Happy defanged Labor Day

Ah yes, the first Monday in September. The end of summer, the start of the school year and campaign season, and (who's really counting?) "labor" day--a day so stripped of its historical significance and dissociated from its proletarian roots that you're hard pressed to find a U.S. citizen able to distinguish it from Veteran's Day or Memorial Day. According to a Rasmussen poll,

Thirty-eight percent (38%) say they take the day to celebrate the contributions of society's labor force and 45% say they use the day to mark the unofficial end of summer. Sixteen percent (16%) aren't sure what they celebrate on Labor Day.

And of course today isn't recognized outside the U.S., because ironically, the original Labor Day--International Worker's Day—established in this country to commemorate the Chicago Haymarket Massacre and the struggle for an 8 hour work day, was celebrated worldwide already on May 1^st. What gives?

The holiday's burgeoning popularity led Congress, in 1894, to establish "Labor Day" in September to honor American workers -- a holiday established, not by ordinary workers themselves as an expression of empowerment, but by big business and their Congressional apologists, as a way to try to dictate what workers were and weren't allowed to celebrate.

One day belonged to the workers; the other 365 days belonged to big business, and we were to work as many hours of those days as business pleased.

May Day was a day won by workers, begrudgingly conceded by the government, only to be rendered an empty gesture towards those deserving far greater recognition for their part in the struggle for dignity and protection in the workplace.

Nelson Lichtenstein, a labor historian at UCSB and the go-to guy on the Walmartization of the global economy, explained how this year, the Great American Boycott on May Day reclaimed the holiday:

…Demonstrations and boycotts return the American protest tradition to its turn-of-the-20^th-century ethnic proletarian origins—a time when, in the United States as well as in much of Europe, the quest for citizenship and equal rights was inherent in the fight for higher wages, stronger unions, and more political power for the working class.

And it looks like more actions like the marches on May 1^st are scheduled around the country in the coming week.

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Today, only 12.5% of the workforce is unionized, and the same poll conducted on the public recognition of Labor Day concluded that (try to resist the urge to vomit)

More Americans have a favorable opinion of retail giant Walmart (69%) than Labor Unions (58%).

Those are some pretty despicable numbers. But how representative are they? Do they really indicate the decline in union support that corporate America keeps trumpeting? Public opinion data from a nationwide survey by respected pollster Peter Hart in 2005 found 53 percent of nonunion workers - that's more than 50 million people - want to join a union, if given the choice.

David Sirota of the SF Chronicle says “Bashing organized labor is a Republican pathology, to the point where unions are referenced with terms reserved for military targets." He cites an article headlined "GOP readies for War With Big Labor.”

I had a pretty looney econ professor who used the classroom as a platform for his tirades against unions, accusing them of single-handedly upending the purported natural stability of the free market, and of representing only a cabal of the selfish elite workers out to profit at the expense of unorganized lower income labor. Corporations, on the other hand, were blameless. Naturally.

Daraka Larimore-Hall is an organizer and grad student at UCSB. He’s got a thing or two to say about “big labor.”

Corporations outspend unions 24 to 1 on political donations, and yet they are often discussed as if they are identical threats to the democratic system. Not only do employers have more power in the economy and in the workplace, they have more power in the political process: more money to give, more leverage over elected officials, more access to media.

…And let’s not kid ourselves: there is a moral distance between corporations, which are driven by profit, and democratic organizations which represent millions of people at the bottom of the economic ladder. All things are not equal when they chose to intervene in politics. One does so for the benefit of the many, the other for the benefit of the few. It’s that simple.

A couple years back, Daraka gave a talk at a Campus Dems meeting, where he delivered a call to action along with the most convincing argument I’d heard on the direct correlation between the success of the Democratic party and the strength of union organizing:

It is not an accident that as unions have waned, so has the “traditional” Democratic Party. We can wring our hands and talk about using the internet to "take back America", or we can understand that that fight happens in workplaces and neighborhoods across the United States. It is in organizing drives, Living Wage struggles, house meetings and city council elections from Seattle to Miami. Everywhere, labor is a part of those battles. Unions are far more than a national ATM machine for tepid, “liberal” candidates. Labor is the heart and soul of our progressive future.

On this day (more like every day), labor in California deserves to be commended for a number of victories over the past year, with voters’ rejection of Prop 75, the Living Wage campaign’s success in Santa Barbara, coalition building for immigrant and labor rights around May Day mobilizations, and we can all thank a union-led movement for a successful campaign to pass recent legislation boosting the state minimum wage to $8 by 2008. But given the record of expanding corporate influence and systematic labor suppression in recent decades, there’s clearly still a lot standing in the way of progressive labor policies, and a great deal of work to be done—just not on oh-so-generous day off, right?