#labor-day — Public Fediverse posts
Live and recent posts from across the Fediverse tagged #labor-day, aggregated by home.social.
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Workers fought for the right to organize, bargain collectively, and have a voice in the decisions that affect their lives. We are fighting for the same principle at the heart of democracy: the right to have a voice in the decisions that affect our lives. #LaborDay
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Happy Labour/Labor Day to all who celebrate in Canada and the US! Remember the reason for the day!💪🏿
#LabourDay #LaborDay #StarTrek -
“Labor is prior to, and independent of, capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if labor had not first existed. Labor is the superior of capital, and deserves much the higher consideration.”*…
Today is, of course, Labor Day, a recognition of the American labor movement and the works and contributions of laborers to the development and achievements in the U. S. that dates from the latter 19th century. Livia Gershon reminds us that, earlier that century, labor had an important champion…
Today, the idea that the value of all commodities comes from the labor power used to produce them is closely associated with Karl Marx. But Marx was far from the only thinker in the mid-nineteenth century to believe this. Literature scholar Owen Cantrell looks at another: Abraham Lincoln [and here].
In 1847, Lincoln wrote that goods rightfully “belong to those whose labour has produced them,” and any good government should ensure that workers receive the entire product of their labor “or as nearly as possible.”
However, unlike Marx, Lincoln saw no problem with the private ownership of property, or even of some people becoming rich. Cantrell argues that his view was the product of his own background in rural middle America. As a young man, Lincoln’s father had worked odd jobs in Kentucky, sometimes alongside enslaved laborers. This became increasingly difficult as the growing use of enslavement crowded out free workers. But he was eventually able to help his community with his carpentry skills and establish a homestead in Indiana. There, Lincoln grew up doing manual labor on the homestead and at neighboring farms.
In 1861, the newly elected president warned that slavery threatened a system of free labor in which “the prudent, penniless beginner in the world, labors for wages for awhile, saves a surplus with which to buy tools or land for himself; then labors on his own account another while, and at length hires another new beginner to help him.”
Cantrell writes that Lincoln believed that both human advancement and political stability for the American democratic republic depended on workers’ dignity and ability to improve their conditions. He envisioned the Civil War as a fight between a slave economy that left workers powerless and a kind of capitalism in which they could use the cash economy to advance, improve production techniques, and create better material conditions for the country as a whole.
Marx had a very different view of the capitalist system, seeing wage work as the mark of an oppressed class making up the majority of industrial nations’ populations. But, like Lincoln, he saw the Civil War as an opportunity to secure better lives for all workers. When Lincoln was reelected in 1864, Marx—on behalf of the First International—wrote to him with hopes that the “American Antislavery War” would essentially function as a revolution bringing the working class to power.
In the end, the post-Civil War era did bring a new labor system, though not one for which either Marx or Lincoln had hoped. It saw the rise of large corporate employers and the consignment of an increasing part of the workforce to lifelong wage work—thanks in significant part to Lincoln’s Republican Party choosing to ally itself with the corporations.
“If he had witnessed the capitalist excesses of the Gilded Age, it would have proved the lie to his conception of capital and labor in the starkest possible way,” Cantrell writes…
Abraham Lincoln was no Marxist, but his ideas resonated—albeit with a rural American flavor: “Abraham Lincoln’s Labor Theory of Value,” from @liviagershon.bsky.social in @jstordaily.bsky.social.
If Lincoln would have been appalled at the Gilded Age, what might he think of what’s transpiring now? “How Did Trump Do on His Labor Day Report Card?” (“Spoiler alert: He flunked…” From @timothynoah.bsky.social in @newrepublic.com.)
* Abraham Lincoln
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As we take the day off, we might recall that it was on this date in 1822 that a prisoner-powered treadmill for grinding corn began operation at the Bellevue County Penitentiary in New York City, located where 26th Street meets the East River. Up to 16 prisoners at a time walked on two paddle-wheel like treadmills, grinding about 50 bushells of corn per day.
#AbrahamLincoln #culture #history #KarlMarx #labor #LaborDay #LiviaGershon #OwenCantrell #prison #prisonTreadmill -
Happy Labor Day!! 🇺🇸💪
Why do you appreciate Unions? We’ll start:
😎 Weekends off
🧳 Paid vacations
⏸️ Work breaks
🤧 Sick leave
🎆 Paid holidays
👧🏽 No child labor
👷🏽♂️Safer working conditions
🩻 Health care
🎣 Retirement
Copying @[email protected] post 😉
#laborday #unions #unionstrong #benefits #workers -
Labor Day marks more than the end of summer.
Congress made it a federal holiday on June 28, 1894, signed during the Pullman strike. The Social Security Act came in 1935, in the middle of the Great Depression, and with it the retirement security many Americans plan around. Title VII followed in 1964, the ADEA in 1967, the ADA in 1990, and the FMLA in 1993.
Today the pressure comes from AI and technology that enable continuous digital surveillance. Algorithms screen résumés, set schedules, score productivity, and recommend who is let go. The questions are the old ones. Who bears the cost of a new efficiency, and what is a worker entitled to know about the decisions made about them.
Every protection has a date, and someone had to fight for it.
#LaborDay #WorkersRights #LaborHistory #EmploymentLaw #AIandWork
Image: Labor Day parade on Pennsylvania Avenue, Washington, D.C. Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, LC-DIG-ppmsca-50064.
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Fictional person to me: "What did you do for the holiday weekend?"
Me: "Oh, I migrated virtual machines between Proxmox servers." -
Honoring Workers
Art: https://commons.wikimedia.org/. Recently, I started following historian Heather Cox Richardson online and learning obscure facts I'd never covered in history class. For Labor Day, Richardson pointed readers to a government website describing the first Labor Day and the parade in New York. The police would have started the march without music (gasp!) if the ferry from New Jersey hadn't docked in the nick of time and unloaded the Jewelers Union of Newark Two and their band. From the […] -
RE: https://albuquerque.masto.host/@abqworkers/117225210520292136
I missed this when it happened at the end of July. Thanks to @abqworkers for bringing it to my attention. Now that @ProPublica has successfully negotiated a union contract with the @propublicaguild, I can start supporting ProPublica financially, which I've just done to the tune of $5/month. Good timing, with #LaborDay tomorrow.
#unions #labor #WorkersRights -
~ Monday noon SLT ~
3pm EDT · 20:00 BST · 21:00 EU
** Happy Labour Day North America! **
🎶 Join me for an hour of pop n rock tunes at Cluckey's Enchanted Overlook.
Dance and/or enjoy Charcuterie & Barbecue & treats! 🍔 🧋 🥗 🌭
🎆 All ages & species welcome of course.
🌎 IM me for a teleport 🌎
#SecondLife #VirtualWorlds #LaborDay -
Good morning!
Another pleasant Indian Summer day here in NEPA. It's cloudy, but the sun does break through sometimes. In another month, we'll be at our peak for Fall colors.
I'm up and moving, still drinking my coffee. ☕ ☕ ☕
No great plans for this Labor Day weekend. The weather's good, so I hope to be outdoors a lot.
When I was a kid, we'd be driving back to Chicago before school started (after Labor Day). Good memories! 🙂
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I'm with John Winger here (Bill Murray in "Stripes"). 🙂 🇺🇸
Support Unions! Billionaires didn't give you the weekend, 8-hour work days, or anything else (including health care).
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How are US-Iran strikes impacting gas prices for Labor Day?
How are recent US-Iran strikes impacting …
#NewsBeep #News #BreakingNews #aaa #Adm.BradCooper #Attack #averageprice #breakingnews #Conflict #diesel #fuelprices #gallon #gasprice #GasPrices #gaspricesontherise #holidayweekend #hormuz #Iran #iranwar #LaborDay #labordaygasprices #ldnd #MiddleEast #PresidentDonaldTrump #PresidentTrump #roadtrip #strait #Travel #u.s. #u.s.navyship #UnitedStates #usiranstrike
https://www.newsbeep.com/720948/ -
I found Fordism!
If I had a dollar for every "ism" Ive dealt with... I think i remember doing a report on Ford in elementary school. ANYWAY. Did you know the #waybackmachine has books? I did not. It has a lot of good ones. I found "my life and work" by Henry Ford. I have been glued to it for days. Half way done, I am compelled to share this new source of #books . You can go to archive.org and simply click the books tab. You must make an account. They have it setup where you "borrow books" digitally. I […] -
This #LaborDay, the economy is weighing on union workers.
And their votes could help decide who controls Congress this November.
https://theconversation.com/labor-votes-discontent-will-accompany-blue-collar-voters-to-the-polls-in-the-midterms-285564
#midtermelections #union
