A conservative group in Olympia, Washington has vowed to boycott Labor Day because of the holiday's association with labor unions.
According to the Seattle Times, business backed conservative think tank the Freedom Foundation plans to protest the national holiday by refusing to take Monday off and having a "work-in" all day instead.
“I can’t think of a problem in society that can’t be traced in some way back to the abuses of organized labor, so it would be hypocritical of us to take a day off on its behalf,” said the Freedom Foundation's CEO Tom McCabe.
Times columnist Danny Westneat pointed out that if McCabe really wants to protest union-led reforms in the workplace, then he should work every Saturday, as well.
"What’s odd about it, though," Westneat wrote, "is that only 12 percent of American workers even belong to unions anymore. Yet we -- I say 'we' because I’m in that 12 percent -- somehow retain an almost supernatural mind-meld authority over the oppressed and hapless other 88 percent."
Freedom Foundation materials call public labor unions a "disease" that is "running rampant" in Washington state.
Westneat pointed to Seattle-based company Boeing's fiasco with the 787 Dreamliner jet-building program, in which Boeing management ran rough-shod over union protests about how the massive jetliners were being built.
"The 787 is now being called 'a case study in how not to build an airplane,'" Westneat said. The jets were grounded all over the world after serious problems were found in their electrical systems and fuel lines, costing the company billions.
"It was the workers who warned that the program wasn’t going to fly, and management who ignored them," Westneat wrote. "Yet it was management who were handsomely rewarded, while the workers -- when they weren’t saving the Dreamliner debacle from imploding -- who had their retirements slashed."
"But let’s all protest against this and stagnant wages and outsourced jobs and all the other realities of work in America by...working on Labor Day!" the columnist concluded, saying that he isn't just taking Monday off, "I’m boycotting Tuesday, too!"
[image of business people with heads in sand via Shutterstock.com]
