Monday, September 3, 2007

Labor Day

... the day that the big media pay some passing and scant attention to the American working class. We once had a prosperous and wonderfully competent proletariat, people who were able to do nearly anything and do it with consummate craftsmanship and pride. Now the media Labor-Day reports are about stagnation or even loss in wages, medical coverage lost, and good jobs long gone to global wage arbitrage -- shipped away or undercut here. The Rs have always hated to see good money wasted on workers, feeling it was much better used by going to the corps and the rich. Their war on workers since the 70s has been remarkably effective. The Ds have basically treated our native working class with sneering contempt ever since the 60s, preferring to attend to various oppressed groups, some quite well off, many self-selected by their sense of grievance. Shame there's no real third-party movement out there that might offer some alternative for working-class America.

2 comments:

bruce ponder said...

your critique of demos' behavior omits the cowardly pragmatism of demos in congress (and in oval office, bill clinton) who chose to ignore organized labor's needs while taking its money. they feared being tagged with the union label. and, as part of a general trend, worker rights under the national labor relations act have stagnated and shrunk.

with only a few shining exceptions, demos have ceded the field to the corporations to run roughshod over labor organizers and workers who dare express favor for a union. and so today, while the wealthy and well-off take the day off, all the stores were open on labor day and the workers working.

adrift said...

An interesting post here (scroll down): http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/
says the real Labor Day is May 1. The U.S. set up its own to avoid association with socialism and, well, labor.