Labor Day Musings

The United States of America is the richest nation in the history of earth, and this wealth has been primarily fabricated by the toil of human beings. That’s what Labor Day is theoretically about: celebrating the centrality of the individual human worker in building something greater than themselves.

In the aftermath of World War II, the tacit (and not-so-tacit) unity of capital and labor combined to create amazing wealth, but of course it wasn’t enough for capital. I grew up in a union town - a deeply struggling union town - but of course nobody was going to explain what was going on using Marxist theory or anything of the sort. If a factory closed, it was simply a tragedy. Eventually, even when people started to get a little hipper to exactly why factories were closing - I associate this with Ross Perot talking about the “giant sucking sound” in 1992 to describe factories moving to Mexico - I remember organized labor being blamed for factories closing, and not just by the greediest capitalists.

I see a through line over the course of my life of workers and their work being fundamentally disrespected.

I’ve been thinking lately about how siloed people are. I plan to write more about this soon as regards culture and politics, but it occurs to me how very much it applies to labor as well. I think that collectively we have shockingly little appreciation for the work everybody else does. I’m not just talking about digging in a la Studs Terkel’s Working, I’m actually talking about something more superficial. We used to have stronger collective ties with others through our nominal commercial relationships, by which I mean that it used to be a lot more likely that we knew our mail carrier by name, that we had a friendly rapport with our insurance agent, that we would see the same tellers at the bank and exchange the kinds of pleasantries that people extent when they at least recognize each other. Today, we badly want to get in and out of the grocery store as soon as possible, the vast majority of us don’t receive newspaper delivery… the collective societal valuation of these basic community ties just isn’t there. And, yes, you better believe, this is part of what people are talking about when they lament “how things used to be”. This is a huge part of what makes people so susceptible to political exploitation.

So on this Labor Day, consider this a call to acknowledge and respect workers and their work. Be kinder to service providers, say hello to people you recognize at places you frequent, treat people how you’d like to be treated if you were in their shoes. SAY THANK YOU to your cashiers, even if something frustrated you, because these people are providing a service to you and not being paid all that well for it and they’re just trying to get by just like we all are.

Happy Labor Day to workers everywhere!