Over the years, Labor Day has been transformed in the mindset of Americans simply as a holiday of family picnics, weekend barbecues and the unofficial end of summer. For many of us in the labor movement, however, we know that the first Monday in September was created from the heroic acts and sacrifices of countless working men and women and signifies a fitting tribute to the social and economic achievements they have defended and secured on behalf of all American workers.
These are victories that many of us often take for granted in the workplace, such as the 40-hour work week, Social Security, Medicare, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration and living-wage ordinances that raise low-wage workers up from the poverty line and into the middle class.
Unfortunately many of the significant gains and civil liberties that these and past workers have achieved on our behalf are quickly being erased by our current U.S. president and his administration. For example, millions of American workers now stand to lose their overtime pay eligibility because of new changes to the Fair Labor Standards Act that allow employers to replace paid overtime with unpaid compensatory time off.
The attacks on workers just don’t stop there. In the past four years, OSHA safety laws have been weakened and in some cases even disbanded. The collective bargaining rights of more than 170,000 federal workers have been trampled on and stripped away on the pretext of national security. And companies that move jobs overseas have been rewarded with tax breaks while the average middle-class family is struggling to make ends meet.
In addition, workers are facing one of the toughest economic climates in recent history. More manufacturing and private-sector jobs have been lost in the past four years than under any other president since World War II. More than 14 million jobs are at risk of being exported. Nearly two-thirds of the jobs added since last year are in low-wage industries. Real wages of American workers are at record lows despite a two-thirds jump in worker productivity and a corporate profit growth rate of more than 62 percent. Plus 44 million Americans remain without health insurance, a number that continues to rise.
We cannot continue to work like this anymore.
This Labor Day, let’s do something that truly honors those workers who came before us. Let’s talk about the importance of workers’ rights at our holiday gatherings. Let’s talk about what has been taken away from us. Let’s talk about what this year’s elections mean to our pocketbooks. Let’s talk about how we are going to bring back good jobs, health care and strong communities to America.
These are basic issues that extend beyond union or non-union values. In the end, we are all workers, and we all deserve the same respect and dignity for our labor.
