Happy Labor Day, And Remember Tuesday's Weekly Live Chat

In the Age of the Corporation, it seems almost anachronistic to have a holiday celebrating "labor." But if it weren't for the organized labor movement of the 20th century, would we have workplace safety, child-labor laws, vacation and leave, five-day work weeks, decent working conditions and protection against discrimination?

Oh, right, the "free market" would have taken care of it all.

But I am thinking of the plus side of the labor ledger. On the minus side there's corruption and a trail of destroyed businesses and industries as labor locked many U.S. employers into a doomed spiral of benefits and labor costs. No wonder even today, opinions about union membership are so divided in the U.S. I wonder, if hard times come again (a $9-trillion national debt, credit crunch, mortgage collapse, lack of personal savings, etc.) whether there will be a labor resurgence... maybe not, since so many of the manufacturing and industry jobs of the classical labor movement no longer exist...

Oh, well. Really, I just wanted to say, Happy Labor Day and I hope you enjoy the day off. I hope you'll consider coming by Tuesday's weekly live chat here on TroxBlog from noon to 1 p.m. -- it'll FEEL like Monday, so I thought I'd put in an extra pitch.

To observe or take part in Tuesday's chat, come back to TroxBlog at noon and look for a new item with the headline, "The Sept. 4 Chat Is Open." Just click on the "Comments" link of that item to see what folks are saying or to add your own comments.

If you can't be here live, feel free to "pre-file'' a comment or question by adding a comment to this post. And you can always come back afterwards to check out the transcript of what people had to say.

Comments

[Boo Boo]

OK Howard here's one for your chat. You say businesses were destroyed by "a doomed sprial of benefits and labor costs" So when Bill Clinton was president and we had a surplus along with a robust and thrivng economy that was a bad thing? I was in my late 30's finally earning a good living, able to buy my first house and a new car. The jobs didn't just go away they were exported and we got cheap unsafe products in return. Coroporate profits skyrocketed and the workers got zilch. We have 47 million without health care. The homeless population grows daily. We are being taxed out of our shoes and the Insurance Compaines are laughing all the way to the bank. It's really going to be hard to turn this around. My grand kids will be footing the bill for long time if we don't.

[FP]

Credit to 'ya for the following:

"if it weren't for the organized labor movement of the 20th century, would we have workplace safety, child-labor laws, vacation and leave, five-day work weeks, decent working conditions and protection against discrimination?

Oh, right, the 'free market' would have taken care of it all."

Nice to see those words - too bad today's Trib editorial page includes some of the most anti-union, free market bunk I've read in weeks, err ... make that days.

[Jennifer W]

Just wondering if anyone else has noticed the mistakes in the Times lately. Grammatical and otherwise. We're getting a little more than miffed about it here at my house, have called the paper to point the things out, and have been told that 1. there are not enough copy editors on staff, and 2. unless more people call and complain/point it out nothing will be done about it. ???

Specifically--the top headline in the local & state section last week (grammatical error, pardon me for not having the quote, I am an idiot at using the times website and cannot find the headline, but it was a quote by Rick Baker and it read like slang because a word was missing)
--all the captions over the past week where some of the letters are in italics and some are normal, makes for poor reading
--Howard's column yesterday, grammatical error, "that has an name for it..."
--and so on. How can we get this fixed? We won't remain one of the top 10 papers in the nation with these egregious errors.

[Mark]

Howard, the labor movement clearly was necessary in the early part of the 20th century, and provided a lifestyle that benefitted many generations with reasonable wages and relatively benign work conditions. However, the movement in the 60s and 70s got companies to give up so much, without adequately forecasting increased life expectancy and outrageous medical costs, that it's choking those industries that have to compete globally against companies without such costs.

That being said, as deregulation (and reduced govt oversight in so many ways) has been the rallying cry throughout our economy for the past 25 years, we have also seen that many businesses (and their well-funded political puppets) will gladly endanger the welfare of employees and/or customers to earn an extra dollar. The widening income gap is certainly a result of such actions.

I'm actually a huge "free market" supporter, (a libertarian at heart) but the free market demands a moral compass on those that participate in/guide the market, and this compass was metaphorically tossed out the window more than a few miles back down the highway. As a society, we need to watch less E! channel, read fewer tabloids, and take personal responsibility to change the government we deserve into one that works for all of us.

[Jane]

Howard,
I am really angry at the news that Bright House cable has decided to move government channels, such as the Pinellas school board channels off of basic cable. I've been a BH subscriber since two or three corporations ago, and I've heard nothing about this except the article Saturday. Don't these piranhas have an obligation to provide this service free (or as free as cable ever is) of charge? We need THREE shopping channels and at least three spanish channels on basic cable but I have to buy a box to keep an eye on my city council and school board? I have to buy a box to watch my son perform on PCS "Student Measures"? From the way the article was written, this sounds like a done deal, comments?

[Lawrence]

Jane, I hate to tell you, but Brighthouse is a greedy corporation, just like all the rest. Here in the TB area, we pay the highest rates for cable, internet, telephone service of anywhere. Brighthouse's CEO only earned $287 million last year. With all the inflation he has been experiencing, why should you be having a "free" ride. I remember when they actually used leeches for medicinal purposes; now they are all running corporate America.

Were it not for Unions, we’d all be working 70-hours a week for $7 an-hour, with no health insurance, no holiday pay, no overtime, no workers comp, no retirement, no security… and living 10 to a singlewide… just like illegal migrants.

Now you know what corporations want the boarders left wide open.

[Jane]

I know, Lawrence, and agree with you 110% but tell me where is the competition here? What are my options? Remember when that other bunch of leeches, the legislature, raised our cable/phone rates in the name of fostering competition?

[ELIZABETH]

Tonight at 6:00 pm producers and members of Access Pinellas TV are turning out in force to plead with our County Commissioners to save our station. In the name of our First Amendment Rights - Freedom of Speech, please ask your readers to join us at the County Commission Office. We want standing room only to make it clear we need this public soapbox in order to be heard in the din of commercial TV. Thanks!

[Elizabeth]

Why do you think that sweat shops went overseas? American businesses are no longer concerned about labor because they can throw the jobs to China and other countries that will force children to do the dirty work at starvation wages. If American labor unions took measures to protect overseas workers it would go along way to aiding their cause. Personnally I thank labor unions for helping workers get a fair shake in working conditions, wages and hours. I worked my way up to a management position and I truly believe that the folks that I supervise deserve a piece of the American pie.

[David Mathews]

Hello Everyone,

I was visiting Safety Harbor this afternoon and happened to see four manatees by the fishing pier. Manatees must love Safety Harbor's fishing pier because I have seen them there at least five times over the last six months. Who can blame them, either, because Safety Harbor is a pretty place.

2007 is another record setting hurricane year. Two land-falling Cat-5 hurricanes and there is still plenty of time left for sorrows:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Category_5_Atlantic_hurricanes

Let's see: 2004, 2005, 2007 ... does anyone notice a pattern forming here? Hurricanes are frequently becoming monsters.

Maybe Florida should incorporate this information into its development planning and wetland destroying policies. But it is too much to ask for wisdom from Florida's politicians, just as it is foolish to ask for self-restraint from Florida's developers.

Humans will keep on destroying Nature and Nature will repay the favor by destroying all these things that humans have constructed within the flood and storm surge zone.

I have no praise whatsoever for the fertility-clinic couple's success at becoming a baby factory:

http://blogs.tampabay.com/breakingnews/2007/09/sextuplet-mom-h.html

Eh ... did these people notice that there are 6,600,000,000 humans on the Earth. No one needs fertility doctors. Large families are an obscenity on a planet which already has 2,000,000,000 impoverished people and among them millions of orphans suffering and dying from neglect and deprivement.

Yet this family has added six more hungry mouths to the human family. They probably expect that their children will live "the good life" of obese American hyperconsumerism.

Unfortunately the world cannot sustain 300 million+ American hyperconsumers consuming, destroying and polluting the planet for status & wealth & pleasure.

These children are certainly going to live in the post-automotive, post-America, post-cheap food age. They will witness the end of civilization. They will witness the oceans swallowing Miami, Manhattan and Bangladesh.

This is the world that the fertility-clinic couple will leave their children to inherit.