This diary was intended as just a comment in the Saturday hate mail-a-palooza, but it kept getting longer and longer, so I thought I would offer it as a diary.
Why are both heads of household working 11 hours a day? Why are we juggling our schedule's to make sure someone is there to take care of our kids? I mean the answer to that is pretty easy, it is because we love our kids. But - it is getting harder.
Are we losing ground?
Not that very long ago it was different....
It seems somehow quaint in the 21st century that employers would actually pay you for lunch. 9 to 5 is just 8 hours. You used to get paid for lunch. Go figure.
Just how much ground has the American worker lost?
The 1950's America is what the conservatives say they want to go back to. An America where a single bread winner worked 40 hour weeks and unions were strong.
The 1956 Republican paltform:
In addition, the Eisenhower Administration has enforced more vigorously and effectively than ever before, the laws which protect the working standards of our people.
Workers have benefited by the progress which has been made in carrying out the programs and principles set forth in the 1952 Republican platform. All workers have gained and unions have grown in strength and responsibility, and have increased their membership by 2 millions.
Furthermore, the process of free collective bargaining has been strengthened by the insistence of this Administration that labor and management settle their differences at the bargaining table without the intervention of the Government. This policy has brought to our country an unprecedented period of labor-management peace and understanding.
[Edited to add a link to the 1956 Republican Platform.]
We applaud the effective, unhindered, collective bargaining which brought an early end to the 1956 steel strike, in contrast to the six months' upheaval, Presidential seizure of the steel industry and ultimate Supreme Court intervention under the last Democrat Administration.
The Eisenhower Administration will continue to fight for dynamic and progressive programs which, among other things, will:
Stimulate improved job safety of our workers, through assistance to the States, employees and employers;
Continue and further perfect its programs of assistance to the millions of workers with special employment problems, such as older workers, handicapped workers, members of minority groups, and migratory workers;
Strengthen and improve the Federal-State Employment Service and improve the effectiveness of the unemployment insurance system;
Protect by law, the assets of employee welfare and benefit plans so that workers who are the beneficiaries can be assured of their rightful benefits;
Assure equal pay for equal work regardless of Sex
We are losing ground?
I would gladly go back to a 1950's America with 'assured equal pay' for all Americans that the Republicans promised in 1956.
As Jefferson said in the Deceleration of Independence, "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. --That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed"
The Republicans lost the election. The consent of the governed has been heard.
I started out with a video, so I will end with one, and I will end my patriotic screed.
(And it is a patriotic screed - in the purist intent of our Founding Fathers. "All Men?" I mean what could have the Founding Fathers possibly meant by that? Maybe I am going out on a limb here, but to me, it means ALL the the people. If we are to claim American exceptionalism, that is what it has to be based on.)