In Honor of the Holiday-Formerly-Known-As-Labor Day

Once upon a time, everyone worked every day, as hard as they could, and if they were lucky and the wind didn't blow their topsoil away or a flood didn't wash their seed out of the ground or hail didn't flatten their crops a few days before harvest, everyone ate. Not well, perhaps, and all that work stunted their growth and gave them arthritis before they were forty, but everyone ate. This was called the agrarian system, and it worked best for the priests and the chiefs and pretty well for the men, and rather abysmally for the women and children.

Over time, people managed to put up surpluses from their crops and started trading them with each other, and eventually, commerce was born. Some people stayed out of the fields entirely and made pots and barrels, carts and plows, cloth and bread. Everyone still worked pretty much as hard as they could every day, but by then, a religion had been born that said everyone had to take one day a week off, so they did. Mostly, at least. They still had to keep the fires going and clean the chamber pots and cows don't recognize Sunday, so they had to be milked. But the load was lighter on Sunday. This was called craft capitalism, and it worked best for the lords and priests and pretty well for the men, and rather poorly for the women and children, but it was better than the agrarian system.

After a few hundred years of this, some people invented a whole bunch of things to take the drudgery out of work - the cotton gin, spinning jenny, knitting machine, steam engine, jacquard loom. Thus was the industrial age born. Once again, everyone had to work as hard as they could and if they were lucky and the factory didn't close down and the owners didn't cut wages, and the government didn't raise the price of grain to discourage imports then everyone ate. Not well, perhaps, and all that work stunted their growth and killed one child in six before age sixteen, and half of all adults were seriously maimed or killed at some point in their lives, but they ate. This was called the Industrial Revolution and it worked best for the factory owners and the priests and pretty well for the men in management, but pretty awfully for women and children and the environment and the social fabric. But people said it was progress, and better than being stuck out in the country and so it continued.

After about a century of this, some people got sick and tired of seeing their loved ones broken in coal crushers and rendered in lard vats and burned to death because the factory chained the doors shut to prevent theft and so they organized themselves together and stood outside the factory gates and protested for better conditions. Sometimes the factory owners saw the sense in what these unions wanted and fostered a partnership between labor and management, but usually, they just called the cops and hired new people. Usually people died in strikes. But slowly, so slowly that the change can only be seen from the future, these terribly courageous people achieved safe workplaces and a fair, minimum wage, health insurance and workers’ compensation injuries, a forty-hour week and overtime. They achieved something close to pay equity between the sexes and prevented children from working. They got the Federal government to declare a single day at the end of summer Labor Day, so that working people could enjoy a beautiful summer day off with their families and friends and be rewarded for being the backbone of the American Economy. Everything was closed on this day to give everyone a day off. This, we call the Golden Age of Labor. It worked best for the common people, and it wasn't excessively expensive for the corporations and the bosses, and even women and children got something close to a fair shake, though not entirely. It really was better than being stuck out in the country and scratching for a living.

After about fifty years of this, people decided that those unions weren’t out to prevent their loved ones from getting crushed to death or burnt and didn’t really want safe working conditions and health care. Unions were actually Commie tools out to destroy everything that was good and decent about America and all unions did was take your money and give it to baby-killing politicians and give your jobs to illegal immigrants or welfare cheats or just negotiate you right out of a job. The bosses and corporations had never really liked the unions anyway, so they started pushing anti-union propaganda. They gave employees new titles and made them management, stopped paying them over time, and forced those employees they couldn't make management to work off the clock or without breaks. Stores started staying open on holidays, and that one, beautiful day a year when everyone was off and they celebrated the fact that we were beholden to our workers became a day when only middle management was off, and if you were really labor, you had to work. Wages fell in the service sector, until a son with more education than his father still had a worse job and lower wages than his father had had thirty years before.

The American Dream of improving the lot of each generation turned into the American nightmare where no one can get ahead and there are no protections. People started dying because the government couldn't inspect all of the meat anymore, millions had to use community social services because they can't afford health insurance on the poverty line wages available with most jobs. The minimum wage meant workers were eligible for food stamps and rent assistance, if they could get them. This was the Post-Industrial Age of Corporate Serfdom, and it was good for the Corporations and their Neo-conservative political lapdogs and the priests that have forgotten Jesus' messages about peace and protection for the weak. It wasn’t good for women, children, the environment, minorities, communities or just about anyone.

The Holiday-Formerly-Known-As-Labor Day was about the solidarity of the working class and our achievements as a collective force in getting a living wage, reasonable working hours, sick time, vacation time, health care, safe working conditions, and enforcement for the whole package. Labor Day was the day that no one worked to celebrate the backbone of the American Economy. Today, the only people who are off are students and people working in education (because they still have a strong union), middle management and professionals, and government employees. Those people who make up the backbone of our labor force - retail, service, manufacturing and medical - are at work, probably a little disgruntled and frustrated at missing the picnics and the parties.

Our ancestors would be appalled at how easily we've given up the gains they fought for. Their ghosts look over us and are disgusted at our complacency; they they know, too, that they have been forgotten.

So, since we have forgotten, we might as well change the name of the Holiday-Formerly-Known-As-Labor Day to Middle Management Day, Retail Sales Day, or Corporate Perk Day. Because it has nothing to do with real Labor at all anymore.


Politicat