Custom Search

Labor Day as Memorial Holiday; Middle Class R.I.P.

Rob Kall

If you're making more than a million a year, go ahead, celebrate labor day.

Otherwise, get off your butt and use the day to get active and fight for the future of the middle class, because it is at great risk, already drawing its last dying breaths. Don't kid yourself if you think otherwise.

Forget about Labor Day as the day to celebrate the worker. Workers have been so screwed, it's time to take the paid day off to do all you can to fight for the survival of the American worker, of the American middle class, of jobs that pay living wages.

David Letterman joked, on his show the other day,

Folks have big plans for Labor Day? Labor Day, of course, is the one day a year we honor our workforce. Do we still have a workforce?
and

We go out and we buy a lot of products made in China. That's how we celebrate Labor Day.

Arianna Huffington's newest book, Third World America, chronicles, in painful detail how corporations and the congress, and the White House and their appointees have been systematically undermining, literally wiping out the middle class.

flickr image by By Blue Jay Day

flickr imageByBlue Jay Day

We'd hoped that a strong Democratic congress and Obama in the White House would stanch the bleeding.

It didn't happen. The Whitehouse rescued big finance and the auto industry but did nothing for millions of homeowners facing foreclosure. Congress pretended to pass financial reform while simultaneously gutting real reform, with the White House helping to weaken things like auditing the Fed or building in real, tough regulations.

The result is, the middle class is worse off now than it was in 2008. Pathetic, suck-up apologists for spineless or sold out Democratic legislators are telling us that Obama did what he could. The poor legislators were hamstrung by filibustering Republicans.

Bullshit.

Obama and the Democrats were given historic powers-- a filibuster-proof majority in the senate, even. And they threw the power away. They wasted time, they made excuses. They were weak when they had to be strong. They sold out the middle class again and again.

So now, we have labor day for a skeletal working force. We have laws that allow, even encourage corporations to out-source jobs, not just low level jobs, but high-paying ones. No wonder there are millions of unemployed. No wonder the word is that those millions of jobs may never come back.

It used to be that labor day was a day to celebrate the worker. Perhaps now, we should seeing labor day as a memorial for the short time in American history when workers were honored and through their salaries and living wages, respected.

Perhaps, as David Letterman suggests, we should make Labor Day a celebration of the Chinese worker. Or maybe we should celebrate the worker in America before Bill Clinton signed globalization agreements like WTO and NAFTA, which, as Ross Perot accurately predicted, created that great sucking sound of millions of lost jobs.

I don't understand why the millions of unemployed have not rised up and made a lot of noise-- a hell of a lot of noise. Where are their spines? Have they been beated down so badly that they can't speak up, stand up and insist that the White House and congress do at least as good a job rescuing them as they did the banksters.

How about a labor day that gets people out in the streets? Reading Huffington's book, Third World America, I had a hard time, repeatedly, putting the book down, getting really angry. Why aren't the mainstream media telling the story of the death and dying of the middle class? During WWII there were Nazi horrors, mass murders that were reported after the fact. Now, we have mass firings, rapid destructions of major American Industries causing losses of hundreds of thousand or millions of jobs. These are American Disasters-- a job holocaust afflicting tens of millions of Americans.

flickr image by By Blue Jay Day

flickr imageByBlue Jay Day

It's probably too late this year to turn Labor Day into a day of protest but we should be planning now for next year, to make it a day of activism. If you and your family members all have jobs, great. Go out and protest to support your neighbors and relatives who have been hit by the recession. Protest for the neighbors who lost or who are about to lose their homes-- causing your home to drop in value. Protest against Democratic frauds like Chris Dodd, who gutted the financial reform while claiming to champion consumers.

Throw a labor day party for candidates who are making strong commitments to pass real legislation. Push those candidates to throw out the sell-outs who chair the house and senate committees. Push to end the seniority system in congress that contributes to a legislative system which has consistently worsened the plight of the middle class.

This year, on Labor day, take a few moments to write a letter and mail it. Or draft a few thoughts to say when you call your legislator's office the day after labor day.

The time to celebrate labor day is over. It's time to use the paid time off to fight for fellow workers and for your own job. We should have been doing that for years, but now, the writing on the wall is so clear, we need to be sure next year is the first year that Labor Day is known as a day of strong protest.

Author's Bio:

Rob Kall is executive editor, publisher and site architect of OpEdNews.com, Host of the Rob Kall Bottom Up Radio Show (WNJC 1360 AM), President of Futurehealth, Inc, inventor . He is also published regularly on the Huffingtonpost.com

With his experience as architect and founder of a technorati top 200 blog, he is also a new media / social media consultant and trainer for corporations, non-profits, entrepreneurs and authors.

Rob is a frequent Speaker on the bottom up revolution, politics, The art, science and power of story, heroes and the hero's journey, Positive Psychology, Stress, Biofeedback and a wide range of subjects. He is a campaign consultant specializing in tapping the power of stories for issue positioning, stump speeches and debates, and optimizing tapping the power of new media. He recently retired as organizer of several conferences, including StoryCon, the Summit Meeting on the Art, Science and Application of Story and The Winter Brain Meeting on neurofeedback, biofeedback, Optimal Functioning and Positive Psychology. See more of his articles here and, older ones, here.

To learn more about me and OpEdNews.com, check out this article.

And there are Rob's quotes, here.

To Watch me on youtube, having a lively conversation with John Conyers, Chair of the House Judiciary committee, click here Now, wouldn't you like to see me on the political news shows, representing progressives. If so, tell your favorite shows to bring me on and refer them to this youtube video

My radio show, The Rob Kall Bottom Up Radio Show, runs 9-10 PM EST Wednesday evenings, on AM 1360, WNJC and is archived at www.opednews.com/podcasts Or listen to it streaming, live at www.wnjc1360.com

Rob also host a health/mind/body/heart/spirit radio show-- the Rob Kall Futurehealth radio show. Check out podcasts from it at futurehealth.org/podcasts

Follow me on Twitter

A few declarations.

-While I'm registered as a Democrat, I consider myself to be a dynamic critic of the Democratic party, just as, well, not quite as much, but almost as much as I am a critic of republicans.

-My articles express my personal opinion, not the opinion of this website.

Recent press coverage in the Wall Street Journal: Party's Left Pushes for a Seat at the Table

Sept. 5, 2010

www.opednews.com/articles/Labor-Day-as-Memorial-Holi-by-Rob-Kall-100905-537.html

Four Winds 10 - News