That said, it's kind of ironic that in order to have Eid-al-fitr off, the workers have to give up Labor day.
Sigh. It's tough being pro-labor nowadays. I gotta send this to Workplace Prof Blog. Thanks for the tip.
You know, just thinking that people read this and identify more with rich assholes rather than guys doing the dirty work gets me steamed.
On the glass-is-half-full side: a unionized meatpacking plant? In Tennessee? And they got a contract? Praise be to Jesus!
Yes, as if the shitty thing were not that Tyson wouldn't give them one fucking day without taking another away.
Looks like the WaPo is doing a series on low wage workers.
I'm confused. The press release says it is an "additional" holiday.
I'm confused. The press release says it is an "additional" holiday.
Is it possible that they just made Labor Day an unpaid holiday?
I'm confused. The press release says it is an "additional" holiday.
It is an additional choice of which day they can have off, I think.
Iidal Fitil has become so commercialized anyway.
I think the difference is that they're no longer getting paid on Labor Day, but they'll still get it off, as federally mandated.
I strongly recommend that you not read the comments on the Shelbyville Times-Gazette story -- I think they killed a little piece of my soul.
Yeah, I second jms's recommendation. I think I just became a Wobbly or something.
My wife had either Labor Day or Memorial Day (I don't remember which) taken away as a paid holiday when they added MLK Day as one. Leaving aside the relative honorary merits, mid-January isn't really when another holiday was needed, barely 2 weeks after New Years.
This unexpected surge of sympathy for black Muslims among the hard-working people of Tennessee gives me hope for the coming election.
It does surprise me a bit that they didn't just make it a floating holiday. That's how a lot of employers deal with religious holidays -- you don't get any off, officially, but you get three floating holidays and you can use them on whichever days you like. Nobody has to feel like their holiday is more or less important.
Maybe that's impractical in a chicken processing plant. I wonder if the line can run without 1/4 of the workers.
If you lot had sensible holiday allowances in the first place, this wouldn't even be a problem.
13: Employers are never required to be closed for a holiday. "Federal holiday" just means most federal offices are closed.
When the LA City Council proposed taking away the Columbus Day holiday to grant the Cesar Chavez holiday, the Italians raised holy hell. The Italians! You gotta love it.
They ended up taking away the Christmas Eve half-day and giving a Cesar Chavez whole day.
This unexpected surge of sympathy for black Muslims among the hard-working people of Tennessee gives me hope for the coming election.
This isn't necessarily the case and the article doesn't provide useful detail. If the settlement's good enough, people will vote for it despite objecting to some provisions.
Check out the comments on the story linked from the post, most of which are racist rants about boycotting Tyson.
In the name of inter-thread comity, Holiday = Madonna's best song.
Get this: they get a seven-minute paid break!
Seven minutes!
Apropos of nothing, I have found myself intensely frustrated by government working hours lately. Yes, there are many downsides to the "always on" culture of corporate America, in which people are always checking their e-mail and making cell phone calls in the middle of meetings or subway cars.
But my word, the unbelievable hours of life you can waste because you can only reach somebody by going in person and waiting, or calling repeatedly during a narrow time window. It's really, really frustrating. And it does not make me think kind things about generous holiday schedules.
One the plus side, perhaps this will encourage the workers to celebrate Labor Day one the correct date - May 1st.
At my last company, we had 4 floating holidays that we were suposed to be able to use whenever we wanted. The boss of our office insisted that we take MLK day off, we all think so as our clients wouldn't think we were racist. And the he made us all use another for Columbus Day so it wouldn't look like he was only doing that for MLK so he wouldn't look racist.
21: True. I should have been less careless. Most federal holidays are state holidays too, but I forgot, this is a private employer. It's more based on custom and union agreement for private companies.
You should have come in on MLK day. Since no one else would have been there, there wouldn't have been a lot for you to do, I imagine.
My biggest gripe with floating holidays is that it's a lot easier for management to say you only get 3 floating holidays now instead of 4 than to tell people they no longer get Labor Day/MLK/Columbus Day off because it is divorced from the emotion of the holiday. I made this argument when my company switched an lo I was right, as they did just that two years later.
government working hours
The City of Cambridge pulls an interesting trick here - they run extended hours (to 8pm?) on Monday, so that there's at least one non-lunch timeslot for 9-to-5 types, and make it up to the workers by having them leave early Friday afternoon. Seems pretty win-win to me.
When I was in publishing, we had one floating holiday. Basically, the company didn't give MLK day off, folks complained, and they took away our 12/31 holiday and gave us a floating holiday. I felt really guilty about always choosing 12/31.
31 - We *wanted* to work on MLK. Days that were client holidays but not ours were great for doing things that needed all users off the computer systems, like software upgrades. Instead, we had to work over a weekend.
I granted myself a floating holiday* last Monday so I could finish Summerland. It's superb!
* I did take a lengthy client call, so I marked it as a half-holiday on my timesheet.
OK, now I've clicked through and read the original article. Either the union is writing completely incompetent press releases, or the newspaper has a serious axe to grind. Or the reporter is incompetent.
This in particular should never have gotten past an editor:
The press release stated there are approximatly 700 Muslims working at Tyson, but Mickelson said that Somalis only represent approximately 250 of the 1,200 employed at the plant, a little over 20 percent of the workforce.
Dude, Somalis != Muslims.
Reading the article, they get their birthday as a holiday?
39 - That's not unusual, is it? Our company gives us a floating holiday that can be used on Veterans' Day or our birthday.
their birthday as a holiday
St. Monday!
(Actually, Wikipedia does not back up the explanation given to me for that expression; namely, that Irish immigrants in the 19th century commonly took off the saint's day that corresponded with their own first name, and that angry employers felt that this practice was being used to justify just talking off Mondays in general.)
I've never worked anywhere, nor heard of anywhere, that allowed you to take off on your birthday. Except if you wanted to take a vacation day.
Is "assholity" the proper term for the state of being an asshole?
I can think of several alternatives that seem better:
Assholiness
Assholitude
Assholery
I'm sure the birthday thing is a way of increasing productivity. If, on everyone's birthdays, people bring a cake, take a long lunch, etc., it cuts into more productivity than if one person stays home.
I'm sure the birthday thing is a way of increasing productivity. If, on everyone's birthdays, people bring a cake, take a long lunch, etc., it cuts into more productivity than if one person stays home.
Seriously? In a chicken factory?
I don't see that happening in a world where companies generally insist on people with the flu coming in to do half-assed work and infect the rest of the office instead of getting a paid day off, anyway.
I figured it was because if people took bdays off over the year, the plant would still be open. Another day that everyone took would mean a day the plant was closed. Hence, why I bet management would be more willing to trade Labor Day than the employee's bday.
The places I've been that have celebrated people's birthdays have tended to do it in bulk - a monthly lunchtime thing where they list everybody who had a birthday that month and was willing to be named.
Those comments are indeed depressing, not because they remind me that such people exist--a fact I have never lost sight of--but that they can read a newspaper and write a complete sentence, which just seems so damned improbable.
43: Is "assholity" the proper term for the state of being an asshole?
"Shittiness".
Maybe *your* asshole, Rocky. I use baby wipes on mine.
Pedantic moment of literalism: even thought intellectually I realize it must not be the case, for some reason I always think of baby wipes as being essentially alcohol swabs + perfume + marketing, and it freaks me out, because ow.
We have floating holidays at my office. The second highest productivity day of the year is Good Friday, when the lawyers can do their jobs without interference from secretaries. The highest productivity day of the year is Yom Kippur, when the secretaries can do their jobs without interference from the lawyers.
And of course the most unpleasant day of the year is Puerto Rico Day, because the trash just piles up and the bathrooms go uncleaned.
27: You just had to get that in while I was away, didn't you?
The nice thing about working in my industry is that a few very rich people in New York who like to take holidays decide when the holidays are, and when they're gone, there's no point in coming in. The not nice thing is that some assholes in Washington like to be contrary two days a year, and that screws everything up for a couple of weeks.
You pretty much can't buy baby wipes that use alcohol any more.
You pretty much can't buy babies alcohol anymore. That wipes!
Leaving aside the relative honorary merits, mid-January isn't really when another holiday was needed, barely 2 weeks after New Years.
MLK day should be in August, the anniversary of the IHAD speech. Everyone would have picnics and racial harmony would spread through the land.
57: Until they start debating the etymology of picnic, whence will begin the Time of Blood.
57!
In 2009 the MLK day comes right before Inauguration day. This means a very long weekend for DC feds.
Also, DoD is now lobbying OPM for a National Capital Region holiday on 9/11 (just for DoD). Seems that the security for the memorial dedication will be so tight that the work in the Pentagon will grind to a halt anyway.
We do need more summer holidays.
Canadians have some holiday today, but its observation on a Tuesday seems to be widely viewed as a great excuse to take off on the preceding Monday. We should be doing more of this creative holiday planning here.
51: also moisturizer.
MLK day: (As explained by National Brotherhood of Skiers member: any holiday in ski season is great. )
Like KnRu I'm impressed the the t-g readers' discussion.
I marvel at what it takes to set people off against a company.If they are rumored to mistreat their workers, not much is done in response.
If there are suggestions that they have an unsafe product,silence reigns again.
If they are alleged to have illegal hiring practices,the people in the community don't storm the plant with burning torches.
But,let a group of strangers get an accommodation of their faith and all Hell breaks loose.
BC Day is a great invention. Unless you're waiting for a Fed Ex . . .
The funny thing is that there are several holidays that ended up being observed, that were started for new ethnic groups, and we still seem to have a Constitution.
64: Ah, but these people don't believe in God. Or so I'm told.
Come to think of it, I was told the same thing about the Catholics. Huh.
It is way past time somebody did something about those fucking Irish taking away jobs from real Americans.
Must be the Civic holiday in Canada, at least in Ontario. Celebrated in honor of a different person in each town. Simcoe Day in Toronto, Colonel By Day in Ottawa, etc.
This buries the lede: SUD was invented so the Finns could get a day's headstart on the Irish.
I especially liked this comment:
I am curious to see what they are going to do when Catholics, Jews, etc., as well as other religions start stepping up demanding "their holidays". Have fun with that Tyson.
Yep, it's going to be unbridled chaos when Tyson has to start letting employees off for Christmas and Easter.
OT: This is an interesting dilemma for the legal academy. To boycott or not to boycott a hotel for our annual conference b/c of the political positions of its owner?
Simcoe Day in Toronto, Colonel By Day in Ottawa, etc.
Yeah, Simcoe is such a Toronto name, and for people in Ottawa, about as distant as the moon. We all knew about Colonel John By, though. One of my ancestors signed this petition to the Crown, addressed to "Lieutenant Colonel By, Commanding Royal Engineer, Rideau Canal."
Canadians have some holiday today, but its observation on a Tuesday seems to be widely viewed as a great excuse to take off on the preceding Monday. We should be doing more of this creative holiday planning here.
In Alberta I am told this holiday is called 'August Long Weekend.' 'What's the holiday celebrating?' 'There wasn't a holiday in this month?'
74: Albertans are so weird. They like to think they're American-style cowboys or something, when in fact they're still observing ye olde English tradition of Saint Monday.
More power to 'em, if it gets them days off work, says I.
Consider this my troll-spasm of the day, to show I am alive and reading, if not contributing. This thread had gone a little quiet anyway, and needed a troll trolling about trolling.
Thus communal being necessarily includes a political dimension, regardless of how one defines the specifics of the structure of the political life of a community.It follows from this understanding of communal being as intrinsically public that communal being cannot simply be a matter of my unilaterally choosing to live or act in a cerain way. For, although autonomous choice is necessary, it is not sufficient for community since others, or more precisely, relevant aspects of the world, must also be appropriately responsive. It is the experience of the absence of this responsiveness, an absence that may even defy (occasional or habitual) acts of collective will formation, that I referred to earlier as a loss. The experience of the loss of visionary community in roughly the above terms is what I shall mean by "the (ontological) problem of communal being or community." As I understand it, then, in the liberal age community is a problem and it is a problem of being in the sense outlined here.
Not only is the problem of community an ontological one bit it also arises pre-reflectively. That is, one may identify with intrinsically public communal being (hereafter 'communal being') immediately, that is, without the aid of a theory of community. But, since in the liberal age this is an experience of loss, it also involves a related inability immediately to identify with one's social world. One's affirmative attitude towards one's communal being is thus concretely embodied in the experience of alienation from one's world as a totality and, by extension, from one's activity in it (hereafter 'the experience of total alienation'). The experience of total alienation is a late twentieth century phenomenon associated with the realization that neither the traditionally Marxist, nor the New Left social movements' efforts to create stable revolutionary identities have succeeded. John Dunn sums it up well when he suggests that, following the collapse of Soviet and western Europe socialism "what has been deleted from the human future, almost inadvertently but still with remarkable decisveness, is any form of reasonable and relatively concrete social and political hope."
The Radical Critique of Liberalism, in memory of a vision by Tola Nicolacopoulos, an open access book (which means I typed the above) linked at Philosophy's Other
holiday!
it was my last day in the lab
in the old lab i mean coz we're moving in two weeks to other place
i just packed up everything, so tired
au revoir and thanks for keeping me company, all
78: Does this mean a hiatus or a permanent good-bye, read?
in two weeks i'll be back
but if i can break my unfogged habit i don't know
i'll see :)
Speaking of trolls, how about that Jason Craiglist Guy.
Good luck in the new place, read.
In my experience moving to new labs always means there will be no place to eat and everything will be "communal" and noisy. But more free space.
But more free space.
More free lab space, I presume? Are they building larger labs or something?
"Troll", as used by the dimwitted, PC cafe-liberal sort, has no relation to what it initially signified. Starting in early 90s or so it was used by conservative control freaks mostly for a specific type of misinformation hack. Now the term (as used by say the KOS snitch union) means something like "one who doesn't agree with my own sentimental political schema", or "someone posting smart shit that really irks me".....
Good luck with the change, read. You'll find that breaking the unfogged habit is not so easy.
Good luck, read! And, what the heck with 84.
And, what the heck with 84.
Given the lack of pastries, it's nothing.
Blather on, Fuck you, but you owe us Whoopie Pies. I like the kind with actual butter cream filling.
"Whoopie Pies" is another name for the homemade oreos/chocolate mascarpone cookies I posted to the deggofnU pool. Amber says she doesn't like to name food after sex. Although I'm going to bake them for a Saturday dinner's dessert (for W-lfs-n!), and so I guess I'm making whoopie.
I am not making them for Fuck You though. He still owes you a moon pie.
Well, I disapprove of naming people after tree excreta.
Anyway, it's silly to think that just because two things share a name, one was named after the other—unless Amber has some better reason, like your testimony, for thinking that these cookies are named after the conjugal act.
The thought that an Oreo is a vestigial whoopie pie is sort of sad. Even if you take the tops off two of them and put the frosted halves together, you still have a mere simulacrum, a degraded copy. Oreos don't even taste like chocolate.
Yet an Oreo in and of itself is not that bad. Just don't think about Whoopie Pies and you're okay.
To be honest, I don't know the origins of the name. Definitely not my testimony. I call these "chocolate mascarpone cookies," or "awesome cookies."
I don't think I had ever heard of "whoopie pie" until I read that on her blog when she baked the oreos. I was also confused about moon pies, which I once had (the packaged kind) and disliked, and used to think were the same as whoopie pies. Clearly, whoopie pies are better.
If moon pies are those domes of spongy marshmallow on dried-up cookie covered with a thin chocolate shell, they just aren't in the same ball park.
From the link in 94:
¼ cup (½ stick) room-temperature, unsalted butter
¼ cup vegetable shortening
2 cups sifted confectioners' sugar
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
This sounds like the really good kind of whoopie pie.
Now I'm hungry, but it's 2 a.m. and I have to go to bed. Good night.
Thanks for posting the chocolate mascarpone sandwich cookie recipe, Belle Lettre. I think I'll try to make them this week. Although, I've also been craving crystallized ginger cookies (which recipe I should maybe post on the wiki), and perhaps I'll make those instead. (The craving was no doubt triggered by BL's mention of Bakesale Betty's, whose ginger cookie is delicious and very close to my recipe. The jms household blames, thanks, you, BL.)
You're very welcome! Please post the ginger cookie recipe! I will want another batch of cookies to eat next week!
Are you in the Bay Area? Actually, who is in the Bay Area among you, so that I can invite you to my house a month or two from now for a big meet up? Emails welcome.
Belle, I live in LA now, although I come back to the Bay Area a lot, to visit fambly an friends. I will post the recipe when I am sober and among my recipe books.
45 & 46 are exactly right. There's no need for the company to worry about lost productivity from too many birthday parties; they just don't allow them on company time. As w-lfs-n pointed out, 7-minute break. Plenty of workplaces less harsh than a chicken factory are the same way.
Seconding 45, very few jobs have the kind of autonomy and flexibility many of us take for granted.
BTW, I sincerely wish I had listened to 14. People suck.
Thank goodness McCain is calling Obama out on playing the race card in our post-racial society. Noting that all previous presidents have been white is sooo divisive, especially when done in a lighthearted way like saying Obama doesn't look like the portraits on U.S. currency. (Who came up with 'race card' and who will join me in waterboarding them?)
21: Employers are never required to be closed for a holiday.
I'm quite sure that this is the case in Federal law, but in Massachusetts grocery stores are not allowed to open on Christmas and Thanksgiving. Of course, these are not paid holidays.
"Race card" originally meant straighforwardly appealing to racism -- when George Wallace said he'd "never be out n!ggered again", he was stating an intention to play the "race card" in then-current usage. People have successfully, since then, managed to define any reference to someone else's racism as itself racist (or something like that. I totally accept that falsely accusing someone else of racism is a terrible thing to do, but it's a different terrible thing than racism. And the falseness of the accusation is necessary to make it a bad thing at all.), and flipped the meaning of "race card" to match. Pisses me off.
101: I can't believe that's legal other than in cases where what's sold is regulated, i.e., liquor.
103: But it is the case, even for supermarkets that don't sell liquor. And no company is allowed to sell alcohol at more than three of its stores, and all of the supermarkets have to shut down. Convenience stores can stay open. A couple of years ago the Asian supermarket accidentally stayed open on Christmas, but then they did it again and argued that most of their employees celebrated Chinese New Year and not Christmas.
Further to 101: In fact, I'm positive it can't possibly be true absent the condition of regulated goods. If grocery stores sell wine or beer, they could fall under that, though blue laws in many cases simply require that alcohol not be sold on Sundays, etc., not that the place close if alcohol isn't its primary good.
BG, do you have a cite for that law? Because I am certain that the grocery store in PDBS was open early in the day on Thanksgiving.
Besides, where would Jews go for Chinese food and movies?
107 was ambiguous becaue grocery stores are not traditionally the venue for either dim sum or movie-watching. I meant if other kinds of businesses were closed. It was a joke, see? (Paging Standpipe.)
106: The relevant laws. Reading through the list of exemptions is kinda amusing.
110: Reading through the list of exemptions is kinda amusing.
(23) The selling of kosher wine or the selling or delivery of kosher meat or fish by any natural person who observes Saturday as the Sabbath by closing his place of business from sundown Friday to sundown Saturday.
The Rule of Law complicated and the public order in Massachusetts threatened by considerations of a Middle Eastern religion.
110: I guess I'm wrong. I'm flabbergasted. I find it absolutely stunning that such a restrictive law hasn't been found unconstitutional, though the amended 1994 version seems to apply mostly to construction and manufacturing, and even then they can get a permit.
In any case, thank goodness for the bootblack exemption.
I find it absolutely stunning that such a restrictive law hasn't been found unconstitutional
On what grounds would it be unconstitutional? It's unrelated to interstate commerce, and it doesn't implicate due process rights according to any precedent I'm aware of. It's possible that some state constitutions might have stronger protections of property rights, but absent that, state legislatures have pretty broad authority to regulate commerce within their borders unless pre-empted by federal law. Which is as it should be.
thank goodness for the bootblack exemption
Yeah, that one made me laugh too. You can't show up to Christmas mass with scuffed shoes, people!
Bootblacks only before 11, and only at airports, though. Wouldn't want the prodigal son's surprise return marred by any residual scruffiness.
It's unrelated to interstate commerce
Do you think all the goods sold in the store come from Mass. I doubt it.
That would seem to be more than enough of a reason for the S.C. to rule it involving interstate commerce.
That would seem to be more than enough of a reason for the S.C. to rule it involving interstate commerce.
Before Morrison I would have agreed with you. Now, I'm not so sure.
113: I was assuming some creative misapplication, as with so many other pro-business rulings. Maybe due process, 1st Amendment, corporation is a person, an argument that it does restrict interstate commerce on some things, e.g., trucking, shipping to other states, that the ban isn't closely enough related to legit govt interest to allow so much picking and choosing -- unfair that one sole proprietor be forced to close and not another. I'm not arguing that these should necessarily be winning arguments, just that they might be.
creative misapplication
For instance, ruling that the Violence Against Women Act falls under the commerce clause. (Of course, IANACL.)
The Lopez court stated that Congress may regulate (1) use of the channels of interstate commerce, (2) the "instrumentalities" (for example, vehicles) used in interstate commerce
This was the precedent that seems to be used for Morrison.
I would assume a store could fall under either of these. So I think the S.C. could still manage to call it interstate commerce even though I think that it isn't.