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A partisan holiday
by Laurence Lewis Mon Sep 06, 2010
Labor Day shames Republicans. They campaign against unions. Their media propagandists rail against unions. Their policies consistently favor corporatists over workers.
If the Republicans had their way, minimum wage would be kept to a minimum. Regulations that protect workers would be slashed or eliminated. Consumer protections would be slashed or eliminated. Environmental protections would be slashed or eliminated.
Republicans like to claim they are about less government, but they are really about less government protection of people and workers from corporate abuses. Republicans want to regulate our personal lives, telling us who we can and cannot love and marry, what women are allowed to do with their own bodies, and how we all are to respond to our bodies' natural rhythms. But they want corporations to have complete freedom.
Unions and union workers played a huge role in creating the best of what America has been for the past century. They built our national infrastructure and our national security. They taught us and fed us. They protect us in our homes. They protect us from natural disasters. Republicans love to stoke fear and hatred based on the 9/11 attacks, but they have opposed helping that day's first responders who saw friends and colleagues die, who risked their own lives, and who continue to suffer the after-effects from those attacks.
Those who fought and died to create the labor movement helped end child labor and legal employment discrimination, and they helped create the forty hour work week, paid overtime, workplace safety, workers' comp, unemployment protections, pensions, guaranteed health insurance, sick leave and guaranteed vacations. When Republicans criticize unions and talk of reducing government, they are talking about ending all of that progress.
More than any other holiday, Labor Day is partisan in nature. Republican presidents and Republican elected officials may pay it lip service, but they rarely mean what they say. Their actions speak their true intentions, and they rarely act to the benefit of workers or unions. The only surprise is that they haven't attempted to abolish the holiday altogether. Perhaps someday they will seek a balance by attempting to establish a holiday that equally reflects their values and their agenda. But Corporate Plutocracy Day just doesn't have the same ring to it.
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