Would You Like Some Swine Flu in Your Burger?

I read this article about how despite the Swine Flu outbreak, which probably isn't that bad after all the press hysteria (surprise, surprise), that many people who are sick are going to work anyway because they have no sick time. This was something that I had forgotten. I used to work for various fast food restaurants before I went to college, and there, you have no sick pay and no vacation as far as I can remember.

I have a white collar job now, I get 10 days of sick time and 10 days of vacation a year. I can use my sick time for anything, like if I need to go have my eyes checked, or if I need to take care of personal business. I think that should be standard for every job, but what do I know? I must be a socialist commie (probably throw fascist in there too) because I support worker's rights. It's a terrible thing that a great majority of this country doesn't even realize that they're getting the shaft and they keep voting for the ones who are screwing them over.

Swine flu or not, many workers can't stay home

By JOCELYN NOVECK

NEW YORK (AP) -- You wake up one morning and you're feeling achy and feverish. The directions from health officials battling swine flu are clear: Stay home from work. Don't risk infecting others. And certainly don't send a sick kid to school.

But what if you're one of the estimated 57 million working Americans with no paid sick days?
...
"The problem has really come into sharp relief the past few days," said Debra Ness, president of the National Partnership for Women and Families, which has long pushed for paid sick leave. "Many people don't even realize that almost half the private sector - 48 percent - has no sick days, not even a single one."
...
Making matters even worse: Those least likely to have sick leave are low-income workers, particularly in fields like food services, child care and the hotel industry - in other words, the people you most want to be staying home if they're sick...

The Associated Press interviewed a number of workers in the food industry. Not surprisingly, most didn't want their names used for fear they would be fired. They told stories of coming to work with a fever or flu in order to keep their jobs, and of seeing sick co-workers sneezing and coughing near food... A study on sick leave found that 68 percent of those without paid sick days had gone to work with a contagious illness like the flu or a viral infection...

Making the problem even thornier: Kids. Children get sick all the time and infect each other. Yet even among those workers lucky enough to have paid sick leave, few have flexible sick days that can be used to care for a family member... Advocates for family-friendly policies point out that the U.S. is the only country out of the top 20 world economic powers with no federally mandated sick days. Put another way, some 140 other countries have them.

No U.S. states have them either, though three cities have passed such measures: San Francisco, Washington and Milwaukee, where implementation has been held up by a lawsuit...

There are two types of people. There's the worker, who apparently is content to be screwed over, and then there's the higher ups, thankful that the workers don't realize that they should be getting the better end of things, especially considering that the CEO of most major companies makes hundreds of times the annual pay of their workers.

And I just want to point out, that I as bad as the evil Wal-Mart is painted to be, they provide a little sick time to their employees, or used to at any rate. I don't know about now.

Oh, and you want to know why the economy is in the tank? Henry Ford, as much of an anti-Semitic bastard that he was, realized that if he would pay his workers enough, they'd buy his product. Well guess what? We don't pay the majority of people in this country enough to afford to live, much less buy anything. But we have a solution for that. We give credit cards to everyone! The working class can then go out and charge it, but they still can't pay for it. So they can file bankruptcy, and get credit cards again. Yes, this really does happen. I have seen it with my own eyes. But now there's no credit unless your rating is sky high, and so the working class can't buy anything, because they didn't have the money for it in the first place. And our economy is in a death spiral because of it.

Republicans are Anti-Worker, but we Knew That

I had another ten page rant about Obama in my inbox this morning. This time from Senator Jim DeMint (Republican) of South Carolina via Townhall.com. Crackpots. They're asking me to sign some petition against unions, because how dare workers organize. Really though, the letter was half attack on Obama and half attack on unions.

I'm not saying unions are all they are cracked up to be, perhaps we could use some reform in that area, but if workers want to unionize they should be able to. My grandmother was in a union when she worked at a factory in the 1970s and she liked it and she made very good money. When I worked for a big box retailer, whose name will remain unsaid, they used scare tactics against any type of organizing, implying that anyone who dared attempt to unionize would find themselves without a job, and saying they had an "open door" policy that meant we didn't need a union. Really? I beg to differ. I think that unions give workers leverage, and the Corporatocracy doesn't like that, because it might eat into their profit margin if workers start demanding enough pay to live. And the sad thing is, the people I worked with who lacked critical thinking skills, were persuaded to believe that unions are a bad thing.

But the thing that really pissed me off about this drivel in my inbox, they don't bother to say what the number is on the bill, or the actual title of the bill, they just call it a "Card Check Forced Labor Bill" which I'm damned sure that's not the name of it, so I can't find what bill they're talking about, and I don't really have time to dig much for it. That in and of itself is underhanded. They spout a bunch of stuff, and make it extremely difficult for anyone with half a brain or a questioning thought in their head to go and see if what they're saying is even true. Oh, and of course at the bottom of the rant, surprise, surprise, they ask for money. There's also a disclaimer at the bottom saying they're "non-partisan". My ass.

Some choice tidbits from the ten page rant:

"You see, passage of the so-called "Card Check" Bill is all that stands between the union bosses and total control over hundreds of thousands of America's small businesses . . .

. . . not to mention the hundreds of millions of forced-dues dollars that will immediately be seized from American workers' paychecks...

Any workers who refuse to sign the so-called "union authorization cards" would find themselves victims of lies, intimidation, threats, harassment -- and worse -- from union militants...

And when you do, please consider a generous contribution of $500, $250, $100 or $35 to the Committee."

They make it sound like the union is going to come in with billy clubs like it's the Republican National Convention and start beating people if they don't want to unionize.

So, I finally found what it is, I had heard of it, but it had slipped my mind. The Employee Free Choice Act. Because you know, it's a terrible thing that employees have a choice about whether they are represented or not. I find the rhetoric in their stupid newsletter a turn off (i.e. Obama is a socialist communist devil worshipper... okay it didn't go quite that far but it might as well have), and I have this sneaking suspicion that it's lies, but I seriously don't have the time right now to go through all their points and research it.

I will say though, that there was a time in this country, when we were prosperous where almost every industry was unionized. Those days are gone. The Corporatocracy has shipped all the high paying jobs overseas and have reduced what they pay to the ones that are left here. So you can't make enough to live any more without a college education, and even then it's dicey.