49 Replies to “Labour Day 2011”

  3. Wikipedia notes that Labour Day was begun in part by something called the Eight Hour Day Movement. These days people advocating an eight hour work day are called “Teabaggers” by the unions.
    I’m staying home today, fixing my race car and playing on the interwebs. Boycotting the hell out of Labour Day.

  5. unions have outlived their usefulness. we need something to replace them, something that represents the labour element of production and the economy.
    any suggestions?
    oh, right, this is the ‘right’ end of the spectrum. every man for themselves. real teamwork attitude eh?

  6. “Love it when they rip the sheets off like that.”
    Just read that article. Crude, stupid, urging violence against people who form a legitimate political movement. He’s going to fall into a tar pit if he keeps stomping around like that.

  7. When I think of Labour Day, I think of Sid Ryan, the CUPE union leader who is a friend of Hamas and Hezbollah. I also think of the four years I was in the CAW and of the twenty-six years my father-in-law was in the CAW and you discovered real quick that dissenting voices were not tolerated. I also remember when my friend John became tired of the bank and getting a job at GM on the line. He was told twice by the department shop steward to slow down, the first time it was friendly, the second time not so much. He quit the same day.

  9. hmmm. ya, reading some of these links it appears the avg n american worker has a choice between big business tossing crumbs at them or big labour tossing molotov cocktails at big business.
    like I say, we need a new alternative.

  10. whit seven said: “He’s going to fall into a tar pit if he keeps stomping around like that.”
    He’s going to lead 2,000 SIEU thugs in a “counter-demonstration” march against a Tea Party event that has 200,000 people attending, is what’s going to happen to him. Then he’s going to get his frickin’ fat ugly head handed to him.
    On the bright side, the Tea Partiers will clean up the mess afterward.

  12. Phantom – one would hope that they’re not so stupid. What percentage of the Tea Party is armed, as opposed to the unions? Thuggery only works when the victim has no recourse.

  13. “What are your own reflections?”
    Well, it should be possible to simply celebrate the virtue of labour for its own sake and pay tribute to all working men and women.
    Without any union tub-thumping and hollow triumphalism.

  16. Phantom – true, but be careful how large the brush is. Some guys I used to play poker with at a mining camp were union members, but they knew exactly how much overtime it would take to hit the top tax bracket, and took all of it while refusing a minute more. Recognizing what side of the bread has butter doesn’t automatically mean stupid.

  17. The worst job I ever had was shovelling sh”t for $1 an hour in a heat wave in 1966. (the sewage trench broke between the restaurant and the river, I am not making this up either, won’t say where in case they are still at it … otherwise I would have been washing dishes … blew that job off for pitching hay at similar rates, where I first discovered I had hay fever … these were my first two jobs as a student between grades 12 and 13).
    My best job is the one I have now as Director of the outreach program for the Inter-Galactic Federation. You may not be familiar with it … YET … but the outreach is coming.

  18. What’s the worst job I’ve ever had? I’m not sure, but I once met a woman who had once worked as an ejaculate (actually egg whites) pumper in porn movies.

  20. Worked a summer for a roofer. Worked another summer for a bricklayer. 35 years later, and I can still recall the sore muscles.

  21. “oh, right, this is the ‘right’ end of the spectrum. every man for themselves. real teamwork attitude eh?
    Posted by: CEO at September 5, 2011 3:13 PM”
    You don’t need a union to develop teamwork; fair management encourages cooperation and rewards competency and diligence. Unions are now into power, using their members and those members’ dues to further their own political ends. And as someone here said, unions don’t like dissent.

  22. The worst job, objectively, (not considering my delicate emotional state and etc., I am female you know) – objectively, the worst job I ever had was in University, as a telephone survey caller. You know everyone who picks up the phone would only marginally prefer to be hearing from you than from leg-breaking enforcers for the Mafia loan shark they’re dodging. So that’s draining.
    All the surveys themselves appear to me to be completely meaningless and stupid. Something to do with middle management paperwork; HR, I’d guess.
    If you ask “how long will this take?”, and they say “5 minutes”, it’s probably 15. And don’t just hang up. If you do, the person you just insulted, who now hates you, will put you back on the rotation for the person on the next shift to annoy. Calmly explain that you wish to be taken off the calling list. Enunciate those words. Then they have to do it.
    (But don’t be horrible to the drudges on the other end of the phone. They’re not getting rich this way, you know.)
    How salesentities do it I don’t know. I would literally kill myself before I would do that sort of thing again.

  26. As much as most people of conservative/libertarian bent now loathe unions, they once had a vital role in bringing much needed improvements to the working conditions of the laboring masses. Of course, it helped that capitalists, best exemplified by Henry Ford, realized that their workers are also customers, and improving the working class standard of living was a win-win.
    100 years later unions have become irrelevant. Their members are mostly all fat cats.
    Worst job: I could think of many, but the prize goes to working for a food wholesaler and emptying 50-pound bags of potatoes and stuffing them into 10-pound bags. Do that 8 hours straight! For 1.75$ an hour.

  27. Worst job I had was working for the federal government under the thumb of PSAC.
    Worked variously as a bullshit shoveler (really-Waterloo County Cattle Breeders),toilet cleaner, tire changer and kitchenware sales clerk.
    In retrospect, the government job was the worst. It sucked the living soul out of me.

  28. I’m self employed, just finished wrapping up for the day. Now I have a flat of blue berries to get ready alas to make some jam. Labour Day, the glory years of the marxists is fading fast.

  29. Self employed here too. Although I did play hookey today – no overtime anyway…
    Worst job: working the “deli” at what was Woolco. Those $1.44/lb sliced ham days were awful. People would line up for hours. 40 years later and still can’t eat the stuff.

  30. Sorta related to Labour Day.
    Did you know that:
    J.S. Bach spend a month in jail?
    For this:
    He attempted to quit one job and take another.
    His then employer said, ‘no way, yer goin’ to jail” [rough translation from the German].
    And during his incarceration he penned the first book of the Well-Tempered Clavier.
    Source: the irrepressible smiley-voiced Julie Nesrallah on Radio 2 earlier today.
    Lessons:
    There’s been progress on the labour front.
    How to use your idle time productively.

  31. And working in a shoe store would come a close second. “Are you SURE you’re a size 6???”.

  32. Self employed; semi-retired. I do whatever I want to….every day.
    Some companies like Toyota do remarkably well without unions.
    Unions are an embodiment of the Peter Principle:
    Union people rise to their level of maximum incompetence, then sit there doing as little as possible so as not to endanger their retirement benefits.

  33. I’m spending the day and evening farming.
    GreenNeck @ 6:33 caused me wonder about “unions once had a vital role in bringing much needed improvements to the working conditions of the laboring masses.”
    Why is it that working conditions on farms have improved at the same or even greater rates than in union sectors?

  34. C_Miner at September 5, 2011 3:54 PM said:
    “…one would hope that they’re not so stupid. What percentage of the Tea Party is armed, as opposed to the unions? Thuggery only works when the victim has no recourse.”
    This is something the TEA Party needs to be very careful about. So far, the right has not reacted violently to SEIU thuggery. I’m not suggesting that a TEA Partier take a SEIU beat-down without defending himself or herself, but the TEA Party can’t allow itself to be drawn down to their level. This isn’t a “we’re better than that” issue (although, IMO the TEA Party is better than that), but an issue of not giving the opposition any ammunition that can be used against the TEA Party.
    Unions are on the way out. Any organization that cannot exist unless government forces people to join isn’t a going concern and, clearly, isn’t of value to the very people the Unions were created to protect. The end won’t be pretty, however.

  35. My worst job was working in a slaughterhouse. Low man in a slaughterhouse does not get the ‘glamour’ assignments.

  37. Yeah, first job as a teen was shoe salesman. Those days you actually got the shoes and fitted them on the customer. Any teenage male hormonal responses were burned away with the hairy legs and bunioned feet of grandmas from the old country. (I think they went to see anne first.) The (female) manager never let me near anyone of the fair sex that was close to my age.
    I for one, know Al Bundy’s pain.

  38. rindlrad – agreed. \Most of what unions enshrined as their reasons for existing are now part of Canadian law. The prevalence of video cameras (and phones) will make it painfully obvious who is at fault if something happens. Anticipating what is likely to happen may be beyond the capacity of union goons, however, which is what would likely precipitate something that neither side wants. Unless they know, deep down, that thuggery may result in them getting shot, it might happen. I hope I’m wrong.

  39. Uhhh my worst job ever i worked at buns master bakery in winnipeg …the guy hated me from the moment i started , i he would sit in the lunch room with me and stare at me and the clock ..lol. at the time i was by myself on welfare (both of my parent’s left me my mom told me understandibly i guess that i was to much of a burden on her she is parapolegic , and my dad moved out of the city and just told me the day he was leaving i was still in high school so that is why i was on welfare i was still in highschool ) and this was a work program i was also working at supervalue and the victoria general hospital between them all i worked seven day’s a week and just barley made forty hours a week lol it was just the way it was i could not get hours …so i figured out very quickly that a bus pass was a very good investment for me i saved easily two hundred dollars in bus fair a month ….but that was hell , being under the watchfull eye of the big brother at buns master bakery ROTFL!!1 i burnt $50 worth of chocolate chip cookies casuei had neevr used a convection oven (this was in 1995-1996) so i puth tem in for 10-15 mins like ususal but they cook fully in about 6-8 mins in a convection oven so they were chared , he pulled me outside and a screamed in my face that this job was mine to lose , and i asked him why it was mine to lose casue i did not understand , he said i pay you almost nothing and you work the hours that none of “my ladies” can work …lol. so i said what if i burned another batch of cookies by accident he said that i would be fired …i took off my aprin threw it in his face , he cocked his fist to hit me but held back i laughed and walked away , caught my bus home and puti n a bid to work more hours at the hospital i got all the hours i could handle casue a fewl adies were going on hoolidays in the kitchen , buti quit both the job’s i had plus buns master bakery in a one month period casue i got my dream job of a full time permanent position at maple leaf meat’s on lagimodier and marion , LOL . A few yearsl ater i left for college in my 1981 monte carlo and took a job before i was done school in alberta in avaiation and have never looked back!!!!

  40. Worst job…processing mineral samples in a lab on the midnight shift, with only 1 day of training. Can’t recall how many samples I screwed up.
    Next worst was 6 months of French language training in St Jean-sur-Richeleau I had to endure while in the Forces. Never felt less like a soldier than during that period. Almost quit because of it.

  41. C-Miner said: “Phantom – true, but be careful how large the brush is.”
    I usually take the “Well, of course not -all- union members are…” as read, because the other truism reads “…there’s an exception to every rule…” But really, your union thug/shop steward types, while cunning, are on the whole not rocket scientists. They really think everything is the same as everything else, and if they just do what they always do by way of intimidation, bone breaking and graft, they’ll stay on top.
    That’s why their failure in Wisconsin was such a shock. They marched, they picketed, they intimidated, they sat-in, they burnt cars… and they LOST! WTF?!!! They’re still freaking out. Today we got to see the top guy having a cow in living color. Jimmy Hoffa, son of a guy whose body still hasn’t been found, declaring war on… pretty much everybody in America!

  42. worst job????
    if’n I didn’t like a job I quit, so I never stayed at a job I didn’t like
    of coarse I had a “few” jobs because of this attitude:-))))
    tho a couple of “union” jobs were trying

  44. Unions are really a form of Mafia. They have stranglehold on businesses, are morally and financially corrupt and are hard at work only to drain businesses of sufficient funds to employ people and pay/treat them fairly. When I think of all the people unions have screwed over and how their greedy demands will bankrupt businesses, it makes my blood boil.

  45. Although I’ve done everything from mucking out horse barns to cleaning plugged sea chest strainers on HMC Ships, in an Atlantic storm…
    The worst was working for the Federal Sol Gen department in building maintenance. Finished all the work that the plant super gave me by 0900, and was expected to make time until 1600. I’ve never been so demoralized.
    I run my own business now. Never worked so hard (except in the Manitoba floods with the Navy) and never been happier. Message there, somewhere…

  46. Worst job: Canadian tax payer. The hours are absolute and the benefits scarce.
    I spent my labor day riding the 6000th km of my 11 day motorcycle trip. Ill spend tomorrow doing the 7000th on the final leg home

  47. Depends what you call labor. The only thing I labored today was to f*ck My Lady silly, multiple times.

  48. Walter F @ 8:15 “Why is it that working conditions on farms have improved at the same or even greater rates than in union sectors”?
    Well – they have because of economy of scale or of issue etc. Where there were once 1 farm per 1/2 KM of about 150 acres – now there are few grain farms less than many sections that are profitable.
    35 hp Tractors are now 250 hp and AWD or FWD. Most have flashing lights, roll bars, air conditioning and stereo. Newer ones are coming out with GPS etc.
    WIMPS.

  49. Worst job – working in a factory running a plastic injection molding machine. Boring beyond words.
    Toughest job – toss-up between working in the smelter in Thompson Man. or underground in the mine at same. It got me into really good shape.

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