A LABOR DAY PROPOSAL

Well, here it is. The one day in the year on which we actually commemorate and celebrate working people, instead of ignoring and crapping on them. And how do we celebrate them? The same way we celebrate all our holidays now--we have sales. And how do we manage that? We have sales "associates" working all day, that's how. And most of them, like most sales "associates" anywhere anytime, are part-timers, so they don't get overtime, they just get their usual pittance per hour.

It's time for some brave politician to change that. Let's make Labor Day a real holiday for real laborers. We can't shut down the malls and the sales, of course. That would be unAmerican. But we can legally require anybody who works on Labor Day to be paid four times his or her usual hourly wage. Probably the result would be lots of middle managers hogging the overtime for themselves. But at least the ordinary salesclerks would be able to stay home and picnic with the family.