Monday, September 5, 2011

Labor Day..........canceled?

thanks to Brooke for the image.  Sad, but true for too many people not 'participating' in a job.
I still wonder why people say HAPPY LABOR DAY, but I guess it is happy this year if you do still have a job.
By the way, did you know the famous PULLMAN STRIKE precipitated this day's observation?  You'll note that union workers burned down buildings, threatened the safety of the public, and threatened delivery of the US Mail. But, when I looked up Labor Day, it only mentioned that it became a federal holiday in 1894, following the deaths of a number of workers at the hands of US military and US Marshal.  Absolutely no mention of what precipitated the crackdown.  Labor Day became a federal holiday in 1894 after the strike when President Grover Cleveland and Congress made appeasement of organized labor a top priority
Lilies of the Valley are sold in little bunches on street corners in and around Paris, France on May 1, Labor Day there.......it's mostly a way to collect money for labor movements, which is probably totally uninteresting to you but a great way to have the image of one of my very favorite flowers in the post :-) 


P.S., Did you know Obama's at an AFL/CIO rally today in Detroit? He probably still thinks unions create jobs instead of pricing us out of the world market......another campaign trip paid for by you. 
Have a good day.
z

53 comments:

Always On Watch said...

it's mostly a way to collect money for labor movements, which is probably totally uninteresting to you

But it is interesting to me -- a factoid I'd never heard before.

I love lilies of the valley! My grandmother loved them too and carried them in her bridal bouquet.

But I wouldn't buy them to support labor movements.

elmers brother said...

PTUI!

Joe said...

Labor Day is a fake holiday. But I have to admit, I enjoy NOT working on a day called LABOR Day.

Bd said...

The childish right would criticize no matter what Obama did today. Attending a union event, whose purpose helped the average worker, despite your ignorance and how the right has been brainwashed by their wealthy overlords to hate essentially themselves-is a fine event to attend.

Silverfiddle said...

Ah... No cogent and illuminating conservative blog post is complete until capped by Bd's incoherent hopium-addled msnbc talking points.

Liberalism and unions are wonderful! Look what they did for Detroit!

Obama should hide in shame on this, the saddest Labor Day since the great depression.

btw, Bd, Rick Perry's Texas has helped more workers this past decade than all the unions put together.

Put that in your hopium pipe and smoke it.

elmers brother said...

The childish right would criticize no matter what Obama did today. Attending a union event, whose purpose helped the average worker, despite your ignorance and how the right has been brainwashed by their wealthy overlords to hate essentially themselves-is a fine event to attend.

Apparently BD had never been part of a union or he'd know better. They're a crime family that extorts union dues from its members. Most of whom have no choice.

Speedy G said...

Unions have NEVER represented the "average" worker... only the under-average worker. One eight of American workers belong to union. No wonder most Americans have been completely in the dark as to their destructive effect upon American industry and employment. It's only NOW that people are finally waking up.

Z said...

Elbro, some day, I hope you tell your story about unions, your personal experiences. I know them, more people NEED TO...before you and your coworkers lose your union jobs because of unions.

Speedy, thanks for that.
I'll never forget talking to a bigwig lawyer about Jesse Jackson; I asked him how he makes a living. He told me that he knew for a fact that good ol' Jesse went to companies like Coca Cola when they had union problems, he'd calm the union workers down, get paid big time by the union bigwigs and the company, and voila...workers screwed; all is settled. Jesse's rich.

SF; I just saw that you had your daily visit of idiocy by Bd, too :-) "hopium"...good one!
(by the way, you're a WAY WAY better writer than Jack) (WAAAY)

Speedy G said...
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
Z said...

Check THAT OUT, folks....

WOW. Just how IN THE BAG are the creeps who'd do this? Didn't they see it? Don't they understand that a relic from 9/11, a firefighter's hard hat going into the collection at 9/11's museum, shouldn't have an IRON WORKERS FOR OBAMA sticker on it, that it should be all FROM THAT ERA!?! Yet, it's being entered into America's memorial of that time?

WOW. Just how IN THE BAG are the creeps who'd do this? Didn't they see it? Don't they understand?

Z said...

Speedy...I don't get the link and your comment.

By the way, on that link; how do they get THAT RICH? Many were loaded before; you can't really run without tons of dough (sadly), but..??

Speedy G said...

Doesn't EVERYONE living on 9/11/2001 know that Obama was running for President in 2008?

HisStory has undergone another shameful revision.

Anonymous said...

Of all places...he picks Detroit? The very real symbol of the failures of socialism and the democrats who ruined this city.

But...keep voting by color Detroit. You certainly have a fine history to live up to.

Z said...

Right, Speedy....it's like a relic from WWII with a CHENEY LIED sticker on it. Maybe this is how bad our public school kids are being taught ? :-)

Z said...

Imp; I thought that, too. Detroit's a MESS, absolutely run down to the ground, and he goes there as a symbol of union success and encourages more of it.
Think the media's noticed? (ya, right..)

Speedy G said...

Ooops. Bad link. Sorry Z.

Z said...

Speedy, I deleted your incorrect link because I don't need more insults from my trolls (if you know what I mean).


As for your article.....I read that thinking "and these people are running the country?" They honestly misunderstand business THAT badly? They actually think they're right?
Is history useless to socialists with an agenda too strong for the truth?

And, by the way, is there REALLY a horse and rider giving that message there or is that a metaphor the writer's using...?!! GAD

Joe said...

Bd: Just like the childish left criticized everything Bushi did, right?

gramma2many said...

I was reading a little pamphlet put out in our area. It listed Labor Day activities. One was a barbecue that sounded fun until I continued reading. It said Union Workers and Government workers would be admitted for 1/2 price. Sponsored by the local Democratic Women's society. Figures. By the way, I am staying home, not going to that one;)

gramma2many said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Bd said...

Those who hate unions are those who wish they belonged to one.

Joe: Well, with good reason, wouldn't you say? Bush effed up everything he did.

Silverfiddle; So how has 'Perry's Texas has helped more workers this past decade than all the unions put together?' By creating the most minimum wage jobs? My making him millions while he was in public office? Gimme a break.

"Liberalism and unions are wonderful! Look what they did for Detroit?' Putting out gas guzzling pieces of crap did that.

Elmers Bro: So 'unions are a crime family that extorts union dues from its members.' Yeah, they pay dues. Big whoop. Having a nice weekend off? Thank a union.

Z said...

Oh, GAD< Bd!!!! You just CANNOT be this misinformed!? REALLY?

By the way...oops. Elmer's Brother is working today; he doesn't have the weekend off.
Proud conservatives are all over the blogs saying they're working and glad to have the work. WAKE UP. He hates his union; has never benefited from it and is doing all he can to get OUT.
I'll let him enlighten you.

Bd...READ, THINK...don't swallow all the idiocy you obviously watch and read..it's unbecoming and, since you vote, it's really kind of dangerous to our country.

elmers brother said...
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
elmers brother said...

I could also thank the unions for getting people's job back who stole from the company..not once but three times. I can thank them for protecting the slug who wont do his job or for paying the unskilled worker more than o make with 25 years of experience or I could thank them for putting me on a fixed income making my performance irrelevant to any raises.

Z said...

Oh, GAD< Bd!!!! You just CANNOT be this misinformed!? REALLY?

Proud conservatives are all over the blogs saying they're working today and glad to have the work. WAKE UP.

Bd...READ, THINK...don't swallow all the idiocy you obviously watch and read..it's unbecoming and, since you vote, it's really kind of dangerous to our country.

Z said...

Elbro; thanks for that. Your stories of the union guys/bosses at your business have been horrible and I'd like a whole blog post on this if you ever find the time...

Well...libs will believe only what they want to believe. scary

elmers brother said...

BD you do know that in non Right to Work states that union due are mandatory? That's called extortion.

Even in non RTW states getting out of a union is a ball buster.

Z said...

Scotty posted this quote (below) at his blog and I thought it was excellent...it's off topic, but this is my blog, so what the heck!

"People seem not to see that their opinion of the world is also a confession of their character."

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803 - 1882)

Bd said...

REPORT: The American Middle Class Was Built By Unions And It Will Decline Without Them

oday is Labor Day, a federally recognized holiday that most Americans likely think of as a well-deserved day off. Labor Day was first celebrated in the late 1880′s as labor activists from the American Federation of Labor (which later formed part of the basis for the AFL-CIO) and other unions rallied around a day to celebrate organized labor and to take a day off. In 1887 Oregon started a formal “Labor Day” and by 1897 President Glover Cleveland made it a federal holiday, reacting to pressure from unions following the contentious Pullman Strike.

And yet, despite the many benefits unions have provided the United States, right-wing politicians and business interests have for years sought to undermine the ability of Americans to organize to demand better pay, benefits, and conditions. From the anti-worker Taft-Hartley Act to the recent GOP-led efforts to kill public worker collective bargaining rights, these assaults have successfully decreased union membership over time. In the prosperous 1950′s, nearly one in three Americans was in a union. Today, it is closer to one in ten.

This has had a deterimental effect on the American middle class. As the following chart from CAP’s David Madland and Karla Waters demonstrates, as union membership fell from the 1970′s to the present, the middle class’s share of national income fell as well:



http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2011/09/05/311831/american-middle-class-organized-labor/

elmers brother said...

REPORT: The American Middle Class Was Built By Unions And It Will Decline Without Them

Like the post office BD the union is an anachronism. The unions need to die...they're responsible for the collapse of many of our state gubmints and are nothing more than money launderers for the Democratic Party.

elmers brother said...



Look at the mining industry...the companies that busted up their unions are still around...those that didn't...well..

If you wish more examples of thuggery just witness the latest Verizon strike

Z said...

Elbro..it just couldn't be that people who know the truth about unions (you, as just one example of someone who's suffered under one) actually think that non-union types don't health care and fair pay, but I think that's the case.
This is the beautiful IDIOTIC Leftist attack: go to the most extreme attack to make a point that most reasonable people know is utterly ridiculous.

elmers brother said...

The unions also thwart competition. Let them compete on the open market then we'll see how good those union workers are.

From the Cato Institute:

“Unions are rapidly becoming an economic anachronism. In recent decades, barriers to international trade and investment have fallen, and domestic markets, including transportation, energy and telecommunications, have been largely deregulated. U.S. industries, on the whole, have accepted and even embraced the more competitive environment. Sectors such as steel, textiles and sugar continue to demand protection from foreign competitors, but they are now the exceptions and not the rule. But leaders of organized labor, on the whole, do not accept the new, more competitive environment.

A return to the era of more closed and regulated markets should be strongly resisted. Although it may be seen by labor leaders as a golden era, it extracted a heavy price on Americans in the form of lost consumer welfare, product innovation and freedom. The preferable policy alternative is to allow competition to work in labor markets just as it has been allowed to work more fully in product markets.”

Out of place, out of good ideas, and out of time, unions are indeed as anachronistic as they come. At times it seems that unions are the Luddites at the tech convention, imploring everyone to replace their iPhones with a union made CB radios and their iPads with clipboards


Are you a Luddite BD?

elmers brother said...

Absolutely Z. Why is it that most union workers are government employees? Just who are they being protected from?

In my employment experience in the private sector and even in the military, the only protection I needed was my hard work.

One job after the service I earned a 9% raise over the course of the first year I worked just based on my performance. Now the union thugs come around wanting me to thank them for a cost of living adjustment. I have to laugh.

Z said...

Wow, Elbro........all a question of CHARACTER, I guess. Some want to work hard and earn what they have and protect children and protect labor laws like OSHA, etc., that are sensible for America...
Others have their big fat hands out for a big fat freebie, begging and whining that "IT's NOT ENOUGH!" Meanwhile, our country can't compete.

I'm going to go watch a movie; I'm sick of the whole thing.
Poor Bd's sprinkling his idiot fairy dust at other blogs, too....too scary to read your stuff and have to think. Must be embarrassing, when you think about it?! :=)

Anonymous said...

Notice that the A-hole in cheef...said" we're going to find some straight shooters....and we're UN American?".

Remember the scathing hoopla when Palin used the word.."target".

Frauds, thugs, scumbags all. Hoffa has declared war on conservatives...yet the A-hole in cheef...says nothing?

Because he's a low life community organizer" at heart. He loves unions, chaos and anarchy. Ayers taught him well.

beakerkin said...

Elmer

My experience is quite different. The union has done a wonderful job protecting workers rights in my job.

-FJ the Dangerous and Extreme MAGA Jew said...

I grew up dealing with the Marine Engineer's Beneficial Association (MEBA) as the "union rep" for my profession in the maritime industry.

Did I mention that w/o the "Jones Act", there would BE no maritime industry in the United States, which at one time one of the greatest maritime powers the world has ever seen?

Thank the unions for that. They killed it.

Then I worked in the shipbuilding industry. The unions killed THAT industry too.

-FJ the Dangerous and Extreme MAGA Jew said...

If the US Navy had to comply with Union Rules, we'd only have half a dozen ships. That's all the country would be able to afford to operate.

christian soldier said...

Oh Detroit- the once beautiful city-
left this at another site:

unions used to have a purpose-100 years ago- then-
the unions were taken over by thugs-wanting $$$ -
\
Detroit-
unions took over the auto industry-
promoted welfare-
now-
the auto companies are owned by the unions and the govt-

houses go for $1.00 in Detroit
\
no body wants to live there – so – no sale!

Wake Up US-
C-CS

elmers brother said...

Beak while you were unfairly treated its not because the union was there for but because the union was either protecting that same supervisor or lacked the will to try and get rid of him. In other words if the union wasn't there in the first place you wouldn't be working for an idiot. He'd have been forced out long ago by a company unafraid of union backlash, endless harrassment, civil lawsuits and EEO filings.

elmers brother said...

What I've seen at my work are low level agitators who rarely work themselves and more times than not take a job with the union because they lack any real world skills. Are local union head makes six figures. He never works in craft and everyone says he was lousy at it anyway. Our union can give a third of our dues to a political candidate and can even have union members work for a political campaign. I'm stuck paying dues to an organization cutting my own throat.

Z said...

Beak, please read all the comments.
By the way, I think ALL union members feel their union's for THEM; we just wish they'd be first for AMerica...we can't do without jobs because they're so tough they won't allow companies to be competitive.

FJ...interesting stuff; thanks for that. WHY can't SOMEBODY get in the msm and label most unions for what damage to our economy and Middle America which they've done?

Instead, we get liberal dopes like DUcky at Silverfiddle's blog accusing ME of wanting child labor back because I see through unions. With that kind of dialogue, where do you go?

CS, have you rec'd that email of pictures of Detroit and how HORRIBLY run down it's become? it's like a horror movie.

FW...Obama did THAT? I hadn't heard this. I suppose the language is pretty typical of WH language these days with a bunch of Harvard punk/thugs there, so Obama didn't blink an eye....but he complimented Hoffa after hearing that? Shades of Jeremiah White-type of behavior, huh? !!

And, Elbro, it would DO ME IN to know my union dues were going to a liberal moron candidate..I'm so sorry for what you go through.

Ducky's here said...

Has Michele Bachmann told Rick Perry that the fires and drought are God's retribution for Perry's policies.

Just seems she would want to be fair and balanced

elmers brother said...

Red Herring Man is back

elmers brother said...

Oh and surprise surprise duhkkky you and Obama's Arab spring in Libya now have definitive ties to Al-queda..

WTG duhkkkwad

elmers brother said...

BTW BD you're wrong about Perry and those mminimum wage jobs. Wages have gone up under Perry.

Always On Watch said...

Z,
I'm going to include that information about the hardhat in my 9/11 post.

Always On Watch said...

My father worked in a closed shop (bus transit in D.C.), starting in about 1932.

In his experience, the union tried to control members' votes in national elections. The pressure was on! Vote Democratic Party or lose your union membership -- and your health insurance and retirement.

Dad stood strong and voted for whom he pleased -- and told everyone so. However, as a result, he was harassed on the job to the point that he took early retirement ASAP.

Also, when the union called a strike, Dad had to stay home for a month. Then, everyone went back to work -- for less than the company had offered, thanks to that damned strike.

Charles Dickens's Hard Times shows the pros and cons of unions -- even back in the 19th Century. Corruption ruled from both management and union.

Joe said...

Bd: While BO has improved the jobs market, helped banks survive, caused the economy to shoot up, gotten us out fo meaningless global conflicts, improved our infrastructure, forced us to make plans to buy health insurance and so much more.

Bd said...

No one is forcing Health care plans on you and I'm betting you have one anyway. Requiring everyone to have even a minimum plan will save us billions by those who have no insurance and seek Emergency Room treatment.

So...what else is 'so much more?'

Z said...

BD... you're only believing what they want you to hear about obama care; please check the details out; you'll be more upset than we are.

Lisa said...

Hey Bd didn't you know that the road to hell is paved with good intentions?