No Time to Give Thanks

Workers at Wal-Mart should not be thankful for a raise in pay from 8 dollars an hour to 9 dollars. The company is enormously successful and the owners luxuriously wealthy. Workers at MacDonald’s need not thank their owners for chicken-feed increases. Are Starbuck employees supposed to be grateful for a pittance?

The workers need to continue to organize so that they may bargain with owners for a fair share of the mammoth profits produced by their work.

Barbara Ehrenreich in the NY Times, of Sunday, January 3, 2016 sounds the alarm.

Liberals need to get up off their yoga mats and hit the streets for worker equality and safety. It is time for the folks interested in the spiritual life, meditation and retreats to enter the fray against pay inequality and fight for peace and justice.

Gratitude and giving thanks is necessary and healthy. Giving thanks for minimum  wages, which ruin families, increase crime and decimate education gives owners a free hand to continue to exploit workers. I suppose people are to rejoice and give thanks for slave labor at low wages.

The New Year is not only a time to be grateful, but also a time to work for economic justice.

Robert Warren Cromey