Thank unions for weekends

Labor Day is just past, and if you’re like most folks, this day officially means the end of summer and back to school.
But would you believe this particular three-day weekend is really symbolic of all weekends?

No, I don’t mean the barbeque factor (though grilling outside is nice), I mean where Labor Day really came from.

I know, I know, extolling the virtues and origins of a given holiday is so school-marmish, but in this case it’s particularly relevant from a timing standpoint.

Labor Day is the symbolic fruit of some hard-won battles we generally take for granted, the concept of weekends being one of them.

You see, once upon a time, workers only got one day a week off, Sunday, and sometimes not even that. Work days were much longer than eight hours for the average worker. Unemployment compensation, disability pay and secure pensions were unheard of. Workers rights were unheard of.

Organization of workers eventually led to unionization. Unions forced labor negotiation with companies, which created the concept of the “weekend” which eventually led to the norm of Saturdays off in addition Sunday for churchgoing. (What the Jewish folks did before this, I have no idea. I can only imagine their religious observance put them at an even further disadvantage in a fairly intolerant world.)

Now, if you’re like many if not most people in America these days, you’re probably saying “So what? I work weekends too. I work two and even three jobs sometimes. And what’s more, my health care benefits have begun to suck big time, if I can even afford them anymore. So I don’t see what the big deal about some guys working a whole mess of hours about a hundred years ago is all about. Workers in America still have it good compared to what some of those folks in Third World Nations deal with.”

Well, that leads me directly to my point.

If you are working more, and it seems like you’re getting less, you probably are, unless you happen to be in the top income brackets.

You see, while Republicans in the state and federal legislatures continue to drag raising the minimum wage out until they can figure out how to take credit for a process they’ve literally been impeding for years, your actual buying power fell while the top one-fifth took home more money—a lot more. As soldiers have made the ultimate sacrifice for our nation, the average army private earns $25,000 per year while the average defense CEO makes $7.7 million. Oil barons average $32.7 million in compensation, 518 times more than the average oil worker.

And even if you make exactly what you did two years ago, you’ve still lost 8 percent, with an average rate of inflation of 4 percent per year.

Steven Greenhouse and David Leonhardt wrote recently in the New York Times “wages and salaries now make up the lowest share of the nation’s gross domestic product since the government began recording the data in 1947, while corporate profits have climbed to their highest share since the 1960s.” They go on to say the median hourly wage since 2003 —adjusted for inflation—has declined two percent since 2003 while productivity “has risen steadily over the same period.”

What produced weekends and even the concept of a minimum wage in the first place? The collective bargaining strategies of unionization and progressive movements and legislation, something which has fast been going out the window due to the corporate efforts to vilify and marginalize unionization.

“Unions are communist,” so goes the message.

But are things like the minimum wage, child labor laws, collective bargaining rights, Social Security, Medicare, secure pensions, Head Start politically, radically left-wing? Or are they the marks of a civilized society? Policies and ideas that help make the economy work for those who help create this country’s wealth seem only fair.

In a perfect world, universal health care and a living wage, trade and industrial policies that create jobs and restore workers’ rights, and rebuilding our ravaged pension system would be immediate priorities. But history has shown that it will take another popular movement to fulfill America’s promise for the majority of Americans, not just the richest 20 percent.

(Originally published in The Easton News, September 7, 2006)