LABOR DAY: ORGANIZE

[Hannah Bell]

Friday, September 3, 2010 | by Jim Hightower

America's corporate chieftains must love poor people, for they're doing all they can to create millions more of them.

They're knocking down wages, offshoring everything from manufacturing jobs to high-tech, reducing full-time work to part-time, downsizing our workplaces, busting unions, cutting health care coverage, and canceling pensions – while also lobbying in Washington to privatize Social Security, eliminate job safety protections, restrict unemployment benefits, kill job-creating programs, and increase corporate control of our elections.

It's said that the poor and the rich will always be among us. But nowhere is it written that the middle-class will always be there. In fact, it is a very recent creation in our society (and an unavailable dream for most people in the world). America's great middle class literally arose with the rise of labor unions and populist political movements in 1800s, finally culminating in democratic economic reforms implemented from the 1930s into the 1960s...This essential framework was not "given" to us by corporate executives and politicians... Rather, it came from union-led grassroots movements, organizing for structural change to serve the common good of America's people.

This Labor Day, we see corporate executives and their politicians relentlessly dismantling that framework, piece by piece – and we see the middle class disappearing and poverty rising. But as labor icon Joe Hill said, "Don't mourn, organize." It's time for working families to organize for the common good.


http://jimhightower.com/node/7237

[HillbillyBob]

1. Its been a hand to mouth struggle for a lots of folks

for 30 yrs. We sort of achieved the murkin dream.. a run down house in the country ..We bought out of the need to have a roof over us and the house was abandoned and needs a great deal of work but we can't get much done w/o the income we have lost over the last 10 yrs. My partner was in a good paying field till the bastards moved IT overseas.
I was listening to a report talkin bout now that wages have been killed companies want people to be call centers out of their own home..do they give any kind of consideration that you are using part of your house as a business or are you expected to be their infrastructure out of your pay check? The sure as fuck don't help with insurance or retirement and not trying to kill SS.
I think we need to revisit The Terror.. Bastille day #2....anyone hello? time t drop the playstation and wii and pay some damn attention.

[stray cat]

2. Create jobs!