Holiday: Civic: Labor Day best celebrated by taking a break in the work cycle

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Of all the pieces I've read in the last week on Labor Day USA, this editorial from today's Evansville Courier-Times (Sep4,2k6) packed the most current, engaging statistical info into a focus on the quality of the civic holiday we're celebrating.

There's nary a word about labor unions USA or anywhere else. Partisan as it may be, refWrite pauses to say simply, rather than the behemoth AFL-CIO or the split-off group led by the Service Employees and the Teamsters that are contesting AFL-CIO's hegemony in Amrican labor relations, we support the Christian Labor Association - USA (affiliated internationally to the World Confederation of Labour). But, then, refWrite also advocates a completely different organization of labor relations that involves parallel unions devoted to diverse basic viewpoints on work and work-relations, within the same workforce. The task would be for these commitment-based unions (each affiliated to its own national workers organization, or not, as each chooses) to dialogue toward a common position for wage negotiations, benefit packages, health and safety on the job, and good daily work relations for all on the job - some of these negotiation concerns in some industries and large corporations would best be pursued nationally. But compromising together within the same bargaining unit (whether national, regional, state, local or a single corporation) would aim toward getting along with the employer and getting the best deal possible for all involved.

Of course, that doesn't mean every employer would want such an arrangement. Strikes would still sometimes be necessary, but no person would be forced to strike by his/her union, nor by the different but dialoguing unions of that workforce collectively.

Union membership is a moral bond, and every adult worker should have the stature to join, support, and maintain that union which best articulates one's own convictions about the meaning of work and the quality of relations between workforce members and management determined by the owners.

Here's the timely Evansville Courier-Times editorial for Sep4,2k6.

Labor Day Americans are a hard working lot

This Labor Day is an apt occasion to reflect that Americans may be many things, but lazy isn't one of them.

More than 151 million of us 16 and older are in the work force, 112 million of us in occupations that provide a service, according to the Census Bureau. Our median household income is $44,389 and the median weekly wage, $568.

Over a fourth of us work more than 40 hours a week, and 8 percent of us more than 60. There are 7.5 million moonlighters, and 249,000 of those hold two full-time jobs.

We are still a mobile work force, one of the strengths of the U.S. economy. The median length of time for a worker with a single employer is four years.

While we are rapidly leaving our rural roots behind, hundreds of thousands of us are ranchers and farmers, and, if it helps our rugged self-image, that's more than those who work as hairdressers and cosmetologists.

We are still very much a traditional work force, at least as we understand "traditional." We may think of ourselves as a 24/7 society, but most of us work days; only 8 percent of us work night or overnight shifts.

And the great majority of us - 77 percent - drive to work alone, taking just over 25 minutes to do so. Believe it or not, the average commute got shorter over the last five years - but only by 48 seconds.

For all the talk of telecommuting, the share of people working from home has increased only slightly, from 3.3 percent to 3.6 percent, since 2000.

Americans work more hours per year than any other workers in the industrialized world, according to the Center for Economic and Policy Research, and they take off less time.

The average American gets 23 days a year in vacation and holidays, half of what an Italian worker takes in time off.

Even the legendarily hardworking Japanese get 31.

So, take a break this Labor Day. You've earned it.

So, take a break!

-- Owlb