Labor Day is not a holiday, but a battle in history that continues to be waged today. Far removed from barbecues and the start of the football season, the first Labor Day was celebrated on September 5th, 1882, in New York City. An estimated ten to twenty thousand workers marched from City Hall, past Union Square to 42nd Street. It was an unpaid day-off where speeches were given that voiced discontent with the bosses of labor. Socialists, the Knights of Labor, and various left organizations associated with the Central Labor Union organized the march calling for shorter hours, higher pay, safer working conditions, and a labor holiday. Continue reading

Do you make $15 an hour? Or are you selling an hours worth or your labor and life's existence for just $15? How something is framed or conceived makes a big difference. As an educator, much of my work is helping people re-frame how we talk and understand things. Back on May 1st we celebrated International Workers Day or May Day. Labor Day was created to divert attention away from international solidarity among laborers. It was as an attempt to diffuse and pacify American laborers and to encourage them to conceive of the United States as a place that appreciates and values workers. Nothing could be further from the truth. The United States was founded on the exploitation of labor. From the genocide of the indigenous, to the enslavement of Africans and the abusive practices endured by immigrants, the blood, sweat, tears of the poor and marginalized and exploited have given rise to this country. Today Labor Day has been further re-framed and re-conceptualized so that it is considered a day to celebrate the end of summer and sales. Continue reading

We own our labor. Let us not forget that. We don't need to sell our labor to people that exploit it. We don's have for people that don't give us the recognition and compensation we deserve. We don't have to wait on these major corporations to save or invest in the American job industry. Nor do we have to wait on these corrupt politicians and/or corrupt party's to change the policies that promote predatory practices? Continue reading

As someone who has been a union member since I was a Marine with the American Servicemen's Union until I retired last year as a Teamster as well as a member of the Industrial Workers of the World, I have lived the reality of mistreatment of workers in the United States. It is good to see labor rising with teacher and other strikes increasing across the country and with the US public showing its highest support for unions in decades. The next president should harness the energy of working people and build political power for a transformation agenda for working people who have not gotten a real raise in decades, while executives and investors have been getting rich off of higher rates of exploitation with increased productivity and globalized markets and corporate-managed trade deals that enable global corporations to pit the working classes of different countries against each other in a race to the bottom. Continue reading

I don't know what has happened in America. People seem to have less and less respect for the working class, many seem to have an absolute disdain for any type of labor. Combine this with an overall lack of respect for education and skills training- decrying those who go to college or those with college degrees goes hand in hand with a hatred for union trained workers.If federal minimum wage doesn't go up, the skilled wages don't increase. When my father wanted me to join the Plumbers and Pipefitters union in 2000, the wages for an apprentice are the same as they are today. Continue reading

This Labor Day, we can't help but think about the insanity that is our country's desperate need for countless people-hours to transform our infrastructure and renew public services while, at the same time, countless people and families across our nation suffer for lack of living-wage jobs. But as crazy as that problem is, the solution makes perfect sense: an Eco-Socialist Green New Deal. Greens have fought for it. And the idea is catching on, thanks to the tremendous effort of our members and candidates. Will you give to the Green Party of New York today so we can keep up the fight at this pivotal time? Because you and I know there is nothing the corporate power structure would love more than to erase the most essential, radical demands of the GND. We cannot allow that. Continue reading