It's Labor Day! ....Thank a Pinhead!

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Dixie - In Memoriam

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Many of you weren't aware of this, but Pinheads are good at some things! YES! It's true! After all, it was a Pinhead who created Labor Day!

"Labor Day differs in every essential way from the other holidays of the year in any country," said Samuel Gompers, founder and longtime president of the American Federation of Labor. "All other holidays are in a more or less degree connected with conflicts and battles of man's prowess over man, of strife and discord for greed and power, of glories achieved by one nation over another. Labor Day...is devoted to no man, living or dead, to no sect, race, or nation."

Labor Day, the first Monday in September, is a creation of the labor movement and is dedicated to the social and economic achievements of American workers. It constitutes a yearly national tribute to the contributions workers have made to the strength, prosperity, and well-being of our country.

More than 100 years after the first Labor Day observance, there is still some doubt as to who first proposed the holiday for workers.

Some records show that Peter J. McGuire, general secretary of the Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners and a cofounder of the American Federation of Labor, was first in suggesting a day to honor those "who from rude nature have delved and carved all the grandeur we behold."

But Peter McGuire's place in Labor Day history has not gone unchallenged. Many believe that Matthew Maguire, a machinist, not Peter McGuire, founded the holiday. Recent research seems to support the contention that Matthew Maguire, later the secretary of Local 344 of the International Association of Machinists in Paterson, N.J., proposed the holiday in 1882 while serving as secretary of the Central Labor Union in New York. What is clear is that the Central Labor Union adopted a Labor Day proposal and appointed a committee to plan a demonstration and picnic.

So.... While we all celebrate this magnificent holiday, by sitting on our asses, eating and getting fat, and being completely worthless, surronded by manufactured goods that were cheaper to make in other countries, make sure to remember the pinheads for their magnificent contribution to the general public. Without Pinheads, we would be WORKING today!!!!
 
Yeah...

It's kind of funny that "labour" day is one of the few days in the year most people don't work.

I do, though. Those pinheads apparently haven't penetrated Popeye's inc.'s skull.
 
Watermark said:
Yeah...

It's kind of funny that "labour" day is one of the few days in the year most people don't work.

I do, though. Those pinheads apparently haven't penetrated Popeye's inc.'s skull.
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you should get doubletime for it though, and here it might be time and a half plus equal comp hours off, so basically, doubletime and a half, for working today... :)

Well, I forgot you're in mississippi, what is the holiday pay there? :(
 
He works at a restaurant or retail, they do not get special consideration for this day.
 
Popeyes is pretty good chicken if a decade past memory serves, and isn't it them that has the dirty rice? hmmm, maybe not?
 
Happy Labor Day Dixie and Watermark, from President Bush!

"This Labor Day weekend, President Bush made the recess appointment of a Wal-Mart lawyer - with a long paper trail outlining his opposition to the Fair Labor Standards Act’s (FLSA’s) overtime pay and other provisions - to head the Labor Department’s Wage and Hour Division. "*
 
Care4all said:
Popeyes is pretty good chicken if a decade past memory serves, and isn't it them that has the dirty rice? hmmm, maybe not?
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My wife used to be a florist who did a party for the billionaire owner of Popeyse in New Orleans. Man, that dude is a dirty old man! The dude is like 70 years old, and gets himself a new trophy wife every five years, or so.
 
Cypress said:
Happy Labor Day Dixie and Watermark, from President Bush!

"This Labor Day weekend, President Bush made the recess appointment of a Wal-Mart lawyer - with a long paper trail outlining his opposition to the Fair Labor Standards Act’s (FLSA’s) overtime pay and other provisions - to head the Labor Department’s Wage and Hour Division. "*
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you have got to be kidding?
 
Care4all said:
you have got to be kidding?
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and you're suprised...why?

This is totally consistent with the conservative agenda. Weaken minimum wage laws, relax overtime rules, weaken labor law enforcement.

No big deal, no suprises.
 
Cypress said:
Happy Labor Day Dixie and Watermark, from President Bush!

"This Labor Day weekend, President Bush made the recess appointment of a Wal-Mart lawyer - with a long paper trail outlining his opposition to the Fair Labor Standards Act’s (FLSA’s) overtime pay and other provisions - to head the Labor Department’s Wage and Hour Division. "*
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Oh My God! He worked for Walmart!!!!!!! *gasp*:eek:
 
Maybe after the Pinheads drive Walmart out of business, they will create another really neat holiday for us to enjoy? Like Mom and Pop Day or something? Pinheads are really good at inventing holidays!
 
Census Bureau:Real median income down by 5.4



ROBERT KUTTNER
Another year, another wage loss
By Robert Kuttner | September 2, 2006

LABOR DAY was created by the machinists union in New York in 1882 as a ``workingmen's holiday." Unions all over America adopted the idea. By 1894, Congress passed legislation making Labor Day an official holiday. The day also celebrated the act of organizing, politically and in the workplace, to improve livelihoods and lives.

Today, the politics have largely been leached out of it. Labor Day is a long weekend that marks summer's end.

And that extra day of rest is needed more than ever. Government statistics show that the typical family works about 500 more hours a year than families did 30 years ago, because it takes two incomes to make it. Even so, family incomes are failing to keep pace with the cost of living.

This past week, these items have been in the news:

The Census Bureau reported that median incomes for working-age families were down again, for the fifth straight year. Real median income for households under age 65 is down by 5.4 percent since 2000, even though the economy has grown every year. All of that gain has gone to upper-bracket people and corporate profits.

The Pew Research Center released an extensive survey on public attitudes about the economy. Pew reported, ``The public thinks that workers were better off a generation ago on every key dimension of worker life -- be it wages, benefits, retirement plans, on-the-job stress, the loyalty they are shown by employers." And, statistically, the public is right.

The Globe recently reported that chief executives of nonprofit hospitals now routinely make more than $1 million. University presidents are not far behind.

The Economic Policy Institute (on whose board I serve) has released its annual, encyclopedic report, ``The State of Working America." Among its findings: The economy's productivity increased by a remarkable 33.5 percent between 1995 and 2005, but real wages have declined since 2000. Employer-provided health coverage declined from 69 percent in 1979 to 56 percent in 2004. The top 1 percent's share of interest, dividends, and capital gains has risen from 37.8 percent in 1979 to 57.5 percent in 2003.

Politically, it's evident what is occurring. Those in a position to capture astronomical incomes are awarding themselves an ever-larger share of the national economic pie. Meanwhile, ordinary incomes, job security, health security, and retirement security are eroding.

The political mystery is why everyone else is not kicking up a fuss. After all, as the Pew report suggests, it's not as if people are unaware of what's happening. Here's a clue to some of the puzzle: Polls show that people do want more reliable wages, pensions, and health insurance. But too many people have given up on the idea that the political process can be used to restore the American dream.

Theda Skocpol, author of several books of social history, tells of interviewing a hard-pressed woman with small children and a low-wage job. Her only social support was that her mother-in-law -- the children's grandmother -- looked after her children while she worked. As Skocpol observes, this was possible only because Social Security enabled the grandmother not to have to work herself.

Skocpol asked the woman whether she thought there was anything government might do to improve her economic circumstances. The woman replied, ``Nothing they do there ever makes a difference for people like me."

But that was not always so. Social Security, Medicare, college aid, the GI Bill, government wage-and-hour laws, and government protection of the right to unionize made a real difference in people's lives.

These policies, which benefited the vast middle class (and helped to create it), did not just happen. They were the result of political organizing and a public awareness that government could affect the economic opportunity and security of ordinary Americans, for better or worse.

It's understandable why politics today is often a turnoff. But if a great many middle-class and poor Americans have given up on politics, you can be sure that the economic elite is invested in politics as never before. The changes in the tax code and regulatory laws and workplace practices that benefit America's super-rich did not just happen, either. They are the result of relentless maneuvering by the financial elite and its political allies.

So this Labor Day, at the beach or in town, we suffer not just from reduced economic opportunity but diminished political imagination. You can ignore politics, but you can't escape it. So we might as well reclaim democracy to benefit the many rather than the few.

Robert Kuttner is co-editor of The American Prospect. His column appears regularly in the Globe.

© Copyright 2006 Globe Newspaper Company.
 
Damocles said:
Really. I also never got it when I worked in the Amusement Industry...
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I didn't when I worked in the Service Industry either. I now have the good fortune to make my living in a less stressful sector.

Labor Day is one of the few holidays I actually honor, in the emotioan and literal sense.
 
I think to celebrate Labor Day we should drop some more of those 500lb bombs on some brown people. Or do the libs in here think we should negotiate with them as well?

Draw 'em in, nuke 'em, forget about 'em!
 
Please note: Only retail establishments may open during the summer holidays of Memorial Day, Independence Day, and Labor Day. Retail establishments which operate on New Year's Day, Columbus Day after 12 noon, or on November 11th after 1:00 p.m. are required to pay their employees time and one-half regardless of the number of employees on their payroll. Retail establishments which operate on the summer holidays of Memorial Day, Independence Day, and Labor Day must pay time and one-half if at least eight employees are on the payroll in the week prior to the holiday.


GUESS things are DIFFERENT in the northeast....at least in massachusetts! i was wrong about the double time, but they do get time and a half in massachusetts...
 
IF at least 8 people are on the payroll on the previous week... I wonder how they work around that...
 
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