Why Do We Have Today Off?

If you’re reading this on the day that it has been posted online, it’s a Monday and you don’t have classes, and that’s awesome. Now let’s talk about why this long weekend exists.

You probably know that it’s Labor Day, you know that you get a day off, and you know that today is supposed to be a day to relax, and to appreciate the hard work that the workers of this country have done to make it the great place that it is. What you may not know is that Labor Day was started by the first influential union, the Central Labor Union, in the late 19th century as a parade to showcase “the strength and esprit de corps of the trade and labor organizations.”

This Labor Day, however, you’re more likely to see workers in the service and retail industries working extra shifts than you are to see something on the initial grand scale that was envisioned for the holiday. This has been made necessary by the many sales and promotions that have become a part of how our nation celebrates this day off— the focus changing from celebrating labor to just consuming more of it.

So, why the change?

Why did we go from parades glorifying the strength of labor and celebrating the brotherhood of unions to family cookouts, while a large percentage of low income workers are still working away at their jobs?

When unions were in their prime, this wasn’t the case. In the 1930s and 1940s each big city had huge parades with each union out in full force, supported by the rest of the community coming out to watch the spectacle. As unions have been cut down over time, America as a populace has stopped showing this level of respect to the people who work day in and day out to keep this country running. Almost a quarter of the American workforce is now in the retail and service industries, two groups who rather than get Labor Day off, actually end up working more on this day.

As labor membership continues to decline, we have to look at the motivations behind the so-called “right to work” legislation that has been passed by half the states in the Union. It’s not that this legislation keeps people from being forced to join unions—they never were in that position anyways. All this legislation accomplishes is that non-union workers gain the same benefits, namely unions defending them if the need arises, without having any of the costs, such as union dues. It’s simple to see that given the opportunity to gain something and pay for it, or gain that same good at no cost, many people will choose to get the good for free. Therefore, workers don’t join unions, resulting in the depletion of union funding because of the lack of membership dues. Without these dues, unions are not able to protect their members as efficiently, and this is reflected in the pay scales in states with right to work legislation. After controlling for all other labor characteristics and behaviors, an Economic Policy Institute study found that right to work states had average wages that were 3.2 percent lower than in non-right to work states. In addition, workers in right to work states were less likely to have benefits such as health insurance and paid or even unpaid leave.

It’s easy to argue that unions are up to no good. Many governors have won elections solely on the promise of introducing right to work laws that are supposedly designed to break the evil unions’ stranglehold on the labor market. But looking at the history of organized labor, many things we’ve come to take for granted were won by those very same labor unions with, and I mean this quite literally, blood, sweat, and tears. We can thank them for the weekend, child labor laws, the eight hour work day, paid overtime, workplace safety, anti-discrimination acts, and the right to earn a minimum wage, all things that make jobs what they are today instead of what they were in the industrial America of the 1800s.

So, what should we do?

Enjoy your day off, eat good food, and see your friends and family. But also take a few minutes to reflect on why you aren’t in class, and think about the fact that a lot of other people don’t have today off. That they’re working today, on this day celebrating labor, because they have no choice. Because they don’t have the guarantee for this day off, because they aren’t unionized or their union is no longer strong enough to have bargained for them on this. Think about what has changed from when this holiday was created, to how it is celebrated now.

Happy Labor Day.

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