seemingly every turn. We need to strengthen labor protections both in this country and worldwide to lessen the ability of the oligarchs to exploit the workers who produce the goods and services that make so few of them even more enormously wealthy while pitting us against each other to work harder while lowering our standard of living slowly but surely.
The path that Trump and the GOP are taking us down will only succeed in making most of us poorer in the long run and distract our attention from their exploitation of our labor to augment their bank accounts through use of their undeserved privilege, which they see as either their birthright or the fruits of their superior merit as human beings or some combination thereof. Immigrants and people of different religions, races, ethnicity or sexual or gender preference are not the enemy. The hunger for power over others and greed for material possessions in excess of real need for them cause the problems that then become scapegoated into irrelevant differences used as excuses for much of the warfare and social turmoil that result in the situation like that we face now.
Hopefully, we will someday see a society where all work to improve the welfare of all in a more cooperative endeavor, so that all will have enough to not only survive, but to thrive, unhindered by greed-driven wars and grand theft. The way to achieve this is to stop electing folks like our current President and his powerful enablers elsewhere in government and society at large and choose a path that progresses to more equality and peace rather than regression to times when life was even worse for most people than it is now. Turning the clock back on labor and worker rights, like dismantling the social safety nets that took so long to develop, as has been broadly supported by some very prominent leaders in this country and abroad recently, is something we must oppose with every fiber of our beings. – RJC
Friends of Padre Steve’s World,
Today is Labor Day and sadly many people don’t really understand its significance. For decades organized labor has been demonized by the descendants of people who died to secure decent working conditions, wages, and benefits for regular hard working people. The attacks on labor and workers have become much more pronounced under the Trump Administration than any prior administration since that of Herbert Hoover.
But most of the people lucky enough not to have to work on Labor Day really don’t know why it it matters, and whips in spite of those who despise labor and care not a whit about working people, who simply to use business terminology are simply human capital or resources. I actually despise those terms because they dehumanize people by turning them into impersonal economic units of measure.
So today I am digging into the vault to explore why Labor…
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