Labor Day 2013

TIME

Will you be barbecuing this Labor Day, or slaving away at the office? According to new survey data from Bloomberg BNA and Beyond.com, many Americans will have the somewhat ironic pleasure of laboring on the day that’s meant to commemorate the “social and economic achievements of the American worker.”

The above chart from The Center for Economic Policy Research (CEPR) highlights the differences in legal requirements for paid time off in the developed world. The United States is a major outlier among its developed peers when it comes to mandatory time off, and that ends up affecting poorer workers more than anybody else.  According to the CEPR, though 23% of American workers don’t receive paid time off, that number jumps to 49% for the bottom fourth of wage earners.

NYTIMES

Republicans in the House of Representatives continue to staunchly oppose public efforts to reduce unemployment, repeating their assertion that government policies themselves are the primary cause of the problem. Earlier this summer 30 of them even co-sponsored a bill that would strike the goal of encouraging “maximum employment” from the mission of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve.

MORE HERE.

Even though it's several years old, the following video by Peter Anderson, featuring a song by James McMurtry, illustrates how American labor has been cast aside by the rich and powerful who own our government.