Bob Barney: Labor Day and God’s View of Workers and Employers (Transcript)

LISTEN TO THE PLAIN TRUTH TODAY 7:11 BROADCAST: Bob Barney: Labor Day and God’s View of Workers and Employers

Hello, this is Bob Barney. I got a special show for Labor Day. It’s going to be a 7:11 short show.

Just wanted to get over things. I think we had pretty good shows today, explaining Labor Day,

the history of Labor Day. Dave Stotts has a very good Christian view of things, I will say, even

though he’s not of my ilk of Christianity, but he does a pretty good job in his series of special

holiday shows that he does, as well as his biblical, driving through the Bible shows that he does

as well.

But I want to get into a different perspective. It’s a short show, like I said, but a different

perspective of Labor Day and what it means to America. It is not a biblical holiday, but it is a

holiday that we should remember God, because God is for the working person.

When you read the Bible and you understand what God wants us to do, one of the things God

wants us to do is to work. He who doesn’t work, I think Paul says, shouldn’t eat. And so we

should, at this time, not only remember what Labor Day stands for in America, but the general

idea of Labor Day and the idea of what God has to say about labor, workers, and the workers’

rights.

There was a time in America, we always think about America, how great it was in the 1800s, but

there were some bad problems back in the 1800s. We had, like we are having today, these,

what we would call billionaires today, industrialists back then, they worked on, not slave labor,

but the closest thing to slave labor you could get after the Civil War, I’ll tell you that right now.

There were kids in coal mines at 9, 10, 11 years old.

There were young girls that were literally chained, the doors were chained shut at the fabric

industry that they would be sewing. Hundreds of girls would be on a floor sewing garments

and stuff, the garment industry. And again, they were 10, 11, 12, 13 years old.

They could not leave to take breaks and to prevent them from even going to take a break, they

would chain them in their rooms. And there was a very famous time when a fire erupted in one

place, I believe in New York City, and it killed a bunch of young girls who were sewing garments

in the garment industry. And these are the kind of things that were going on in the 1880s,

1890s, when finally Teddy Roosevelt became president, and he was the very first populist

president.

I always say, in a way, I’m a populist, but I’m also a conservative populist. What we have going

on right now in this second TR administration, Donald Trump wants to liken himself to Teddy

Roosevelt, but Teddy Roosevelt was a man of the people. Yes, he was rich.

He came from money, but he also went out West. People do not always know this. He went out

West as a young man after his wife and mother died on the same day.

Think about that. And he went out West to try to reinvent himself as a cattle rancher in

Wyoming. And he did a pretty good job for an Easterner doing it, and he won the respect of all

the fellow cattlemen and cowboys out there, something that would be hard to do for an

Easterner back then, and he won their respect.

And what he learned from that experience was that America was built by a rugged individual,

be it man or woman, rugged individuals who did not need handouts from the government. And

when Teddy Roosevelt became president, one of the things he said was, government’s role is

not to pick winners and losers, as we are doing today in the second so-called Teddy Roosevelt

administration under Donald Trump, who is picking winners and losers. No, Teddy Roosevelt

said it was the job of the federal government to be referees, like at a football game, where you

make sure that both sides, rich and poor, are equally on that playing field.

They have the same set of rules, and if anything, you maybe penalize the people who are

cheating in a way, because they have more money to spend, and they can set prices artificially

low, run the little guy out of business, turn around, and raise prices to humongous monopoly

high prices. And that’s what was going on during his times, and he broke up these big trusts,

and he broke up Standard Oil and other trusts like that. He was an enemy of J.P. Morgan.

He was an enemy of the Rockefellers. He was an enemy of the Carnegie’s. But Labor Day really

celebrates the worker of America.

It is a union day, and I have an article I wrote on the Plain Truth a long time ago. If you

celebrate Labor Day, remember a union brought you that. There was a time unions were

important in America, because workers had no rights in America.

They were basically almost treated like slaves, and I think it’s time we realize God does not want

workers to be treated like slaves. And there are all kinds of rules in the Old Testament,

especially the Old Testament, that tells the employer, tells the rich person, how they’re

supposed to treat the poor person working for them, and they were to show them respect. And

you know that the law of God says you’re supposed to pay your worker at the end of every

single day.

He’s not to work the entire week or two weeks before he gets his pay. God thought, and God

still probably believes, and the law is still in force, that an employee really should be paid on the

same day they work, and that is a great reward for them, especially if they’re barely making it

and they’re living what we call today paycheck to paycheck. And God wanted people who

worked for a living to be paid every day so they could support themselves and their families

and get ahead.

And that is, you know, the parable Jesus talks about the three people that he gave one a

hundred talents of silver, another a hundred talents of silver, and another hundred talents of

silver. And the guy who, first guy, took the hundred talents and made another hundred talents,

and the second guy took the hundred talents and made five hundred talents, or fifty talents, I’m

sorry. And the third guy put it in a ground because he was afraid of his master.

And what did the master, who is really Jesus Christ, say to that third guy? You’re a lazy, terrible

worker. You should at least put the money in the bank, but you didn’t do it. So he took his

money away and gave it to the guy who made the hundred talents.

Not the guy who made the fifty, but the guy who made the hundred. Yes, God is a capitalist, but

he’s not a corporatist. God wants to see everything fair and square, and the little guy be taken

care of by the big guy.

And that is what we should remember on Labor Day. That’s a simple, fast 7-Eleven show by me

to wrap up this day, and I hope everyone had a safe Labor Day, and we’ll see you back again

tomorrow for the Plain Truth Today. Until then, Bob Barney, thank you.

Bye-bye.