Labor Day

I would think that since Penn. is a union-friendly state that would be a deal breaker but after years of anti-union propaganda and seeing what has happened in Michigan a very pro-union state, dummies will think this is a good thing.

— Been there Done that (@Beenthe67549681) September 5, 2022

... But they did come out in force in 2012, 2018, 2020, liking something about Obama and Biden and really not liking Trump after watching him. Abortion issue and some others work with these, I think, but the union issue is a really good one (see Sherrod Brown success).

— Three Blog Night (@Yastreblyansky) September 5, 2022

Back to Class

 Happy International Labor Day!

Krugman sticks this thing ("Education has less to do with inequality than you think") under his "Wonking Out" rubric, which is a shame, because that means a lot of people who need to read it won't, and since it's indirectly making a point I've been making for a long time, but making it with an expertise I couldn't come close to, I wanted to highlight it.

His immediate purpose is to defend the idea of a broad-based program to cut or eliminate student debt, like the one Biden promised in the 2020 campaign and has recently returned to talking about; a widespread criticism of such a program is that it rewards people for doing something for which they have already been rewarded, with a college degree:

Labor Day Miscellany

 

I can't really get over the fact that Trump really did this. What kind of person is that?

If there's a video it's not because Russians installed a secret camera in the hotel room, it's because Trump WANTED a video. That's where Steele's informant got the story wrong.

— It's Just Soup For My Family (@Yastreblyansky) September 6, 2020

Yeah, exactly. That kind of person. 

Labor Day: Go fledge yourself

Eastern screech owl fledglings, thankful that the Supreme Court has protected them from union organizers? No, they want a contract! Photo by Joe McDonald.

Edroso commemorates Labor Day with a tribute to the awesome awfulness of Mr. Mark Mix, chairman of the "National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation", and a column by Mr. Mix that ran in the Pensacola News Journal last week, "It's 'Labor Day', Not 'Union Day'" in which he talks about what America's liberty-loving workers have done to defeat greedy totalitarian unions this year, including

• Wisconsin's adoption of a "right-to-work" law in March (jewel in the crown of Governor Walker's effort to turn Wisconsin into a Deep South state);
• the success of the Republican dirty tricks campaign in stopping UAW from organizing the Volkswagen plant in Chattanooga (no, Mix didn't put it exactly that way), though as a matter of fact that was in February 2014, and the latest news from May is that 55% of the factory's work force are now UAW members, and talks are already underway to form a German-style Works Council there, so this year's developments may be a little more on our side; and
• the clearly incorrect, and vile, Alito decision in the case of Harris v. Quinn on the organization of Illinois home health care workers, though that one came out in June 2014.

I wrote the last one up a little at the time, but it was at the end of a post about a completely different Supreme Court decision (the Hobbity Lobbity), and it could have been more thoroughly researched and more clearly written, and I'd like to come back to it, especially because the Mixian account, which fills up most of his column, enshrines such a distorted view of what it's about, and the elements of a proper response are sort of scattered in bits around the Web. So I've done my bit, below the fold:

Labor Day

Jared Bernstein goes big:

But I think what’s missing from our national debate over labor and the condition of working families — those who depend on paychecks, not stock portfolios — is something more fundamental: courage.

Mayday! Mayday!

Karusi, Burundi, May 1 2013

And a Happy International Labor Day from New York City, where our Second-International Center-Deviationist mayor Bill de Blasio is putting a wrap on negotiations (which had been stalled for FIVE YEARS under the Bloomberg administration) with the United Federation of Teachers, which will restore some of that retroactive 8% raise to put them on par with bus and subway workers, spread out over the nine years of the new contract;

The officials said the teachers’ union had agreed to significant savings on health coverage that would not be made with cuts in programs or offerings and would not require an increase in premiums paid by city workers.

They're to use fewer emergency room visits and more health clinics, apparently, which is a good thing (my family uses one of those and we like the way the network is really a network), and more "prescriptions by mail", meaning email? If this really saves the city billion dollars (for all municipal workers, not just teachers), wow.

Also, more and more research demonstrates that a raise in minimum wage has no net effect on unemployment (the job losses it causes are canceled out pretty exactly by the new jobs it creates, except everybody's at a higher standard of living). It's getting to be like climate change, denial is no longer quite respectable, in addition to being wrong.

Chicago, May 1 1886, from InfosDroits.

Most unusual Labor Day message

Today, we celebrate those who have taken a risk, worked hard, built a business and earned their own success.

— Eric Cantor (@GOPLeader) September 3, 2012

See, it's Labor Day. And where does labor come from? Why, from job creators! If they didn't make the work we wouldn't have anything to do. So that's why it's a holiday.

Next up, July 4th, we're going to celebrate the true blue institution of the British monarchy and the Tory party, without which Independence would be nothing more than a word.