Where Does "Labor Day" Come From?

[georgephillip]

From the struggle workers wage against those (capitalists) who confuse labor with slavery.

"The first Labor Day in the United States was observed on September 5, 1882 in New York City, by the Central Labor Union of New York, the nation's first integrated major trade union.[1]

"It became a federal holiday in 1894, when, following the deaths of a number of workers at the hands of the U.S. military and U.S. Marshals during the Pullman Strike, President Grover Cleveland put reconciliation with the labor movement as a top political priority.

"Fearing further conflict, legislation making Labor Day a national holiday was rushed through Congress unanimously and signed into law a mere six days after the end of the strike." (Labor Day - Wiki)

Nothing could be further from the truth than saying capitalism has given US workers the highest standard of living in the world.

It's labor's struggle against capital that produced the American standard of living and the holiday it celebrates.

 

[CrusaderFrank]

Fuck Labor.

We need Entrepreneurs Day instead.

 

[Mr. H.]

According to the wife, it originated 15 years ago today.

9 hours and a pitocin drip.

 

[georgephillip]

Fuck Labor.

We need Entrepreneurs Day instead.

Do you think small business owners today have more in common with labor or Goldman Sachs?

 

[blastoff]

I think it's a good idea to set aside a day to celebrate union leaders stealing, squandering, and otherwise spending the rank and file's hard earned dues dollars on things that don't benefit them. Keep giving your bucks to the fat cat union bosses. They've got expensive lifestyles that need supporting.

 

[CrusaderFrank]

Fuck Labor.

We need Entrepreneurs Day instead.

Do you think small business owners today have more in common with labor or Goldman Sachs?

That you're even asking means we really truly desperately need Entrepreneurs Day. It should be studied starting in elementary schools

 

[georgephillip]

On March 25, 1911, a fire at the Triangle Shirtwaist Company swept through the eighth, ninth, and tenth floors of the factory. The bad news was New York's fire department didn't have ladders capable of reaching beyond the seventh floor.

The really bad news was half of all New York's 500,000 workers spent all day (often 12 hours) working above the seventh floor level.

According to the New York World (as found in Howard Zinn's The Twentieth Century pp.38-39):

"...screaming men and women and boys and girls crowded out on the many window ledges and threw themselves into the streets far below.

"They jumped with their clothing ablaze. The hair of some of the girls streamed up aflame as they leaped.

"Thud after thud sounded on the pavements. It is a ghastly fact that on both the Greene Street and Washington Place sides of the building there grew mounds of the dead and dying..."

Happy Labor Day.

 

[Mr Natural]

Fuck Labor.

We need Entrepreneurs Day instead.

Yeah, fuck workers!

They're just useless parasites who suck down all Mr. Businessmans' profits for no good reason.

 

[georgephillip]

I think it's a good idea to set aside a day to celebrate union leaders stealing, squandering, and otherwise spending the rank and file's hard earned dues dollars on things that don't benefit them. Keep giving your bucks to the fat cat union bosses. They've got expensive lifestyles that need supporting.

Is the minimum wage something you support?

How about an eight hour work day?

It isn't possible either would have come into existence without unions.

 

[georgephillip]

Fuck Labor.

We need Entrepreneurs Day instead.

Yeah, fuck workers!

They're just useless parasites who suck down all Mr. Businessmans' profits for no good reason.

Exactly!

And as soon as we finish with the workers...we're coming after all the damn MOTHERs...the really useless parasites.

Happy Labor Day you Mothers and Others.

 

[CrusaderFrank]

Haven't you idiots figured out that the whole purpose of modern schooling is to turn you into workers with no understanding of how things work?

 

[georgephillip]

Fuck Labor.

We need Entrepreneurs Day instead.

Do you think small business owners today have more in common with labor or Goldman Sachs?

That you're even asking means we really truly desperately need Entrepreneurs Day. It should be studied starting in elementary schools

Speaking of elementary schools...is one billionaire worth as much as 20,000 public school teachers?

 

[georgephillip]

Haven't you idiots figured out that the whole purpose of modern schooling is to turn you into workers with no understanding of how things work?

If how things work includes the relationship between the weather and the stock market, I think you're on to something.

"... The stock market has as much to do with the real economy as the weather has to do with geology. Day by day there's no relationship at all. Over time, weather and geology interact but the results aren't evident for many years.

"The biggest impact of the weather is on peoples' moods, as are the daily ups and downs of the market."

The Economy is the Number...

 

[Trajan]

Fuck Labor.

We need Entrepreneurs Day instead.

Do you think small business owners today have more in common with labor or Goldman Sachs?

I think they are nether, they are like all of us self interested in using what tools they have to forward their business etc. They are as interested as much as they invested in the market and/or their bus.

 

[georgephillip]

Fuck Labor.

We need Entrepreneurs Day instead.

Do you think small business owners today have more in common with labor or Goldman Sachs?

I think they are nether, they are like all of us self interested in using what tools they have to forward their business etc. They are as interested as much as they invested in the market and/or their bus.

The question I was trying to ask is which side of the class war in America would include most small business owners and hourly workers?

If you contrast the richest 10,000 Americans (0.01%) whose average annual income is $50,000,000 with most entrepreneurs and all hourly workers, the small business owner would seem to have more in common with labor than with Wall Street.

The richest 0.01% also "have $350,000,000 in assets and, since 1978, that is an increase of 550% - how have you done the past 30 years?"

America is 234...

 

[Trajan]

Do you think small business owners today have more in common with labor or Goldman Sachs?

I think they are nether, they are like all of us self interested in using what tools they have to forward their business etc. They are as interested as much as they invested in the market and/or their bus.

The question I was trying to ask is which side of the class war in America would include most small business owners and hourly workers?

If you contrast the richest 10,000 Americans (0.01%) whose average annual income is $50,000,000 with most entrepreneurs and all hourly workers, the small business owner would seem to have more in common with labor than with Wall Street.

The richest 0.01% also "have $350,000,000 in assets and, since 1978, that is an increase of 550% - how have you done the past 30 years?"

America is 234...

why would you classify this along class lines?

 

[haileydavey]

Fuck Labor.

We need Entrepreneurs Day instead.

Do you think small business owners today have more in common with labor or Goldman Sachs?

It depends on how well they do. Most large businesses start out as small business.

 

[georgephillip]

I think they are nether, they are like all of us self interested in using what tools they have to forward their business etc. They are as interested as much as they invested in the market and/or their bus.

The question I was trying to ask is which side of the class war in America would include most small business owners and hourly workers?

If you contrast the richest 10,000 Americans (0.01%) whose average annual income is $50,000,000 with most entrepreneurs and all hourly workers, the small business owner would seem to have more in common with labor than with Wall Street.

The richest 0.01% also "have $350,000,000 in assets and, since 1978, that is an increase of 550% - how have you done the past 30 years?"

America is 234...

why would you classify this along class lines?

There are a couple of reasons I tend to trust a class explanation for wealth distribution in this country. The first is anecdotal. I spent most of my working life existing on minimum and near-minimum wage jobs.

Forty years ago a single minimum wage job paid enough to cover the rent on a brand new one bedroom apartment where I was living with enough left over to survive another 30 days.

Today one minimum wage job would not be enough to cover rent in a similar apartment. I don't think it's a coincidence the richest of the rich earned around $3 million/year in 1970 and they earn upwards of $50 million today.

I don't believe there were any natural market forces responsible for that transfer of wealth. I think it's far more likely that in the last 40 years Republicans AND Democrats have increasingly turned to the richest 1% of this country to fund their campaigns, and the politicians have reciprocated with fiscal policy designed to help their benefactors.

Finally, I pay a lot of attention to what Noam Chomsky has to say on this issue:

"The war against working people should be understood to be a real war…. Specifically in the U.S., which happens to have a highly class-conscious business class…. And they have long seen themselves as fighting a bitter class war, except they don’t want anybody else to know about it.” (Full Report:)

Some of the rich can not stop stealing other people's money for the same reason a shark can't stop swimming.

They will die.

And they know it.

 

[Big Black Dog]

Labor Day is a day we set aside once every year to honor all of those who have ever been in Labor, or who plan to someday be in Labor. It's the least we can do for our ladies. For those that show an interest, we assist them with planning out a day to come into Labor on this day. Then we act accordingly.

 

[georgephillip]

Fuck Labor.

We need Entrepreneurs Day instead.

Do you think small business owners today have more in common with labor or Goldman Sachs?

It depends on how well they do. Most large businesses start out as small business.

I think that's true for businesses that produce something.

What about financial speculators who expect the taxpayer to pick up the cost of their bonuses in bad years?

Harry Dent has claimed that of the total US debt burden including personal, business, and all levels of government debt the biggest single component is financial sector debt.(May 11 Update)