Labor Day: We must never forget what it means

“I would rather have a big burden and a strong back, than a weak back and a caddy to carry life's luggage.”
Elbert Hubbard

It’s Labor Day so we’ll keep this short…but we’d all do well to remember what this day is meant to recognize and remember. And no, it’s not just a chance for one last summer blowout before school starts again, or work once more occupies our total focus.

The Labor Day holiday was established to acknowledge the integral part that the labor movement played in building…and continues to play in maintaining…the country that we live in today. Without the labor movement, there’d be no middle class…whether here in America, or in Canada, or anywhere in the Western world.

For Americans, that applies whether you live in a union state, or in a right-to-work state. Without the impetus of the labor movement, make no mistake about it. Most of us would still be working in factories and mines and textile mills and poultry processing plants for huge companies that would also own the places where we live, and the stores where we’d be forced to buy all the things we need to exist.

The labor movement literally gave birth to the middle class and all the perks that come with that station in life. Many of the things that we take for granted today…such as decent wages, home ownership, a good education for us and our children, vacations, and retirement income… were impossible dreams for all but the wealthiest or the luckiest before the labor movement was born.

And these things weren’t given over willingly by the ownership class…not by a long shot. Just as surely as our ancestors fought and died in countless wars for what we are today as a country, they also fought and, in too many cases died, for what we have today as a middle class.

It’s no mere coincidence that the Bush II administration spent much of the past eight years trying to destroy the middle class. That’s what their benefactors…the ownership class…wanted them to do. They hate the labor movement because of the voice it gave to the people who work for them and were once subservient…and they want things to go back to the way they were before.

It’s also why the ownership class is desperately backing the fight to prevent meaningful Health Care Reform from becoming a reality…because that would take away more of their control over the rest of us. We’d all do well to remember that too!

"The labor movement means just this. It's the last noble protest of the American people against the power of incorporated wealth."
Wendell Phillips

SC