See other articles by Stephen Lendman:
The War
on Working Americans - Part I •
The
War on Working Americans - Part II •
Also see below:
Labor Day's Significance Gets Overlooked •
Labor Day Hypocrisy
By Stephen Lendman
t r u t h o u t | Perspective
Monday 03 September 2007
Labor Day has been commemorated on the
first Monday in September each year since the first one was
celebrated in New York in 1882. Around the world outside the US,
socialist and labor movements are observed on May 1 to recognize
organized labor's social and economic achievements and the workers
in them. This day gets scant attention in the US, but where it's
prominent it's common to remember the Haymarket Riot of May 4,
1886, in Chicago. It followed the city's May 1 general strike for
an eight-hour day that led to violence breaking out on the Fourth.
Labor Day became a national federal
holiday when Congress passed legislation for it in June 1894 at a
time when working people had few rights, management had the upper
hand, only wanted to exploit workers for profit, and got away with
it. It took many painful years of organizing, taking to the
streets, going on strike, holding boycotts, battling police and
National Guard forces, and paying with their blood and lives
before real gains were won. They got an eight-hour day, a living
wage, on-the-job benefits and the pinnacle of labor's triumph in
the 1930s with the passage of the landmark Wagner Act establishing
the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB). It guaranteed labor the
right to bargain collectively on equal terms with management for
the first time ever.
All of it was won [by action at] the
grass-roots level. Management gave nothing until forced to, and
neither did government. It always sides with business, never
yielding a thing unless threatened with disruptive work stoppages
or possible insurrection. All this is in a democracy that claims
to be a government of the people, by the people and for the people
- most of whom are ordinary working-class ones.
Since a worried Congress passed the
1935 Wagner Act during the Great Depression, the state of
organized labor declined, especially post-WW II. The decline
accelerated precipitously during the Reagan years under an
administration openly hostile to worker rights in its one-sided
support for management. It continued unabated under Republican and
Democratic administrations, and today stands at a
multi-generational low.
Under George Bush, conditions got much
worse. Since coming into office in 2001, he sided with management
openly on policies to strip workers of their right to organize and
bargain for a living wage and essential benefits. He hired
anti-union officials, denied millions overtime pay, cut pay raises
for 1.8 million federal workers - claiming a "national
emergency" - and schemed to end Social Security as we know it
by plotting (unsuccessfully so far) to let Wall Street sharks take
it over.
Since labor's ascendency decades
earlier, corporate America, in league with government, shamelessly
denigrated unions and the rights of working people in unions. In
1958, 34.7 percent of the work force was unionized, but now the
figure is around 12 percent overall, with only 7.4 percent in the
private sector - the lowest it's been in seven decades.
Even worse, most jobs are low-pay
service sector positions because the nation's manufacturing base
and many higher-paying jobs in finance and technology have been
offshored to low-wage developing nations. Workers there can be
hired for a fraction of the pay scales here, or as virtual serfs
at below-poverty wages as low as $2 a day or less and with no
benefits. Companies fill legions of sweatshop factory jobs in
countries prohibiting unions and fair worker standards, [piling]
Wal-Mart's "Always low prices" on the backs of
ruthlessly exploited working people.
Nonetheless, on the first Monday each
September, this nation "remembers" working Americans
with a federally mandated holiday in their "honor."
Who's celebrating, when it's disingenuously commemorated at a time
worker rights are threatened, ignored, forgotten and uncared about
by heartless governments beholden to capital. They scorn working
people who are no longer as deceived with meaningless bread and
circus droppings at the expense of what they need most: good jobs
at good pay, essential benefits, job security and a government on
their side doing what counts most - supporting their rights with
worker-friendly legislation.
Workers are reminded every day that
backing like that is off the table by governments shamelessly
mocking their day. It's commemorated in name only by a nation
beholden to capital, the corporate giants controlling it, and the
best democracy their money can buy for them alone.
Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and
can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net. Also visit his
blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com and listen to "The Steve
Lendman News and Information Hour" on TheMicroEffect.com
Saturdays at noon US Central Time.
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