Labor Day is such a bittersweet holiday. Three-day weekend for almost all of America. Usually still nice weather, but with a hint of fall in the air. Baseball getting serious. Football starting up.
Yes, but, summer's almost over. Kids have to go back to school. Traffic's awful. Vacation houses getting closed up. Turning the page toward the end of another year.
But Labor Day is bittersweet for another reason: we don't have much respect for "labor" or "laborers" in America anymore.
My parents were both union members. My mother was a seamstress. She started working in the first of a long series of small manufacturing "shops" when she was 14, and immediately joined the ILGWU. When she died a few months short of her 89th birthday, she was still receiving retirement benefit checks.
My father was a Teamster. But, an odd one. My dad worked a lot of different kinds of jobs, but for the last 25 or so years of his life he worked in the cosmetics business, manufacturing cold creams, toilet water and other products for Charles of the Ritz and Estee Lauder. Those plants were Teamster shops, and eventually my dad was elected shop steward.
The union was important to them. It offered them security, a sense of protection against the kinds of disregard, violence and exploitation they'd seen as kids. But labor unions are popular anymore ("why do we still need unions?"), and neither is labor itself.
My mom finished the 8th grade; my dad, the 6th. They were the kinds of people Labor Day was established to commemorate: simple, hard-working. In today's starstruck, "everyone for themself," "too bad you made such a bad choice," America, these are not the kinds of people we're all that proud of. Their jobs are going away, mostly to China or India. Their values are passé. Their value to each of us is obscure. Why do we need their kind? What good are they?
Just for today, let's remember.
I remind myself that my inner and outer life
depends on the labors of other men,
living and dead,
and that I must exert myself
in order to give in the measure
as I have received
and am still receiving.
Albert Einstein
Technorati: Labor Day
I posted this as a comment to a discussion over on Connecticut Local Politics. It seemed like it fits fairly nicely with your post, so I'm copying it, as is, over here.
Genghis’ post did come across as a bit ‘anti-union’ to me as well and I can see why a lot of people were upset by it. However, I can also see how it might have been intended to be constructive criticism. Personally, I have never been represented by a union. Not a lot of information technologists are. However, I became very interested in the SEIU’s public membership organization, Purple Ocean and joined them.
Perhaps Genghis is right. Perhaps the labor movement isn’t especially visible here in Connecticut. Perhaps the labor movement is more like the levee’s of New Orleans. People paid little attention to them for too long. They were always there in the background. Unfortunately, they were neglected and when they were most needed they broke. I believe that we have fairer and better working conditions in the United States today because of the labor movement. I believe that we run great risks by neglecting the labor movement.
I wonder, how many of you think about looking for the union label? The number of union textile shops in the United States is decreasing as more and more of our clothes are made in sweat shops. We can and should do something about it. Recently, I’ve been promoting No Sweat!. They are an online merchant that sells union made apparel. Yes, I make a commission off on any sales from people following my link. However, I’ve been encouraging others to set up their own affiliate programs with links on their own pages.
To me, the labor movement is all of us who want to see clean, safe and fair working conditions for everyone. When we criticize the labor movement, we are criticizing ourselves. Sometimes, the criticism that we aren’t doing enough is well founded and we need to change what we are doing. Please, look for the union label.
Posted by: Aldon Hynes | September 07, 2005 at 04:25 PM