Let’s not forget the “job creators”  –  as ‘some’ politicians are wont to call them – were for the prior four decades ‘job destroyers.’

First they closed the mills in the northeast and moved the jobs to the cheaper labor non-unionized South.

Then they destroyed those jobs and moved the work to near-in off-shore places like Puerto Rico and Mexico and Jamaica.

Then they destroyed those jobs and moved the work to places like Japan.

Then they destroyed those jobs and moved the work to Korea and Hong Kong and Malaysia.

Then they destroyed those jobs and moved the work to places like the Philippines, then to China and then to Viet Nam and to India and Pakistan.  Any place with no labor laws, no environmental laws, no child labor restrictions, no taxes, no overtime pay, no rules for worker safety, no benefits for workers.

Now some of the work is coming back to the US.  But not the jobs.  Now that much of the labor can be automated and robotized, the work but not the jobs are returning to the US.

So on this Labor Day holiday I say ‘thank you’ “job destroyers!”  Thank you for your traitorous boundless greed.  You destroyed jobs and lives and the nation’s economy but you lined your own pockets with lucre.

Now you pit one state against another and one country against another for which will give the larger tax break and most exemptions from labor and environmental and other laws.  And which will contribute the most in corporate welfare to attract the entity to the jurisdiction.

You evade taxes and corporate responsibility.  It was a four decade long race to the bottom.

This Labor Day there is little or nothing to celebrate for workers.  Unions have all but been destroyed.  Wages have been stagnant.  Factoring in inflation, wages have declined.

This Labor Day, the state of Labor is pathetic.  The wealth gap has exploded. Labor is in distress in the US.

Happy Labor Day!

(shared to 21cpw by an APWU member)