Labor Day Mailbag ’11, by Arthur Tebbel – Pop Art #144
September 6, 2011 Arthur Tebbel 7 Comments
In honor of Labor Day I am going to do this column the easy way by answering three short letters and then heading off for a barbecue. Hooray!
Dear Art,
Happy Labor Day! This weekend we will be our nation’s 117th Labor Day. Now mostly considered a holiday for barbecuing and making jokes about wearing white clothing Labor Day has a proud history commemorating those that have struggled for fair conditions for workers. What union contributions to society do you respect the most?
Peter J. McGuire, American Federation of Labor (deceased)
Peter,
I like weekends and reasonable work schedules as much as the next guy but what I really respect about the labor movement is how it doesn’t insist it be honored at every turn. I was listening to the radio this weekend and a caller talked about how we should spend this weekend honoring our servicemen and women who are fighting to keep us free and all that jazz. The same servicemen who already have two holidays dedicated to them. Three if you count what Independence Day has become. But that was just kind of accepted, the host let it go and the music came back on and we all went on with our weekend. That’s the quiet dignity of labor as opposed to the loud in your face dignity of our nation’s military. No disrespect intended.
Dear Art,
My show, Community, is going to return to the airwaves this month for its third season. More importantly the second season will be released on DVD this week. Do you think that a show like mine can be somewhat buoyed by strong DVD sales is good for the television landscape?
Dan Harmon, Executive Producer, Community
Dan,
I think that any system that keeps a show like Community on the air while keeping a higher-rated but dramatically shittier show like Outsourced off the air is fantastic. I don’t think it would have been the same way a decade ago. There are a number of fantastic television shows on right now that nobody watched. Breaking Bad is probably one of the five greatest dramatic series ever and only about a million and a half people watch it every week. Louie is a groundbreaking comedy that routinely fails to get a million viewers. That digital distribution and DVD sales can keep these shows and your show alive is nothing but a fantastic thing. Also I’m delighted to plug your DVD release because Adam Countee, Community writer and friend of mine is featured on a commentary track this year.
Dear Art,
Can we still be friends?
-Barack Obama
Barack,
I don’t know man. You gave a speech this week that totally cut the legs out from under environmental regulations. In that speech you used far right talking points about how those regulations would hurt businesses and cost people jobs. That has not proved itself true in the history of environmental regulations. While I might give a Rick Perry or a Michele Bachmann credit for just not knowing that I don’t believe for a second that you don’t know better. What’s the point anymore man? What do you think you have to gain electorally or morally here? I’m starting to wish it was remotely possible for you to get be challenged in the primaries. Not because I don’t think you’re the best candidate we have but because it would be nice to see you have to defend yourself from the left for fuck’s sake. Take a stand for something damn it.
R. Maheras
September 6, 2011 - 3:18 pm
Gee, Art. Wasn’t Jimmy Hoffa the last union member (presumably) killed in the line of duty? That was, like, 45 years ago!
That by itself probably explains why Labor Day is now a low-key holiday compared to military-related holidays.
Martha Thomases
September 6, 2011 - 4:09 pm
Yeah, why have all these holidays that don’t salute the military. Martin Luther King, Jr. has been dead for more than 40 years! Let’s use his birthday to thank our troops. And Jesus? He died over 2000 years ago, so what’s the point of Easter?
Much better to pay lip service to those we send off to die. Way better than providing them with benefits or jobs when they come home.
R. Maheras
September 6, 2011 - 5:13 pm
Martha — Regarding military holidays, it sounds like a “damned if you do and damned if you don’t” situation.
Keep in mind that Art was using the Labor Day holiday as a springboard to make his real point about military holidays. He could just as easily used President’s Day or any other holiday. Frankly, I think he used Labor Day because it was the softest target.
Martha Thomses
September 6, 2011 - 6:22 pm
Actually, we heard some guy this weekend suggest it. For real. Because this professional broadcaster knew so little history, and was such a patronizing suck-up to e lowest-common-denominator audience, that he didn’t want to take the chance of saying something nice about organized labor, and said the crowd-pleasing thing.
For some reason. It is currently politically correct to demonize the labor movement.
Arthur Tebbel
September 6, 2011 - 6:54 pm
It’s probably worth noting that this broadcaster was Cousin Brucie.
R. Maheras
September 6, 2011 - 7:59 pm
Martha wrote: “For some reason. It is currently politically correct to demonize the labor movement.”
Gee… I wonder why?
Martha Thomses
September 6, 2011 - 8:03 pm
Because the people with all the money are threatened?
John Tebbel
September 7, 2011 - 6:24 am
There’s no informed discussion here. Nanny nanny boo boo, if that’s your thing.
R. Maheras
September 7, 2011 - 9:55 am
Martha wrote: “Because the people with all the money are threatened?”
Yeah… last time I looked, Wisconsin was just flush with cash.
By the way. As I said earlier, I disliked Gov. Walker’s attack on collective bargaining. It was unnecessary and diverted attention from Wisconsin’s dire financial straits.
What Walker should have done is focus on balancing the Wisconsin budget — period.
Some of the cuts would have affected union employees in that state, but if the cuts were fair and across the board, the unions would not have had much local support if they started making noise.
Martha Thomses
September 7, 2011 - 1:05 pm
Governor Walker made it quite clear that his real allegiance was to folks like the Koch brothers. The Wisconsin unions made allnthe monetary concessions for which they were asked, and he still fucked them.
R. Maheras
September 7, 2011 - 3:06 pm
Martha — a bit of a reality check here. Walker didn’t get Wisconsin into its financial mess, previous politicians, and unions, did.
Knowing the history of unions fairly well, and having been a union member myself, can someone please explain to me why public employees need to be unionized in the first place?
Governments at the local, state and federal level aren’t in the business of profit-making, so any public employee union demands aren’t being made against “profit-hungry fat-cats” — they are made against everyone who pays taxes, regardless of their income level.
Martha Thomases
September 7, 2011 - 4:01 pm
No one said the Wisconsin unions were talking about “profit-hungry fat-cats,” so I don’t know where your quote is from. And you’re the person who brought up Wisconsin, not me.
Workers need to unionize and bargain collectively so they can have a stronger negotiating position. For some reason, negotiating from strength is something that’s okay when it’s management (government or private sector), but not anyone else.
R. Maheras
September 8, 2011 - 7:05 am
I brought up Wisconsin for a good reason: The myth that unions exist to protect workers from evil corporate bosses.
Public service unions don’t have corporate, profit-hungry masters, so, in my opinion, they need not exist — at least not for the reasons unions were historically created in the first place. Yet they do, and they are a contributing factor why so many governmental bodies at the local, state and federal level are in the red.
I remember well in the 1970s when I was a union member, the unions were trying to unionize almost every imagineable job — including the U.S. military. It was at this time there was a boom in the unionization of the public sector — a boom which is only now hitting the pocketbooks of governments at every level in the form of pension payouts. There wouldn’t be a problem if the governmental bodies who committed to these pension payouts had set aside sufficient monies way back when to cover the pension costs. Unfortunately, most did not, and the “IOU note” those long-dead politicians wrote is now coming due at the worst possible time: Deep in a recession where revenues are fast drying up, and there are fewer than ever gainfully employed taxpayers to tax.
Martha Thomases
September 8, 2011 - 7:45 am
The governments that commit to union pensions are staffed by people who get government pensions. When the president, Congress, judiciary system, et al. give up their pensions, we can discuss changing the benefits for the union members. Until then, a contract is a contract.
No one was forced to sign anything. I don’t understand why negotiations are only something that needs to be defended when the CEOs at Goldman Sachs, CitiBank, Verizon and other corporations get big bonuses because of their great “leadership.”
R. Maheras
September 8, 2011 - 1:48 pm
I don’t have a problem with public service sector pay cuts that are across-the-board. When times are tough, times are tough.
If you or I have to tighten our belts and reduce spending during lean times, the government should do so as well. It only makes sense.