Accomplishments of the Labor Movement

Holiday Greetings!

I've spent the past several weeks laboring with intense focus to complete a full, finished draft of A Bone to Pick, the second novel in the XK9 "Bones" Trilogy. (The first book, What's Bred in the Bone, is now available. But pausing from our labors to consider the accomplishments of the labor movement is a big part of the point of Labor Day in the United States.

What are the accomplishments of the labor movement? The list is pretty long, and these freedoms--many of which we now take for granted--were not easily won. It's worth a closer look to consider what ideas, values and privileges established we owe to organized labor.

A list from The Hartmann Report itemizes several categories of accomplishments.

Equity and Social Justice
The labor movement achieved the end of child labor, the right to form unions, and the rights of public sector workers to unionize. Unions supported the passage of the Civil Rights Acts and Title VII Prohibition of discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, or national origin, and also passage of the Occupational Safety and Health Act, and the Family Medical Leave Act.

Things we take for granted
Among the accomplishments of the labor movement are things we today would consider essential.  But never forget that each of them had to be fought for. There was a time when they were not considered to be rights at all. I'm talking about the idea of weekends, the establishment of the 8-hour work week, and also the idea of paying extra for overtime (some of our bosses still haven't gotten that memo, but many have). Likewise, the idea that sick leave, paid vacations, and days off on holidays are rights originated with the labor movement.

Rights that are slipping away, if we're not careful
We may have established a guaranteed minimum wage, but is it a living wage? Low-wage workers currently often have to work several jobs to support themselves and their families, thanks to convoluted arguments that obfuscate and justify unfair practices that have led to growing levels of income inequality.

Pensions are another area of growing uncertainty. Winning pensions for workers was a major accomplishment of the labor movement, but under-funded and poorly-performing pension funds are becoming a national crisis. A related issue, the idea of sick leave, paid vacations, and days off on holidays are rights is eroding away in the gig economy.

And then there's employer-provided health care--another whole can of worms that I'll leave for another day.

IMAGE CREDIT: Many thanks to 123RF for this Labor Day greeting graphic.

Women do not owe you

The Artdog Image of Interest

August is a month when many students start back to school--many in new schools. I'm dedicating my Images of Interest for the next several weeks to a reminder that as young girls grow into young women, whether they're in public or private schools or in college, they often are subject to gender-based street harassment--catcalls, comments on their looks, etc. They don't need this grief, but all too many experience it.

Tatyana Fazlalizadeh, Women do not owe you their time or conversation.

This month's Images of Interest are dedicated to those maturing girls and young women, as a reminder that we adults in the community have a responsibility to call out harassment wherever it manifests. I am deeply grateful to artist Tatyana Fazlalizadeh, whose whose work I featured last March.

In this month of Back to School and Women's Equality day, I'm delighted to share more of her "Stop Telling Women to Smile" public art project.

IMAGE: Many thanks to artist Tatyana Fazlalizadeh and her "Stop Telling Women to Smile" public art project, and to Katherine Brooks's Huffington Post article, for this image.

Find your passion, find your voice

On this mid-week after Women's Equality Day, here are some gems of wisdom from around the globe, on the rightful equality of women. Which is your favorite?

How can we work toward the goal of equality for women? One thing every one of us can do is advocate. Call, engage on social media, and/or write to your representatives on the local, state, and national level.

What cause calls most to you? Greater educational opportunities for girls worldwide? Women's equality? Breaking the power of human trafficking? Advocating for more comprehensive access to reproductive health care? Advocacy for victims of rape or incest? Wage equality? Stronger protections for victims of domestic violence?

Whatever your passion, whatever your cause, engagement is only an online search away. Become as involved as your time and resources allow, be that a letter every month or so, or something much more intensive. The important thing is to step up, speak up, and bring your values more fully into your community life.

What have some of your advocacy experiences been? Please share, if you're willing, in the comments section below.

IMAGES: Many thanks to the Women's Rights Facebook Page, for the quote-image from Malala Yousafzai; to AZ Quotes for the words and image of Hillary Clinton; and to a different AZ Quotes page for the image and quote from Mahnaz Afkhami. I appreciate them all!

Celebrate Women's Equality Day

The Artdog Image of Interest

es, I know we normally have a Quote of the Week on Mondays, but this is Women's Equality Day, so I thought the infographic was more appropriate. Women have a long history of being considered less-than-equal to men. Here are some points to consider:

From Visually.

IMAGE: many thanks to Elite Research, via Visually, for this infographic.

Happy Janmashtami!

Happy Janmashtami, to my Hindu friends!

I've been enjoying reading and learning about Krishna Janmashtami, a holiday that begins either today or tomorrow, depending on local observances. It is a celebration of the birth of Lord Krishna, and it involves observances that can range from fasting to creating human pyramids. Happy Janmashtami, everyone!

Hindus celebrate the birth of Krishna on the eighth day of the dark fortnight of either Shravana or Bhadra (depending on whether it's a leap year). I'm very glad there are smart people who can figure out when that is on the Gregorian Calendar, so I can say "Happy Janmastami!" at the right time. I've been trying to do a better job, recently, of acknowledging major holidays that don't happen in December.

One of the most memorable, photographable, and dangerous traditions is the Dahi Handi festival, most famously celebrated in Mumbai (but it's pretty widespread, really). Inspired by stories of Lord Krishna and his friends creating human pyramids to raid household stashes of butter or yogurt, teams form each year, practice, and compete for prizes.

However you celebrate it, please stay safe!

IMAGE CREDITS: Many thanks to "Holidays Today" for the green image of young Lord Krishna as a butter thief, offering greetings of the day, and the blue image of the young Govindas. 

Not seeking your validation

The Artdog Image of Interest

August is a month when many students start back to school--many in new schools. I'm dedicating my Images of Interest for the next several weeks to a reminder that as young girls grow into young women, whether they're in public or private schools or in college, they often are subject to gender-based street harassment--catcalls, comments on their looks, etc. They don't need this grief, but all too many experience it.

Tatyana Fazlalizadeh, Women are not seeking your validation.

This month's Images of Interest are dedicated to those maturing girls and young women, as a reminder that we adults in the community have a responsibility to call out harassment wherever it manifests. I am deeply grateful to artist Tatyana Fazlalizadeh, whose whose work I featured last March.

In this month of Back to School and Women's Equality day, I'm delighted to share more of her "Stop Telling Women to Smile" public art project.

IMAGE: Many thanks to artist Tatyana Fazlalizadeh and her "Stop Telling Women to Smile" public art project, and to Katherine Brooks's Huffington Post article, for this image.

From unbalanced to balanced

The Artdog Quote(s) of the Week

Why is it so difficult for some people to believe that feminism and gender equality isn't a one-way street that only favors women? But the shift from unbalanced to balanced is proving to be harder to achieve than it should be.

It would be so excellent, if everyone could accept that a balanced society works better. Peace can only come with justice, and even such a cold-edged discipline as economics agrees there's more stability in a more egalitarian system.

Centuries of tradition have brought us to this off-kilter moment. Throughout those centuries we most definitely did not have balanced societies. They almost invariably were, in fact, radically unbalanced.

In the West, we've had a lopsided social structure that oppressed essentially everyone except for certain privileged, white cisgender men. In nearly every society, women have historically been an underclass.

My Quotes of the Week this month are inspired by Women's Equality Day. In each post I have tried to bring up a different angle on the equality equation. Last week I brought you daddies bonding with babies. Unfortunately, this week's post is a lot more grim.

That's the only "joke" you'll get from me in this post.  In any unequal relationship, violence is implied--but that violence all too often becomes explicit and bloody. We can see it in civil unrest, fraught racial tensions, in violent crime, and most definitely in relationships between men and women. We're still a long way from making a shift from unbalanced to balanced.

According to the latest statistics I've been able to find, considerably more than 1 in 3 U.S. women (35.6%) are raped or physically harmed by men they know, in their lifetimes. Women are overwhelmingly the victims in domestic violence cases. 

Just under half of the women murdered in a given year are the victims of men they know (Women kill men they know at a quarter of that rate).

Perhaps most chilling of all, the leading cause of death among pregnant women isn't obstetrical complications--it's murder. Usually at the hands of their husbands, partners or lovers--that is, their babies' fathers.

The likelihood triples when the father doesn't want the pregnancy. Think about that, in the contemporary climate of more and more limits being placed on the availability of abortions. We can't make the shift from unbalanced to balanced soon enough, for all too many women alive today.

IMAGE CREDITS: Many thanks to Tigress and Butterfly Files, for the aspirational but unattributed quote at the start of this post, to Coolnsmart, for the (again, unattributed) "kitchen" quote, and to AZ Quotes for the image-quote from Margaret Atwood, which all too aptly sums up one of the most unbalanced aspects of our society.