Posted on 09/04/2006 11:54:48 AM PDT by Ed Hudgins
Happy Labor Day: We're All Workers!
by Edward Hudgins
The Atlas Society & Objectivist Center ehudgins@objectivistcenter.org
When Congress declared Labor Day a national holiday in 1894 it marked not only a celebration by workers but a division of Americans into groups often seen as opposed to one another.
The day grew out of a desire to get governments to force employers to offer certain terms of employment to workers. The first Labor Day parade took place in 1882 in New York and was organized by Peter McGuire who helped found the Federation of Organized Trades and Labor Unions. The "labor" involved were salaried and industrial workers and tradesmen. Not included were employers, owners, investors, managers, professionals and farmers; the latter for the most part owned their own means of production: their farms.
At that time in the economy it seemed to some that Karl Marx might be right, that there were distinct economic classes whose interests were opposed to each others and that politics rather than free markets would be the only equitable way for workers to get their "fair share" and not be exploited by others.
By the mid-1950s about 30 percent of the American workforce was unionized. Today it's more like 12 percent and the largest number are not employed in goods-producing private industries, for example, autos or steel, but are government employees. Yet real wages and purchasing power continue to rise. America is the world's job creation engine. Employment has risen from 99.5 million in 1982 to nearly 134 million today. Unemployment is under 5 percent, compared to over 10 percent for the past decade in the European Community. Marx, of course, was wrong and the implications of Labor Day were wrong as well....
"that politics rather than free markets would be the only equitable way for workers to get their "fair share" and not be exploited by others."
this isn't a black and white subject, like many articles try to depict it as. Anyone who thinks we would have been better off letting businesses and 'the free market' decide the labor enviroment of the US from the start is wrong, IMHO, no matter HOW much of a mess the current system is. It is far better than systems where business alone makes the rules.
Commie.
The key phrase is "free markets." When businesses use government to control markets, including labor markets, then problems indeed result. But if neither businesses nor labor unions receive any special help from government, the economy grows and there is a competition for labor; labor is more valuable. Similarly 'workers' have an incentive to improve themselves and act as entrepreneurs in the labor market.
What we have today sadly is not a free market.
only on paper are you going to find a situation where government is not influencible, either by labor or management, or both when their interests are compatible or do not conflict. Government is a business too, and they do have something for sale as well.
dude, go read some labor history of the US in the early 20th century. If those conditions are what YOU would like to work in, call me a commie all you want.
Are you capable of replies of more than 1 word? Why not debate about labor conditions historically in the US, if you know so much.
I will add as an aside that I believe that part of the impetus of the steadfast refusal of the federal government to actually try to control illegal immigration or labor is for the benefit of business, as it provides a way to bypass many of our labor laws, taxes, fees, and gives employers substantially more direct control over their employees, implicit and explicit, than would normally be the case.
The government is in the business of selling favors and of selling its services as an enforcer to punish one party, industry or enterprise in order to benefit another. In other words, the same business as the mafia, not producing with its own assets goods and services with which to trade with other but in gaining values by force.
exactly. therefore, given the choice of having some labor laws enacted (unionization and union-related laws, much later OSHA, etc) despite some onerous side-effect or direct effects of those laws is far preferable to what corporate america would give us if given the choice. I am sure there is a perfect solution is some politcal theory book somewhere, but in the real world, things could be a LOT worse.
i wonder at the folks who think business is labor's friend.
Unions have always relied on one of two tactics, brute force or anti-liberty labor laws. Labor practices that violate individual liberty should be prosecuted as such. Unions represent thuggery and socialism. Every union was founded by a socialist, just read their rhetoric.
I wonder at the folks who think labor is a friend of business.
You can accept a job or decline it, your free choice. If you don't like the pay or the conditions, work somewhere else.
who ever said labor is a friend of busienss? that is as naive as the reverse. it seems pretty self-evident that their interests are often in direct conflict. if you have ever seen a major union's list of things to ask for in the next contract negotiation, you would wonder why management doesn't just throw up their hands and walk away (aside from the $$$).
all true. imagine labor wages and conditions if unions had never been permitted to organize.
The question is,without a free market system would the marxist concept of a labor union have any value.Labor unions in the old USSR didn't do very well under a socialist system !!!
Lighten up, comrade. No-one forced anyone to pack meat, or dig coal or pour steel.
It's just another day with no mail to me.
WoofDog123,
Yes, do your research. I think this issue began long before the communist international in the 20's. . .
"There are those born to serve and then those born to be served." - Aristotle
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