I will not wish anybody a 'Happy Labor Day' until these 6 things are figured out. There, I said it.
Those little cartoon drawings in the video? That's really his artwork!
Labor Day at Union Square, New York, 1882. Image public domain.
Labor Day began at a time when working people in the United States were working 12-hour days, seven days a week to survive.
(Hmmm. Sound familiar?)
Children — some as young as 5 or 6 — were working, too, at a fraction of the adult wage. And there were no safety standards, so deaths and injuries on the job were just accepted as a risk of trying to feed yourself and your family.
Unions were beginning to take hold, fighting back against all of this and the Gigantosaur Companies, too.
On September 5, 1882, 10,000 workers took to the streets in New York and marched from City Hall to Wendel's Elm Park — the first Labor Day parade.
Why did they march? For the eight-hour work day. They were tired of working all day and all night.
It actually took 12 years for it to become a national holiday, after a massive strike was put down by federal troops, and Congress decided it was time to appease working people.
Miners with their children at a Labor Day celebration in 1940 Colorado. Image from Library of Congress.
In the video below, economist Robert Reich illustrates what we need in order for Labor Day to have real meaning again in this country. Here are the six things:
1. A living wage
$7.25 is nowhere close to a living wage for anyone. I post things regularly about minimum wage on my public Facebook page, and a consistent pushback from the haters is, "It was never meant to be a living wage."
Oh, yeah? The architect of the minimum wage, none other than Franklin Delano Roosevelt, said some things about that in the years leading up to it first becoming law in 1938:
"No business which depends for existence on paying less than living wages to its workers has any right to continue in this country."
And this:
“By living wages, I mean more than a bare subsistence level — I mean the wages of a decent living." — FDR's Statement on National Industrial Recovery Act, 1933
Image from NHLaborNews.com, used with permission.
The real dollar value of the minimum wage has gone down from a high (in 1968, of about $11) to what it is today, $7.25. Remember that thing about people working 12-hour days, seven days a week, 130-some years ago? People today working for minimum wage frequently have to do exactly that in order to survive.
This doesn't even begin to touch the fact that some tipped workers make $2.13 an hour minimum. Not even kidding.
(And another bonus: When we raise the minimum, it floats all boats.)
GIF from "Oprah."
2. Earned Income Tax Credit
This is something that some politicians are trying to eliminate in some states. What does it do? Basically, it gives tax credits to low-to-moderate income workers, especially those with kids.
3. Child Care
Access to affordable child care is something that working people — moms, especially — need (and frequently don't have) in order to be able to do their jobs and even to rise to better-paid positions in the companies and organizations where they work. Bringing your kid to work sounds like something fun to do maybe one day a year, but otherwise ... umm, no.
GIF from "How I Met Your Mother."
4. Good Schools
Schools make a difference in the lives of the kids who go there, and attacks on education that started with the Great Recession of 2008 continue even today. We need to change our priorities, folks.
5. Health Insurance for all
Obamacare, or the Affordable Care Act, is working and making a difference in the lives of millions of people. But the real solution is a universal health care system — something that the ACA took the place of.
6. Union Rights
Union membership in the private sector is the lowest it's ever been, and good union jobs in the public sector have been under attack for at least a decade, if not 30 years. One primary way we can fix that is through card check recognition — that is, if enough people at a company or work location put their signature on cards that say they want to be members, the company signs off on it and that's it; no campaigns to threaten workers, no long, drawn-out election processes where some workers can be fired (and therefore the rest intimidated).
Here's economist Robert Reich to break it down:
So how to help? Spread this around, first of all. Let's get some people talking about these issues on Labor Day.
And here's a link if you want to sign Reich's petition.
A Generation Jones teenager poses in her room.Image via Wikmedia Commons
An office kitchen.via 
An angry man eating spaghetti.via 
An Irish woman went to the doctor for a routine eye exam. She left with bright neon green eyes.
It's not easy seeing green.
Did she get superpowers?
Going to the eye doctor can be a hassle and a pain. It's not just the routine issues and inconveniences that come along when making a doctor appointment, but sometimes the various devices being used to check your eyes' health feel invasive and uncomfortable. But at least at the end of the appointment, most of us don't look like we're turning into The Incredible Hulk. That wasn't the case for one Irish woman.
Photographer Margerita B. Wargola was just going in for a routine eye exam at the hospital but ended up leaving with her eyes a shocking, bright neon green.
At the doctor's office, the nurse practitioner was prepping Wargola for a test with a machine that Wargola had experienced before. Before the test started, Wargola presumed the nurse had dropped some saline into her eyes, as they were feeling dry. After she blinked, everything went yellow.
Wargola and the nurse initially panicked. Neither knew what was going on as Wargola suddenly had yellow vision and radioactive-looking green eyes. After the initial shock, both realized the issue: the nurse forgot to ask Wargola to remove her contact lenses before putting contrast drops in her eyes for the exam. Wargola and the nurse quickly removed the lenses from her eyes and washed them thoroughly with saline. Fortunately, Wargola's eyes were unharmed. Unfortunately, her contacts were permanently stained and she didn't bring a spare pair.
- YouTube youtube.com
Since she has poor vision, Wargola was forced to drive herself home after the eye exam wearing the neon-green contact lenses that make her look like a member of the Green Lantern Corps. She couldn't help but laugh at her predicament and recorded a video explaining it all on social media. Since then, her video has sparked a couple Reddit threads and collected a bunch of comments on Instagram:
“But the REAL question is: do you now have X-Ray vision?”
“You can just say you're a superhero.”
“I would make a few stops on the way home just to freak some people out!”
“I would have lived it up! Grab a coffee, do grocery shopping, walk around a shopping center.”
“This one would pair well with that girl who ate something with turmeric with her invisalign on and walked around Paris smiling at people with seemingly BRIGHT YELLOW TEETH.”
“I would save those for fancy special occasions! WOW!”
“Every time I'd stop I'd turn slowly and stare at the person in the car next to me.”
“Keep them. Tell people what to do. They’ll do your bidding.”
In a follow-up Instagram video, Wargola showed her followers that she was safe at home with normal eyes, showing that the damaged contact lenses were so stained that they turned the saline solution in her contacts case into a bright Gatorade yellow. She wasn't mad at the nurse and, in fact, plans on keeping the lenses to wear on St. Patrick's Day or some other special occasion.
While no harm was done and a good laugh was had, it's still best for doctors, nurses, and patients alike to double-check and ask or tell if contact lenses are being worn before each eye test. If not, there might be more than ultra-green eyes to worry about.