Some people think of Labor Day as the "end of Summer" holiday. As a kid, I din't understand the significance of the labor movement. Some people still don't.
There was a guy on a local page complaining that the trash wasn't going to be picked up on Monday because "they are celebrating their holiday" I wanted to say something to him, but sometimes it's better to let sleeping dogs lie on those community pages, but here is what I SHOULD have said:
Look, buddy, Labor Day celebrates how the labor movement improved working conditions for ALL of us in this Country. Labor Unions helped create weekends off, the 8-hour work day, child labor laws, workers compensation, just to name a few. It helped move forward the idea of a minimum wage- a living wage.
I benefit from my Union job, sure, but everyone benefits from the work those early Labor Unions did to improve working conditions in this country.
So as the final Cookout of the summer wound to a close in yesterdays sunset, I wonder how many people raised a glass to the struggles of Labor and celebrated to working class on the first Monday in September?
When I was a kid, Labor Day was a day of pain and distress and sorrow, as it meant early to bed as school invariably started the next day.
ReplyDeleteANd in fashion arenas, my mother and my Aunt Grace has an inviolate rule that Labor Day was the ABSOLUTE last day white shoes and purses were used, then put away until the following Memorial Day (back then, on May 30, not a moveable feast) Anyone who has ever watched Kathleen Turner beat Patty Hearst to death in a phone booth in John Waters' "Serial Mom" knows the importance of this!
Seriously, it wasn't until my early 20's when I got a full time job with the County Library that I began to see what my Union did for me - raises, holidays, etc. When I began to work for the City Library I became more involved with my Union and really got to see what was going on. True, I sometimes felt the UNion went too far in protecting employees who should have been long gone, but they also came to bat in a very real and urgent way for me twice, when I had "issues" with a supervisor who shall remain nameless, and my job with on the line.
So, everything Robyn says is true.
So, raise a glass to the Labor movement, the working folk, and for fun, watch the "The Pajama Game," where all those pajama factory workers want is a 7 and a half cent raise! And Doris Day goes to bat for them!
Tom