David Sirota calls us away from our picnics and barbecue to remember why Labor Day was created.
He reminds us that there are corporations today that fight to keep unions out, to pay their workers the bare minimum, to deny sick days, and yet pay their CEOs in the millions.
He writes:
“Today, from Wal-Mart to Amazon to fast food chains, the largest and most famous American brands are often the most hostile to unions. That has created a society in which it is standard operating procedure for corporations to regularly engage in the most intense union busting tactics. Meanwhile, from the Democratic president to Republican Party leaders, many of the most influential politicians proudly position themselves as opponents of the labor movement.
“To say the least, these moneyed interests, the media outlets they sponsor and the political puppets they own have no interest in venerating a labor movement that challenges plutocracy. And so just like the modern celebration of Martin Luther King Day often ignores Dr. King’s economic justice campaigns, so too does Labor Day typically circumvent a celebration of organized labor.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
The eight hour day was a hard fought battle resulting in a great victory for labor. Now the roll-back of these gains is being spearheaded by the corporate charter school movement urged on by Barack Obama and his Department of Education*:
KIPP DC wins $10 million in Race to the Top education grant …
[This is merely a fraction of the funding KIPP receives from taxpayers]
“KIPP DC will receive $10 million to expand the Capital Teacher Residency, a teacher-training program it runs…”
After graduating from this abbreviated program which circumvents state regulations:
“KIPP St. Louis teachers are in school Monday through Friday from 7:10 a.m. to 5:00 p.m., with most arriving before and staying late. Many take on additional leadership roles, working as Saturday School Coordinators, Grade Level Chairs, and Content Chairs. They are available to help students with homework until 9 p.m. via school-provided cell phones. Our teachers commit to teaching some Saturday School classes and…”
http://www.kippstl.org/join-us/we-are-team-and-family/print/1
Yes, they try to make people work more and hours and take on other jobs for no pay. It is really disgusting. What I find the most repulsive is that billionaires like Oprah, Gates, Bloomberg, etc. are the people promoting this garbage. I guess they don’t think people have spouses, children, family members, or other jobs that they need to pay attention to.
The five day work week is gone. Even teachers are being pressured into working Saturdays either to baby sit for students who have discipline problems or have fallen behind in credits or need special tutoring or re-teaching during what Administrators happily call Saturday School. The schools get hundreds of dollars per student and pay the teacher a small fraction of that, maybe $18 per hour per class which may be 35 or more if the Administration can get enough students to attend. School Administrations make a nice profit, but who are they spending this surplus on during these times of cutting teacher pay? This must have been something created by one of those Capitalists like Bill Gates. I think Micro-soft might use something like this to rate their workers. Lets see, cut teachers pay, then force them to have to work Saturdays to pay for their home mortgage if they have a home or to pay their ever increasing electric or gas bills which seem to increase without any public input. Is this a tax increase? Oh No, it is Capitalism and a group of wealthy people are getting their well deserved profit from their investment. No one gets a profit from any Educational System, unless you live in a foreign country like Germany. So we should not invest in them? Next idea will be Sunday School and We are not talking about Church related Sunday School even though someone may figure out a way to pay the Churches to do it for less and of course it will be more successful if the state pays them enough money and we can do this with vouchers and give the money directly to the family to use at the Church or school of their choice. I wonder why Arne Duncan hasn’t imposed this idea on schools, yet? Oh, he is currently telling the President to fire missiles at Syria and reward with RTTT grands to the different ships depending on how well they perform and close or mothball the worst performing ships and fire all the crew or replace 25% of the crew with SFA (Solders For America) who could be recruiting from the unemployed. He told the President to give Waivers to the ships willing to go ahead without Congressional Approval. No problem, HE is either The Dictator or some GOD, who knows all the correct answers and HE said let the Capitalist System work as it should.
“President to fire missiles at Syria and reward with RTTT grands to the different ships depending on how well they perform and close or mothball the worst performing ships and fire all the crew or replace 25% of the crew with SFA (Solders For America) who could be recruiting from the unemployed. He told the President to give Waivers to the ships willing to go ahead without Congressional Approval.”
Great analogy!
Maybe he could let billionaires commission of ship full of Ivy League grads to replace the low performing ships.
It isn’t just that business, political and media moguls won’t say a good word about labor unions, they won’t even pay lip service to any positive comment whatsoever about working people.
What scum we all are, hey? How dare we whine for a living wage, or any access to health care from any source whatsoever?
David Sirota, a great favorite of mine and one of the most insightful and informed political writers in America, once again gives a blow by blow description of the need and the successes of the union movement. When we see the privatizer billionaires invading our public school system, for profit, all over the nation, and when we see too many of our unions not fighting back with alacrity and fierce doggedness, we see the obvious impact of the greed of the free market mentality. Few seem to be able to avoid being bought, and rather, succumb to the meter of the new Wall Street overlords.
In LAUSD news, the race for a new President of UTLA is getting heated and clearly shows the divergent sides of this union issue. Only the Progressives seem to be on a steady focused course. The old guard union leaders seems to fold too easily to support the Broad-trained Superintendent and his mentors who call the shots. These power brokers are now using the spin that progressive union actions equal Marxism. They have absolutely no empathy or sympathy for the plight of workers.
Here is a message from my all time favorite Sect. of Labor (who was fired by Clinton for not playing ball with Summers and Rubin and Clinton’s deregulators.
Robert Reich has an excellent and simple 6 step program that we can all follow.
I hope the video comes across on this post.
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Dear MoveOn member—
When I served in President Clinton’s cabinet, we had some good years when—for many Americans—doing good work meant earning good pay.
But these days, with persistently high unemployment and with inequality on the uptick, many working families just don’t have the opportunities they used to.
As we celebrate this holiday weekend, let’s honor the spirit of Labor Day by committing ourselves to turn that around. I’ve put together a short video explaining how we can help working families get a fair shake. I hope you’ll check it out.
And have a great Labor Day.
–Robert Reich
Want to support our work? MoveOn Civic Action is entirely funded by our 8 million members—no corporate contributions, no big checks from CEOs. And our tiny staff ensures that small contributions go a long way. Chip in here.
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This email was sent to Ellen Lubic on September 2, 2013. To change your email address or update your contact info, click here. To remove yourself from this list, click
Seems that WordPro will not let me post the video. Sorry, but it is worth finding and sending it along to all your lists. It is a 6 point plan, over simplified, for improving the role of workers in our nation. And please sign the Move.on petition as well. Obama would be chilled to know how many of us are horrified by his education, and other, decisions.
Unfortunately Clinton is the one who set us up for the fall not a republican. 1994 NAFTA and WTO-end of jobs and the beginning of offshoring and good bye unions. 1996 Telecommunications Act ended the “Free Press” and you cannot use any information on the potential hazards of cell phone towers and microwaves. Read the Russian and European reports. As a result of our work we beat the best lawyers they could put up in L.A. and they went around any public notification as a result of beating them. Then in 1999-2000 Clinton signs the Banking Deregulation Acts which wiped our a reasonable banking system and turned it into a gambling parlor for his friends as that is how things roll.
So, to me Labor Day has become a factual joke as it was intended to honor the working person not the billionaires. Today, the billionaires make out as people go shopping and spending money on trips as they do this weekend.
When are working people again going to be of any importance at all?
George…as long as there are so few manufacturing jobs in the US the workers will be at a low financial ebb. Service jobs, flipping burgers, short hours at WalMart for minimum wage, just won’t feed families.
And yes, Clinton also pushed the specious welfare reform, Welfare-to-Work, of 1996 and gave us CalWorks which now has produced a plethora of homeless families living on Skid Row. He colluded with his Sects. of Treasury, Rubin and then Summers, to do away with Glass-Steagall, and then they all worked together to impose the Gramm, Leach, Bliley Act on the deluded public….and lo and behold with the banksters and the Wall Street crooks freed from regulations, we had the deepest and longest recession since the Great Depression.
According to Deasy, LA has about 190,000 homeless students…seems high to me out of total enrollment of about 600, 000 but I did hear it from the horses mouth.
Are you supporting Elizabeth Warren’s proposal to reenact Glass-Steagall? I am. I hope that doesn’t ruin it for you.
Added note…the LA Times recently published a report which indicated that about 50% of LAUSD children live in poverty.
Happy Labor Day!