"How come you don't work 14 hours a day?..."

[babylonsister]

[tanyev]

1. “You work three jobs? Uniquely American, isn't it? I mean, that is fantastic that you're doing that"

GWB to a divorced mother of three, Omaha, Nebraska, Feb. 4, 2005.

[Bozita]

11. That GWB quote oughtta be the anthem for the new State of Michissippi, formerly known as ...

... Michigan.

Michissippi workers will now work for less, a lot less, than an unemployed Haitian.

[Ikonoklast]

38. And not one price will be lowered.

Corporations will pocket those savings and fuck over their customers just as easily as they fucked over their employees.

And the Republican Teabagger Twaddle can't see what's coming.

[harun]

21. First thing I thought of too.

[Mira]

22. I. so. remember.

I'm still disgusted enough to vomit

[rustydog]

2. How come children aren't working in coal mines any more?

Unions. Plain and simple.
NEWT wanted to reverse that, don't forget.

[mike_c]

3. sadly, I'm in hour 11 of what will be just about a 14 hr day....

And I'm a union worker. Somehow the lines delineating workload get blurred for us "professional" types, e.g. university faculty. And of course not every day is like this (but my base workday nearly ALWAYS exceeds ten hours and includes substantial portions of weekends). It's largely self directed and self managed though-- I'd go crazy if I had to punch a clock and work to a manager's approval.

And the last two plus hrs will actually be union work off campus-- I'm a delegate to our central labor council and it meets tonight. So I started at 7:00 AM and will head home sometime around 9:00 PM. Sigh. Morning comes early in the worker's paradise.

[hedgehog]

5. One of the lesser known scandals of the age is how college tuition has sky rocketed

while wages for those doing the actual teaching have stagnated or dropped!

[mike_c]

6. word....

eom

[midnight]

8. I did read something about that a few years ago.. Forget where they said the money was going..

[Thor_MN]

10. Delayed Maintenance is what they said when I was in school.

They got the fancy new athletic facility finished during the last months of my senior year...

[lbrtbell]

33. All any school cares about is sports

To hell with education, because we need a place where the D-average date rapists can go to feel like they aren't total failures.

[Starry Messenger]

14. Administration.

[Ilsa]

28. Not just teachers/professors;

I know of administrative personnel, specialists like lawyers and other contract negotiators, that haven't had raises in 5-10 years in their "right to work" for less state. But naturally the Republicans say they are paid too much.

[Skittles]

36. I don't think a lot of people get it, mike_c

a lot of DU seems to live in some kind of dream world

[limpyhobbler]

4. k/r

[Mr.Bill]

7. A man tells a waitress in Texas:

Did you know that governor Perry has created more jobs than any other governor?

She replies: Yes, I know, I've got three of them.

[pacalo]

9. That answer is priceless!

[midnight]

12. K&R

[Warren Religion]

13. Rimshot!

[rhett o rick]

15. The idiots dont realize that there is only so much work to divide up.

If more people worked 14 hour days, more people would be working zero.

[Hydra]

17. They wouldn't care even if they realized it

Social Darwinism is currently in vogue. Can't make enough to survive? You aren't working enough hours. Can't find a job? Not trying hard enough. Sick or disabled? Better off dead.

Lovely culture we have, isn't it?

[rhett o rick]

18. How do we combat stupid? nm

[Hydra]

19. In a way, you can't

70% of people think they're in the 1% or will be.

As long as they think this insanity is to their benefit...

[rhett o rick]

20. Willful ignorance. nm

[2labslib]

16. Sometimes I feel like I do....

I'm a teacher.

[Skittles]

23. LOL, EIGHT HOUR DAY?

my work nights are routinely 13 hours

[Luminous Animal]

24. And your point? Do you think union won 8 hour shifts should be abandoned?

[Skittles]

35. I'm saying they have ALREADY been abandoned

[Luminous Animal]

39. Mostly. But, unless you stand in solidarity in any way that you can...

things will only get worse for everyone.

There was an incredible poignant scene in Michael Moore's SiCKO. A woman, an American expatriot living in France, describes the benefits (health care, work load, vacations, pensions) of living there and then tears up and says (paraphrasing)... everything my father fought for as a union man in the U.S., I enjoy here.

[Posteritatis]

29. Sucks to be you. Do you think it should suck as much to be everyone else? (nt)

[Skittles]

41. &%*$ #^%

[jtuck004]

25. Women, children, men, beaten and shot in 1880

(Thank you for the picture, B.S.)



The ones without the sticks...

Again in 1884, and that was the basis for the hanging...

...
The police panicked,
and in the darkness
many shot at their own men

Anti-labor governments around the world
used the Chicago incident to
crush local union movements.

The Haymarket meeting was almost over and only about two hundred people remained when they were attacked by 176 policemen carrying Winchester repeater rifles. Fielden was speaking; even Lucy and Albert Parsons had left because it was beginning to rain. Then someone, unknown to this day, threw the first dynamite bomb ever used in peacetime history of the United States.
...

Peacetime? Protesters being shot by police, with weapons provided by business owners and passed out by the Pinkertons they hired, though I can't find that link right now.

Here.

"... public opinion ran strongly against them. The majority view was expressed by the owner of a Chicago clothing firmwho declared, “No, I don’t consider these people to have been found guilty of any offense, but they must be hanged...the labor movement must be
crushed!”

Here.

That struggle isn't over.

[RKP5637]

27. K&R !!! K&R !!! K&R !!! K&R !!! K&R !!! n/t

[Lady Freedom Returns]

26. I am PROUD to say...

Last edited Wed Dec 12, 2012, 07:27 PM - Edit history (1)

My grandfather was a Shop Stewart for the Teamster Union! I remember being a wee little girl going with grandpa ( yes that is what I called him) to see his buddies at Truckers truck stop every Sunday. This was well after he was retired. But they always talked of their old days. That is where I learned that one person is not a powerful as a group. And that things will work for every one to get a piece of the pie, even the employer, because everyone will have a stake on the product.
That is why I am so anti "Right to work". To me, it feels like you have no pride in the business, no stake. You are just used and spit out. I understand the idea behind it. But I have seen what it ends up doing to people. I see all the good going down the toilet.

For those that are pro Right to work and are anti union, I look forward to your PMs. I am getting a nice collection!

[DinahMoeHum]

30. Unions: The folks who gave us the weekends. . .

. . .and eight-hour work days.

[senseandsensibility]

31. Kick and rec

Labor history is never covered on the corporate media, and is not taught in the schools anymore. The average person is completely ignorant about how the middle class life style they enjoy was created. It makes it very easy for Fox to demonize unions.

[Doc Holliday]

32. Whenever someone asks me

why I'm pro-union (near-sacrilege in this right-to-work-for-less state), I give them a one-word answer: "Dad."

Should additional details be requested, I will happily regale the listener with the tale of my dad, who supported a stay-at-home wife and raised six children on a Union paycheck. Dad liked Ike, but he became a JFK Democrat, as am I. Raised on a cotton farm in West Texas, high school grad, four years in the Army. He got married after he got out of the service and moved to extreme upstate NY, a booming little city called Massena. Massena was then the home of an Alcoa plant, a Reynolds plant and a GM plant. Most everyone around there was "working at the plant" or dairy farmers. Dad worked for Reynolds Aluminum for seventeen years, was involved with the Union and was even a shop steward at one point.

I recall only one actual strike, and I'm a bit vague on whether it was in '69 or '70. (I guess I could look it up...later.) That strike lasted from late spring into the summer of that year, which is a long time to go without a full paycheck...but Dad, my older brother and I were some house-painting fools that year, I tell you. Boy, did I have a tan!

BigBro and I offered to kick back to Dad the piece he paid us as his helpers, to help out with things. He wouldn't let us....one of many teachable moments Dad gifted us with. "Boy," he told me (and God love him, he called me 'boy' clear into my fifties, when he died), "a man supports his family. I'm thankful for the offer, but this is my job. You just put that money away, and don't blow it on something stupid. This thing [the strike] ain't over yet." So we three oldest decided that the best way we could help out was to earn and spend our own money, thereby reducing what Dad and Mom would normally have to spend on us-- school clothes, bumming around money, fair money, etc. The whole family kicked in-- Mom sold Avon, my sister babysat, and we all took our turn watching the three smallest kids. I mowed lawns, washed cars, weeded gardens, washed windows, and even gave the occasional trombone lesson...anything to turn a buck. We 'kids' made the amazing discovery that if you're working your ass off all the time, you don't have time to spend it. I had quite a little nest egg when it came time to buy school clothes. A lot of good people became workaholics that year. I don't know where people get the asinine notion that union workers are lazy and raise their families to be lazy and feel entitled.

Eventually, of course, the strike ended; I think it lasted a total of sixteen or seventeen weeks. Dad went back to work, and life resumed. A couple years after that, he was seriously injured in an accident at work, and eventually was judged totally and permanently disabled. Thanks to the Union, the checks came on time, and the Union's lawyers worked their asses off to get Dad a generous settlement from Reynolds. Eventually, when his health improved enough, Dad went back to Texas and cotton farming; but that eventually proved to be too debilitating for him. He wound up getting a job with the Texas Boll Weevil Eradication program which consisted mostly of riding around in a State pickup truck all day, checking boll weevil traps and talking to farmers. This job started at a whopping $8.00 an hour (this was in 1995). Fortunately, we were all grown and gone by then, Dad was divorced and remarried, and his wife worked, too. With two paychecks, what he received from Social Security, and a modest income from the Union settlement, they got by.

Dad's been gone seven years now. He's mildly famous-- the first human in the state of Texas to be diagnosed with West Nile virus... but, as we say down here, that's a whole 'nother story.

I sure do miss you, Dad.

[JEB]

34. They don't make them like Studs anymore.

What a great voice and insightful mind he had.

[ErikJ]

37. You mean four "UNION THUGS" got hanged....

Why didnt we learn this in school?

[TexasBushwhacker]

40. We're still overworked compared to many countries

15 countries in the European union require 4 weeks of paid vacation for every employee, even part time employees. Japan requires 5 weeks of paid vacation. Most countries have at least 8 weeks paid maternity leave and many have much more. The wonderful US of A has no required vacation, paid or unpaid and maternity leave is treated as an illness. If the person has sick leave hours they can use them, but there is no guarantee of a paid maternity leave; not one day.