(no subject)
Sep. 5th, 2011 09:52 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
camwynGnf. It's 9:25 AM on a day off, and yesterday I did 26 miles on the bike. I should still be asleep. Don't know why it's not happening but sometimes it's not worth the arguing.
I'd like to take a moment to remind folks in the States of why we have today off, in much the same way that way way back when I was in high school my Theology teacher, Sister Doris Lavinthal*, took a moment to point out to us that we had the concept of the weekend at all because of the Jews. The Romans, after all, were a people who thought it was bizarre beyond belief to spend a full one-seventh of one's life in an enforced state of not-working; it was the Jews who insisted on a Sabbath, a time to stop and dedicate the day to holy things and to reflect rather than to one's everyday toil.
Today, in the United States, is Labor Day. Everywhere else in the world it's the first Monday of September, and everything that the day commemorates here is celebrated back at the start of May**. Used to be it was common practice for employers to treat their employees like slaves they just couldn't manage to sell and that they had to give some form of compensation to, and screw 'em if they got hurt or sick or started whining about how sixteen hours a day was some kind of 'inhumane' or something. If they got it into their heads that their employees might try to escape their working conditions more often than the desired bottom line really allowed, well, hell, why bother with safety measures. Work 'em hard, work 'em long, pay 'em as little as the market would allow, and if they complained there would always be some poor bastard worse off than them willing to do the work for less regardless of conditions.
Wasn't until the workers started banding together and acting collectively as labor unions and trade unions to withhold the things their employers needed most from them- the sweat of their brow and the breaking of their backs- that this kind of thing started to change. It got ugly more than a few times, I won't deny that. General strikes're difficult things, and there were terrible actions taken by workers and worker leaders who wanted to go beyond just securing the rights of the working American and into massive social and governmental change. But considering what was being done to the American workers of the time in the name of capitalism as it existed then, it's a little hard to blame them. And in the end, the less extreme ones were the ones who won out, more or less.
If you've ever had to work an eight-hour day, and thought this was normal-
If you've ever had to work in a workplace that obeyed federal safety standards and regulations-
If you've ever bought a piece of meat, taken it home, cooked it, and eaten it without thinking twice about whether or not it would kill you-
If you've ever worked a minimum wage job and known the phrase 'minimum wage' existed-
If you've ever taken time off from work and not been threatened with the loss of your job for it-
If you've ever been paid actual money that you could spend anywhere, rather than company scrip you had to exchange for the products of the company you worked for-
If you've ever been paid overtime for working beyond your standard shift-
Then today is the day on which you celebrate the people who went before you and won you those rights. Today we commemorate the labor unions and laborers of the past and everything they did to shape the world of today. Things've changed since then and there's a lot of reform needed, both to bring horribly corrupt unions back to the point where they're actually for the benefit of working Americans rather than for the benefit of their leadership and to rectify the tendency to go 'well, screw the working American, it's cheaper to hire the working Chinese or Indian', but for now... for the basic elements of things like workplace safety, regulated work hours, and regulated pay... for those and for those who won them for us, today is the day we give thanks.
(This post in honor of my maternal grandfather, who had me thinking 'the Union' was some kind of church when I was a kid because I could hear the capital U when he talked about it, and my paternal great-grandfather, who was a commando leader in the Rand Rebellion, which meant in essence that he fought in a war to keep his job.)
*Yes, that was her actual name. The Maestre Pie Filippine order of religious sisters did not require new sisters to change their names, or to give up the use of their family names, and Sister Doris was a convert from Judaism.
**This is the same time of year as the beginning of outdoor boinking season entirely by coincidence no matter how many jokes you want to make about the working man getting screwed.
I'd like to take a moment to remind folks in the States of why we have today off, in much the same way that way way back when I was in high school my Theology teacher, Sister Doris Lavinthal*, took a moment to point out to us that we had the concept of the weekend at all because of the Jews. The Romans, after all, were a people who thought it was bizarre beyond belief to spend a full one-seventh of one's life in an enforced state of not-working; it was the Jews who insisted on a Sabbath, a time to stop and dedicate the day to holy things and to reflect rather than to one's everyday toil.
Today, in the United States, is Labor Day. Everywhere else in the world it's the first Monday of September, and everything that the day commemorates here is celebrated back at the start of May**. Used to be it was common practice for employers to treat their employees like slaves they just couldn't manage to sell and that they had to give some form of compensation to, and screw 'em if they got hurt or sick or started whining about how sixteen hours a day was some kind of 'inhumane' or something. If they got it into their heads that their employees might try to escape their working conditions more often than the desired bottom line really allowed, well, hell, why bother with safety measures. Work 'em hard, work 'em long, pay 'em as little as the market would allow, and if they complained there would always be some poor bastard worse off than them willing to do the work for less regardless of conditions.
Wasn't until the workers started banding together and acting collectively as labor unions and trade unions to withhold the things their employers needed most from them- the sweat of their brow and the breaking of their backs- that this kind of thing started to change. It got ugly more than a few times, I won't deny that. General strikes're difficult things, and there were terrible actions taken by workers and worker leaders who wanted to go beyond just securing the rights of the working American and into massive social and governmental change. But considering what was being done to the American workers of the time in the name of capitalism as it existed then, it's a little hard to blame them. And in the end, the less extreme ones were the ones who won out, more or less.
If you've ever had to work an eight-hour day, and thought this was normal-
If you've ever had to work in a workplace that obeyed federal safety standards and regulations-
If you've ever bought a piece of meat, taken it home, cooked it, and eaten it without thinking twice about whether or not it would kill you-
If you've ever worked a minimum wage job and known the phrase 'minimum wage' existed-
If you've ever taken time off from work and not been threatened with the loss of your job for it-
If you've ever been paid actual money that you could spend anywhere, rather than company scrip you had to exchange for the products of the company you worked for-
If you've ever been paid overtime for working beyond your standard shift-
Then today is the day on which you celebrate the people who went before you and won you those rights. Today we commemorate the labor unions and laborers of the past and everything they did to shape the world of today. Things've changed since then and there's a lot of reform needed, both to bring horribly corrupt unions back to the point where they're actually for the benefit of working Americans rather than for the benefit of their leadership and to rectify the tendency to go 'well, screw the working American, it's cheaper to hire the working Chinese or Indian', but for now... for the basic elements of things like workplace safety, regulated work hours, and regulated pay... for those and for those who won them for us, today is the day we give thanks.
(This post in honor of my maternal grandfather, who had me thinking 'the Union' was some kind of church when I was a kid because I could hear the capital U when he talked about it, and my paternal great-grandfather, who was a commando leader in the Rand Rebellion, which meant in essence that he fought in a war to keep his job.)
*Yes, that was her actual name. The Maestre Pie Filippine order of religious sisters did not require new sisters to change their names, or to give up the use of their family names, and Sister Doris was a convert from Judaism.
**This is the same time of year as the beginning of outdoor boinking season entirely by coincidence no matter how many jokes you want to make about the working man getting screwed.
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no subject
Date: 2011-09-05 01:59 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-09-05 02:02 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-09-05 03:51 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-09-05 08:01 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-09-05 10:50 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-09-05 02:35 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-09-05 02:39 pm (UTC)These people, regardless of country or territory or race or ethnicity or anything else, are workers, just like we are, and they're providing goods and services that we want. They deserve proper pay and decent, humane treatment for that. Every worker does.
no subject
Date: 2011-09-05 03:52 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-09-05 04:12 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-09-05 06:23 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-09-05 07:31 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-09-06 12:22 am (UTC)*hugs*
no subject
Date: 2011-09-08 08:33 pm (UTC)It's astonishing, and appalling, the kind of abuses that were utterly commonplace back then -- and it's a gift to us now that it's appalling. (And yes, as others said, other countries' workers absolutely deserve that protection too. I'm grateful for what we have here, all the same.)