Happy Labor Day. FYI Americans are pretty tone deaf when it comes to Labor Day. Many don’t even know that labor unions created the holiday in 1882 to honor workers, mostly immigrants, who were organizing themselves against appalling wages and unhuman working conditions. Instead, we’ve devalued Labor Day — which is supposed to be celebrated today — to an end-of-summer holiday and cheapened it to a 3-day sales weekend. We rarely pause to remember, let alone appreciate, the workers of the late 19th and early 20th centuries who struggled and sometimes lost their lives to improve wages work conditions for their families and posterity. They made our lives better. Labor Day is when we should pay respect for the self-sacrifice, jailing, beatings and sometimes death they endured. Their struggles for justice and dignity brought about the 6-day work week and then the 5-day work week. They helped to narrow standard working hours to 10 hours daily and then eight hours. They brought about the minimum wage and overtime pay and they gave rise to the idea of national health care.....
Posted on: Mon, 01 Sep 2014 14:21:56 +0000
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