What's Labor Day Beyond an End of Summer Celebration?

With so much rant fodder flying around in the last few weeks it’s been difficult to settle on one given such a rich landscape of possibilities.

Originally I was going to rant on my passionate feelings about the plank in the Republican platform disallowing any exceptions for abortion - basically taking away all possibility of choice for women who have been rape victims.  I was steaming on that one, but Andrew Solomon did a very eloquent job in elucidating my arguments (thanks Andrew!) so you can read it for yourself.  

Then after nearly a week of  the “Ayn Randian Rugged Individualistic Mine, Mine, Mine” monologues of the RNC I decided I’d blog about taking back my country from the “It’s Mine I Worked For It-You Didn’t” crowd but I found a much more eloquent plea  from Jennifer Granholm so here you go, it’s better and more widely read than anything I would write. 

Letting the thoughts of the week sink in then, and luxuriating in the idea of having a three day weekend with absolutely nothing on the agenda, I realized that the best topic of all was staring me right in the face: exactly why I have a 3 day weekend.

According to the US Dept of Labor, “Labor Day...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. (emphasis is mine).

Labor Day was born from the sweat and broken backs of laborers who were the lifeblood of the Industrial Revolution.  From the days of the Pullman riots to the final creation of the official Labor Day holiday in 1894, workers made it clear that their contributions to making the US a vibrant economic engine would not go unrecognized. In 1898 AFL President Samuel Gompers called it "the day for which the toilers in past centuries looked forward, when their rights and their wrongs would be discussed...that the workers of our day may not only lay down their tools of labor for a holiday, but upon which they may touch shoulders in marching phalanx and feel the stronger for it."  

OK I admit, I had to look up the word “phalanx” to be sure I understood the full comport of this quote so I’ll share that definition with you: “a number of individuals, especially persons united for a common purpose.”

So why was this uniting “for a common purpose” necessary? In the late 1800‘s, American laborers, adults and sometimes children alike, worked 12-hour days and seven days a week, frequently in extremely unsafe or unsanitary conditions for barely a basic living, in our mines, factories, mills and railroads.  They made America what it is today in spite of such conditions. 

Throughout its long and stormy history, the rise of the Labor movement and its subsequent formation into unions has been the topic of much study, discussion, turmoil and at times violence.  Through all the push and pull of workplace dynamics and in spite of political and financial variables stressing the tenuous relationships with labor, the success of the movement cannot be denied.  All workers today, regardless of union or non-union status, benefitted from the success of collective bargaining.  Thanks to the Labor movement most workers today enjoy minimum wages, non-discriminatory hiring and firing practices, safe workplaces, and critical benefits such as sick time, vacation time, health insurance and severance pay.  Indirectly pressure from the Labor movement and the country’s struggles to emerge from the Great Depression also resulted in the creation of our current social “safety net” of Social Security and Unemployment Insurance.

In the last few years the Labor movement has come under assault from political forces that wish to harken back to the pre-movement days when employers called all the shots and saw workers as their minions to order about as they please. Yes, unions and in particular, the public sector, have often negotiated and won contracts that seem at odds with today’s economic times.  Those issues do need to be resolved.  But not all unions and union terms are bad just as not all employers and management are bad.  That the movement has now become a political football to be kicked around as a symbol of all that is wrong with America is an egregious abandonment of the very blood that coursed through early America’s veins and grew us into the great country that we claim to be.  That we cannot come together as one to resolve our issues in a fair, civil and even handed way only spells America’s demise.

That is why I find it incomprehensible that President Obama’s comments have been so taken out of context, vilified, then made a central theme of this week’s RNC “We Built It” show.  

We should be celebrating the success of a country that has come through so many hard times, many examples of which were given in the various RNC speeches.  Every one of those “we struggled” speeches talked about the hard labor of grandfathers and fathers, and the sacrifices of grandmothers, mothers and children to support the family.  They all contributed to and participated in the Labor movement.  Yes, many of them were entrepreneurs who to their credit took risks with the what little advantage they may have had.  But none of them, I repeat NONE OF THEM did it totally alone.  If they had we would not be where we are today.  Someone taught them to read, write and cipher.  Someone built the ships upon which immigrants arrived on our shores. Someone nursed them to health when they were sick and provided surgeries and medicines to make them healthy and able to work. Someone forged the steel and provided the lumber that made their wagons roll over the roads and trains roll over the rails that someone else laid down.  Someone else produced the raw materials that another business made into a product that another store sold who delivered it to the customer in an airplane that someone else built.  That’s why it’s called a SUPPLY CHAIN - not a SUPPLY LINK or a SUPPLY THREAD or a PIECE of a CHAIN or - oh you get it, don’t you?  

As Jon Stewart described, it was “a convention theme at a political campaign cynically based around something the president never actually said” and “a party-wide persecution complex, where any reference to the collective good is somehow taken as a denigration of an individual’s achievement.”  But isn’t individual achievement for the collective good how America got here in the first place?  Why can’t we celebrate the marriage of those ideals instead of using it as a wedge to split the populace into us and them camps?  

So as we celebrate this Labor Day weekend, enjoying our holiday pay for Monday while we golf, or barbecue or hang out at the pool or beach saying goodbye to summer, let’s remember how we got here, and who’s sweat built this country - the common sweat of every generation of American worker that melded together the fabric making our way of life possible.  

Again, the US Dept. of Labor web site says it all:

“The vital force of labor added materially to the highest standard of living and the greatest production the world has ever known and has brought us closer to the realization of our traditional ideals of economic and political democracy. It is appropriate, therefore, that the nation pay tribute on Labor Day to the creator of so much of the nation's strength, freedom, and leadership — the American worker.”