Unemployed on Labor Day

Labor Day Monday is a national holiday and millions of people across our country look forward to having the day off from work. For millions of others, generally people with the most tedious and low-paying jobs, they still have to go to work. For millions of others, like myself, we get to have the day off from work, but it is just a day like any other day over the past couple of years.

I am grateful for the unemployment insurance benefits that have kept my family from total devastation. I have managed to stay eligible for them due to having been able to pick up work on short term projects occasionally. But, today, as we celebrate labor and most specifically, the rights of workers to be treated fairly and justly for their fundamental contribution to sustaining our society, I am simply depressed to have the day off.

I would love to go to work today. No, I don't want to work cleaning toilets, mopping floors, making sandwiches or washing dishes. NOT because I am too proud to do those things, I actually get great personal satisfaction from janitorial and kitchen work. I don't want to do them because I HAVE done them when I was younger and didn't have children to support... when I was getting myself into a skilled profession. I advanced in that profession through hard work and its crazy that I should have to take a janitor or kitchen job from somebody else who can't work in my profession.

I will be forced soon enough to take such a job... and when a project in my profession comes up, I will have to quit the minimum wage position to go do what I am very skilled at doing. It is sad enough that wages have been dropping in my profession as well, I will also be forced to travel at my own expense for those lower wages.

This is what happens when society de-values certain types of work. How important is it for there to be janitors and kitchen workers? To me, it is very important. The minimum wage is too minimal. People should not have to work two jobs of back-breaking labor just to barely squeak by, if even that. And job creating regulation that serves to protect the public interest should be justly rewarded as well.

I used to stimulate the economy when I had a good, fairly compensated, full time, permanent job. Even unemployment benefits have allowed me to contribute to the economy through the purchase of fairly meager luxuries... like occasionally dining out. But that is only because I was paid so well at my old full time job. The wages I receive now when I find some work in my profession are actually less than my unemployment benefits... which are coming to an end very soon. The wages I would receive at a minimum wage job are almost half again of that!

The rightwing wackos are still spewing their nonsense about how unemployment benefits just coddle the unemployed, reward laziness, and keep us out of the workforce. Yeah, because there are just all those jobs out there. How is it that I HAVE taken jobs that pay less than my benefits? Its because those benefits are a safety net... an INSURANCE program that was paid into, but still runs out. Yes, the federal extensions are not paid into, but that is why they are called "emergency" funding. And don't kid yourself, rightwingnuts, I actually hurt my claim to extension benefits by taking work when I could have "free loaded" off the system until all extensions were depleted.

I WANT to work this Labor Day. I want to celebrate what we are supposed to celebrate this day... FAIR compensation for hard and necessary work! Slavery is still technically "labor", that is NOT what this day is about. I will go do some labor right now. I am refinishing my hardwood floors. I am glad to have the time to do it, but it won't help pay the bills.