Labor Day

It's sad that Americans have rejected the successful efforts of labor movements to better the quality of  life of all workers in America. Unions are basically dead. It seems the deaths and blood sacrificed for the fight for better working conditions in America is no longer important, or worthwhile. I wouldn't be surprised if Labor Day is dropped as a holiday. But unions won the better working conditions ALL Americans enjoy.

Union membership used to be well into the high 30% range, now it's in single digits. Unions never really reached into the retail, or service sections of our workforce and union membership started declining at the same time America transformed from a labor economy to a service economy decades ago.

Of course employer abuses still occur, but it seems those issues are settled in court these days, if you can afford to sue your employer. I wonder if anyone caught last night's "60 Minutes" report on the abuses claimed by workers of Amazon. One of our newest and largest service companies and biggest employers.

A new level of worker rights is overdue in America, especially with our culture changing our personal lives and women becoming an equal number of our workforce. Why in the 21st century do we still accept women get paid less than men? Health care used to be a benefit paid 100% by a majority of employers. Wages started stagnating at the same time union membership started declining decades ago. A family used to live very well on the wages of only one worker in the household, that's rare these days.

Employers being able to treat their employees any way they want without interference from the government, or outside influences is a bedrock of Republican ideology. Only the intervention of our courts agreeing with the complaints of workers and setting new law helped stopped abuses from child labor to slave wages and slave treatment,  including safety regulations. Unions brought those cases to the court. Abuses got so bad during the "Industrial Revolution" that Teddy Roosevelt himself championed the break up of monopolies, which opened the courts to regulating the treatment of employees by their employers.

If you are not familiar with the workers struggle in America, educate yourself! The history is all there in the history books, or on Google if you prefer.

I have never had a union job, but I benefited greatly from the fights and benefits unions won from those bloody, deadly fights, all Americans have.

Businesses are pretty good at squeezing every penny out of their operations. Only the government wastes so much money providing services to its citizens. Businesses are cash rich holding trillions of dollars, which used to go to benefits for their employees like health care. Now employees are asked to pay more for their benefits, while businesses invest that money and become wealthier.  Businesses take lessons from people like Trump who make millions while not paying overtime, or have to be sued to pay their bills and expenses. Trump is considered the model of a businessman, even though he has declared bankruptcy many times being relieved of his debts owing millions to the workers he contracted; ending up rich himself through the manipulation of figures and government law protecting the rich.

Enjoy your Labor Day off (hopefully a paid day off) and remember the death and sacrifice your ancestors went through to make it possible. Maybe someday fighting for workers rights and benefits will become acceptable again, in fact, it will have to sooner, or later.

Update/Addition:

Here is a report from Dave Jamelson he posted on Huffington Post today. It gives figures that might surprise you.

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Workers across the country will be kicking back, firing up the grill and relishing the last gasps of summer on Monday to celebrate Labor Day. But even though the federal holiday is meant to observe hard-won gains for workplace rights and working standards over the years, many workers won’t be resting with paid time off.

Unlike most other developed countries, the U.S. does not like to mandate that employers give workers any time off with pay. Just as there is no federal requirement regarding vacation or sick days, there is no law regarding paid holidays. So even though the federal government closes for official holidays like Labor Day, private employers don’t have to give workers the day off. And if they do, they don’t have to pay them.

It’s not like that in many other countries. A 2013 analysis of laws in 21 of the world’s wealthiest nations found that 13 of them mandate some number of paid holidays. Austria and Portugal guarantee 13. Belgium, Germany and New Zealand guarantee 10. France only guarantees one, but the country mandates a whopping 30 days of paid vacation. The U.S. guarantees none of either.

With paid holidays being optional, it should come as no surprise that lower-wage workers are less likely to enjoy them than higher-wage workers. As HuffPost reported in 2015, the majority of workers on the bottom of the economic ladder are not offered paid holidays at work. 

Only 40 percent of private-sector workers in the lowest 10 percent of the wage scale get holidays with pay, according to the most recent survey from Bureau of Labor Statistics. Workers in the top 10 percent of the scale are much better off: 93 percent of them can enjoy paid holidays. The same dichotomy holds for paid sick leave ― 31 percent versus 92 percent ― as well as paid vacation days ― 41 percent versus 92 percent.

Service workers are the least likely of all employees to get paid holidays, with only half eligible for them. The most likely to receive them are white-collar professionals in business and finance, 97 percent of whom get paid holidays, according to the BLS.

Just because a worker doesn’t get paid holidays, doesn’t mean they’ll have to work on Labor Day. But if the worker’s boss lets them take the day off, they’ll be forgoing a day’s pay.

There’s been a lot of movement at the city and state level ― and a little bit at the federal level ― to start guaranteeing workers at least some paid time off each year. Connecticut became the first state to pass a paid sick leave law, in 2011. It was followed by California, Massachusetts, Oregon and Vermont. Many liberal cities have also enacted their own paid leave ordinances that employers must abide by.

Backers of the paid sick leave laws have made their argument based on both economics and public health. No one wants restaurant workers, for instance, handling food while they’re battling the flu. But the movement for guaranteed paid holidays or vacation time has gained much less traction in the U.S., even though polling shows that Americans by and large like the idea. In a HuffPost/YouGov poll done in 2014, three-quarters of respondents approved of a paid vacation mandate. 

The issue has had a couple of champions in Congress in recent years. One of them is Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.). The former presidential contender introduced a bill in 2015, the Guaranteed Paid Vacation Act, that would require all employers with at least 15 workers to provide two weeks of paid vacation to anyone with at least a year on the job.

“This is already done in almost every other major country on earth,” Sanders said on the Senate floor at the time.

The bill never made it out of committee.