Honor workers on Labor Day
Labor Day is to be celebrated Monday. This event began back in the 1880s to honor the backbreaking labor of the working class, who literally built the infrastructure of our great land. Look around you and see that every material object for your convenience and comfort was constructed by someone making low wages and unappreciated.
Strangely, we live in a time when it appears most Americans don’t know how to celebrate labor. Thus, Labor Day becomes Independence Day II. Some state legislatures are actually preventing cities from raising the minimum wage. So the wealth gap continues to grow at an unprecedented rate.
We should want working people to have money to spend on the kind of things that stimulate the economy and create even more jobs. But a wave of selfishness has resulted in calloused disregard for the labor that contributes to the present Social Security system. You cannot successfully argue that this is not a moral and spiritual issue.
Tennessee has no state minimum wage law, so the federal law applies. In Tennessee, the minimum cash wage for tipped workers is $2.13 per hour.
So, on Monday in the invocations and speeches, please mention those who are working hard every day to make your life pleasant and successful for often subsistence wages. And how about playing a Ronnie Dunn tune, “Cost of living is high?” Or the old Tennessee Ernie Ford anthem, “Sixteen tons,” and Alabama’s “40-hour week?”
Women still fighting for rights
Almost 94 years ago, women gained the right to vote with passage of the 19th Amendment to our U.S. Constitution.But women are still not granted full equality under the law. The U.S. Constitution expressly protects women from gender discrimination when voting — and that is where our protections end. The 14th Amendment only applies protections to race, religion and national origin. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia is on record stating that in its current state the U.S. Constitution does not provide equal protection based on gender.
In celebration of the 19th Amendment and the voting rights it bestowed to women, we ask you to continue the work of our foremothers and allies by working for passage of the Equal Rights Amendment. Carolyn Cook of Washington, D.C., founder and chief executive officer of United 4 Equality, LLC, authored a proposal to remove the 1982 ERA ratification deadline. Currently, joint resolutions are pending in both houses of Congress: H.J. Res. 113, sponsored by U.S. Rep. Jackie Speier (D-CA), and S.J. Res. 15, sponsored by U.S. Sens. Benjamin Cardin (D-MD) and Mark Kirk (R-IL), to remove this deadline and reaffirm the Three-State Strategy of ERA ratification.
Contact your U.S. representative and senators to ask them to support equality for women by co-sponsoring and voting in favor of H.J. Res. 113 and S.J. Res. 15. Together, we can herald a new ERA of women!
Mary Jo Middlebrooks