Cant Keep Quiet!

I’ve been tagged to tell what Labor Day means to me.

Labor Day has meant different things to me as I’ve gone through life.

When I was a kid, Labor Day meant the end of summer. It might not have been the calendar end of summer but it was the very last free weekday before school started. For a kid, that meant the end of summer.

I never learned the history behind Labor Day until after I graduated from college. For that matter, I was never told that the Labor in Labor Day meant the people who actually did the work for companies.

Sad, really, I was taught about the history and reason for President’s Day, Columbus Day, Veteran’s Day, Memorial Day, even Mother’s Day, but no one, not even my history teachers in high school bothered to teach me about Labor Day.

Now I’m a teacher but I no longer teach students. Instead I work with teachers to help them teach all their students. When I did teach my own class I did teach my students that Labor Day was a day to honor all those people who work for a living. I taught elementary students with learning disabilities. The history of Labor Day should be taught in high school. My students only needed to know what the holiday celebrated.

So what am I doing to celebrate Labor and those who work to make corporations, schools, etc successful? I’m taking an on-line course (two actually). If it’s not raining this evening, I’ll be putting new numbers up on my house.

As a union member and now knowing the history behind the holiday, I feel like I should be doing something more. But I also feel that the holiday doesn’t mean much any more. At least not in the way of celebrating Labor and what Labor has done for this country. No, I don’t mean the unions, by the way. I mean the workers. The people who do the Labor that keeps this country going.

If it weren’t a federal holiday most people wouldn’t have today off. Many people don’t have today off even though it is a federal holiday. The country has gone too far to the side of what is best for the corporations, forgetting the people who helped the corporations succeed. Just look at the economy. Corporate profits are up but wages haven’t increased in line with corporate profits. Plus what labor can buy with their wages has diminished due to increases in costs for just about everything (gas, medicine, housing, food, etc).

The following two cartoons illustrate the current situation well.