I fully expected to hit Google this morning and find a lot of posts about Labor Day. Just as I was disappointed in the Pilot’s lack of coverage, so was I disappointed in my search on Google. Heck, when I searched for images, most were of various events – parades, picnics, even a marriage proposal – rather than anything really related to Labor Day and its roots. About the third page of images, I was able to locate the picture here, which is a badge from the 6th Labor Day celebration.
I think we often forget why holidays exist. Like so many of our holidays, Labor Day has become simply another 3-day weekend, in this case a time for picnics, back-to-school sales, and the kickoff of the fall political season. Where are the front page articles about the history of Labor Day? Where are the articles about the plight of today’s workers: the stagnant wages, the loss of pensions and other benefits, the loss of jobs? Where are the stories about the replacement of high-paying, blue collar jobs with low-paying, service sector ones?
Virginia, being a right-to-work state, has always had a dim view of unions. But unions help all of us, not just themselves. Can the union bosses be corrupt? Absolutely, but how does that corruption differ from, say, the management at Enron? Unions came out of necessity, as employers took advantage of workers without them. With increasing globalization, the effect of unions in the US has been severely diminished, but the benefits of their earlier work are still with us.
So as you are enjoying your day off, remember why this holiday came to be:
Labor Day, the first Monday in September, is a creation of the labor movement and is dedicated to the social and economic achievements of American workers. It constitutes a yearly national tribute to the contributions workers have made to the strength, prosperity, and well-being of our country.
Technorati Tags: Labor Day
VIVIAN J. PAIGE | All Politics is Local 
C’mon, Viv! By virtue of your own block quotation, Labor Day isn’t about unions; it’s about workers. Only the arrogance of union bosses, and their apologists, attempts to hijack it for the purposes of union bosses.
BTW, next time you want to talk about unions “help all of us,” you might want to use a resource less biased than a union-funded “think tank.”
Um James – why don’t you write your own post? 😀
Actually, if you had clicked on the “history” link in the post, you would find this:
So the folks behind the holiday were union folks.
Republicants hate unions but most of all they’re askeeered of workers. Almost as askeeeered as they are of terrorists. Scared, scared, scared.
The scariest thing of all…many people who vote Republican have to work for a living.
The United States of Corporate America has done a great job of burying the labor movement.
That’s why folks who have to work for a living are now making so much less than before…and with less vacation time…while the rich elitests are richer than ever…with more tax breaks (investment income gets a big tax break…while income you have to work for is taxed to the nines….Paris Hilton rules!!)
Seems like the corporations haven’t gotten total control in Europe (though they are working on it.) Generally workers in Europe can expect 4 weeks of paid vacation a year plus a 35 hour work week. Poeple USE their vacation time without worrying about losing their jobs or their promotion if they go on vacation.
Plus every European citizen automatically has healthcare so they can easily decide to start up their own mom and pop businesses alot easier than this can happen in Corporate America.
What is it (besides military might) that makes America #1 in the world? I’d love to see someone make a list.
This is one of the many reasons we need to make a MAJOR change of course…Let’s vote in folks that can start unifying us and make America a great place to live in once again.
Corporations don’t have to be bad. But if left unregulated and unchecked it’s so easy to create a fascist nation. As that great fascist Mussolini defined it, facsim is the merger of government/state and corporations. More Privatization anyone? Just vote Republican and privatize (fascitize) away…..starting with prisons, roads, social security, etc etc….
How ironic that James Young, ever the knee jerk ideologist, seeks to trash an entire movement, organized labor, just at a time when major newspapers like the Washington Post and New York Times have been reporting that the average worker has actually lost ground during a period of strong economic growth.
According to the Census Bureau, from 2001 to 2005, median income fell by 0.5% after inflation. Yet worker productivity grew 14% in the same period.
In 2005, the fourth year of healthy economic expansion, median income rose slightly, but that was attributed to gains for retirees in their income from investment.
Since 1980, wages have historically declined in bad times but rebounded and grown in periods of economic recovery.
In fact, during the last expansion, 1991-1995, median income rose 2.9% during two economic upswings. Before that, in the first four years of economic gains, it rose 8%.
On the other hand, in this recovery from 2001-2005, during a period of record profits and strong economic growth, the poverty rate rose from 11.7% to 12.6% between 2001-2005. And worse, 5.4% of all poor people rank as extremely poor, with an income that is less than 1/2 the poverty line. This is the highest rate of deep poverty since 1997.
In the New York Times, several writers pointed out that one factor contributing to this profound loss of ground by workers and poor people is the decline of unions.
Without unions and well paying jobs, the middle class and working people are indeed being left behind and no amount of rightwing ideology about free markets is going to change the facts.
BTW, thank you Vivian for this great article highlighting the history and importance of unions.