Reprinted from the Saint Louis Post Dispatch

America should just go ahead and cancel Labor Day. Really.

Other than as an excuse for a picnic, what’s the point? Three hundred and sixty-four days a year, we honor plutocrats, and one Monday holiday in September is going to make up for it?

Organized labor no doubt would object. Big deal. One worker in eight belongs to a labor union. And last year, for the first time in history, more public-sector workers (500,000 more) belonged to a union than did private-sector workers.

Oh, the irony. For the second year in a row, Americans “celebrate” Labor Day with unemployment at 9.6 percent or higher. Corporate profits are 5.7 higher now than then they were in the fourth quarter of 2007, when the recession began. The number of jobs is 5.9 percent lower.

Corporate profits are 5.7 higher now than then they were in the fourth quarter of 2007, when the recession began. The number of jobs is 5.9 percent lower.

Labor — by which we mean not only organized labor but the entire working class — should just give it up. Roll over. Turn turtle. Admit it: The class war is over, and you lost. You not only lost, you collaborated.

Organized labor still may be fighting the good fight. But a lot of the working class is out there marching in the streets on behalf of the monied class, puppets of the plutocrats, angry as hell at all of the wrong people.

Oh, it wasn’t always like this. Labor Day became a federal holiday in 1894 because President Grover Cleveland and Congress were frightened of labor’s power.

This was after Eugene V. Debs of the Railroad Workers Union had brought the country to its knees over Continue reading Labor Day 2010: Puppets of the Plutocrats →