Sept.
4, 2016 Community Christian Church of
Springfield, MO
Roger
Ray, pastor “On Labor and
Wealth”
Teddy Roosevelt: "The right to regulate the use of
wealth in the public interest is universally admitted. Let us admit also the
right to regulate the terms and conditions of labor, which is the chief element
of wealth, directly in the interest of the common good. The fundamental thing
to do for every man is to give him a chance to reach a place in which he will
make the greatest possible contribution to the public welfare.
Understand what I say there. Give him a chance, not push him up if he
will not be pushed. Help any man who stumbles; if he lies down, it is a poor
job to try to carry him; but if he is a worthy man, try your best to see that
he gets a chance to show the worth that is in him. No man can be a good citizen
unless he has a wage more than sufficient to cover the bare cost of living, and
hours of labor short enough so after his day’s work is done he will have time
and energy to bear his share in the management of the community, to help in
carrying the general load.
We keep countless men from being good citizens by the conditions of
life by which we surround them. We need comprehensive workman’s compensation
acts, both State and national laws to regulate child labor and work for women,
and, especially, we need in our common schools not merely education in
book-learning, but also practical training for daily life and work."
The practice of tipping a
waiter or waitress was originally a European idea and when it began to make its
way into the United States in the mid 1850’s it was not met with much
enthusiasm. In fact, many communities outlawed it as an unfair expectation
being placed upon patrons.
However, when the Civil War suddenly
freed African slaves in 1865 just as the railroad companies were needing to
hire Pullman Car workers in large numbers, the influence of the railroad
brought it back so that they could hire former slaves at no salary at all, but
insisted that they work for tips.
From 1865 until 2016, the
salary for service workers in the food industry has risen all of the way from 0
to $2.13 at the Federal minimum.
In Missouri we will not
tolerate such abuse so our minimum wage for tipped workers is $3.82…there is no
sense in taking advantage of someone just because they are poor, right?
Most restaurant servers are
female and, because they are working for tips, they are often put in a position
of just enduring whatever harassment or abuse comes their way in order to be
given tips by the restaurant’s patrons… which is one annoying thing but I have
to say that isn’t the whole picture.
The restaurant closest to my
home is owned by the billionaire O’Reilly family but I am expected to pay their
labor costs for them by tipping the staff who are busting their butts making
more money for the O’Reillys. Since I pay attention to labor issues, I have to
admit, it gets harder and harder to go out to eat. The Metropolitan Grill, The
Metropolitan Farmer, “Barley, Wheat and Rye,” and the Great American Taco
Company locations in Springfield are all owned by a right wing guy who makes
sure that none of his servers get enough hours to qualify for health insurance
and I would starve to death before I gave that heartless…. Individual…. A
dollar of my money. The same goes for the anti-Obamacare owner of Poppa John’s
Pizza, and for that matter the big game hunter who owns Jimmy Johns.
All of which motivated me to
start growing a lot of my own food in my back yard. The most wealthy people in
America are the owners of WalMart and they assiduously control their labor
force to shift the burden of paying them onto the tax payers in the country who
have to support the public housing, Medicaid, SNAP and other social programs
WalMart employees need to survive.
Even the families who own our
local McDonalds, Wendy’s, Panera, and other fast food restaurants are all
multi-millionaires paying employees in a way that shifts the burden of their
support onto social welfare programs.
Our system rewards billionaires and millionaires for keeping their
workers in poverty.
Many of these people absolutely
cannot see that they would be better citizens, better people, better Jews,
Christians, Muslims, Buddhists, or Hindus, if they would temper their desire
for profits with some desire to create better paying jobs for their employees.
What I find mystifying is that it has been demonstrated for the past decade
that the employment model used by Costco, where they pay higher salaries, have
health care and retirement programs for their workers, that they make more
profit than do their chief rivals at Sams and WalMart.
The owners of Sams and WalMart
are not stupid. They have seen these studies. They know it is true. But
somehow, they now actually prefer to make a bit less money if it allows them to
abuse their millions of employees by keeping them in poverty, by keeping them
dependent on food stamps and public housing. There are people who will not do
the right thing until they are forced to do it. We did not just morally grow
our way out of slavery, indentured servant hood, and child labor…. We made
those things illegal.
Labor Day in America has a bit
of dubious beginning and a checkered past. Grover Cleveland signed the Federal
Holiday into law just days after striking Pullman workers had been forced back
to work for lower wages at the point of guns held by federal soldiers.
Labor Day was not so much to
honor the social contributions of labor unions as it was a concession to
prevent a violent response to the way the Pullman strike was ended.
The myth that we were all spoon
fed in the public schools of our youth was that European settlers came to these
shores to escape the crushing feudalism and monarchical control, and religious
oppression that the working class had suffered in England and Europe. But
before the first century of this American experiment had ended, it looked like
the shoe was on the other foot…. There was more religious freedom, less of a
classed society, and more general welfare in Europe and they all managed to end
the institution of slavery without a war.
Who we say we are is great. We
say that we cherish liberty and freedom, and I applaud those values and wish
with all my heart that they were actually a part of the American experience for
everyone. But you do not have liberty or freedom when employers are allowed to
employ millions of Americans for wages that rob them of both liberty and
freedom…. Unless what you mean by freedom and liberty is that you are free to
be homeless if you wish and you are at liberty to starve to death if you can’t
find a way to beat the system.
It would be different if we
were facing a real scarcity in the 21st century. If we simply
couldn’t grow enough food, build enough houses, or hire enough doctors and
nurses to care for our needs. But the problem is not scarcity of resources. The
problem is a scarcity of morality. And for that poverty of character, there is
no excuse.
In the single lifespan of my
parents, our civilization moved from mule drawn plows, horse drawn carriages,
outhouses, coal lamps, wood burning stoves, and exposure to early death from a
myriad of infections and diseases into the age of refrigerators, eclectic
lights, cars, telephones, radios, TV, space flight, antibiotics, super markets,
commercial flight, computers, cell phones and smart phones, the internet, and
Andy’s frozen custard.
And yet our attitude towards
labor and fair wages is more primitive than it was in the time of Franklin
Roosevelt and Harry Truman. When it comes to ethics, we are still living in a
world threatened by pneumonia and lit with a smoking coal oil lamp.
America has so much potential
to create a free, just, and liberated society, and so little will to do it that
it would be easy to be discouraged…. Except for this one thing… I still have
faith that the modern world is just waiting to be born, it is as if I can feel
the birth pangs in the Arab Spring, in the Occupy Wall St movement, in the
Bernie Revolution, and so some degree, even in the Brexit vote, in our Native
American brothers and sisters standing up against an environmentally stupid
pipeline, and an African American football player who sits down when his masters
tell him to stand up.
To quote a famous Monte Python
skit, “I’m not dead yet.” In fact, the real modern world is just waiting to be
born.
