On Labor Day

Across the various platforms I've been blogging on for the past few years, I never wrote on Labor Day. I was either too consumed with work, too consumed with school, or in this case both. However, I figured I would take time out from work (yes I am at work right now) to make a small post about Labor Day.

This won't be about Paul Krugman's latest lament about the American right or Eric Cantor's tweet insinuating that Labor Day is about business owners and not about the workers. What I will discuss is labor then and labor now.

Labor Day's genesis began in earnest with a proposal by either the Central Labor Union or the American Federation Labor (depending on your desired source). While 30 states had already begun to commemorate Labor Day by 1894, it was until that year when the US Congress made Labor Day a federal holiday -- a blatant political conciliatory move after the federal government under President Grover Cleveland intervened in the Pullman Strike. 

The Industrial Revolution brought a new degree of social and economic issues (which is always going to be a reality with any economic system) that arose from increased urbanization and a desire by business owners to produce as much as they can by any means necessary, workers well-being be damned. Unsurprisingly, laborers began to mobilize against poor working conditions through strikes and/or unionization, which employers sought to do anything and everything to avert. Here in the States, it lead to three of the more infamous incidents of labor violence in the late 19th century -- the Homestead Strike, the Haymarket Riot, and the Pullman Strike.

Labor unions reached their peak membership in the 1950s, but reports of corruption, stricter union laws, the shift to a service economy, the shift from production to finance being the benchmark of corporate economic success, and increased globalization have all contributed, in some form another, to a decline in union membership that has persisted since 1960. While nearly a third of public sector employees are members of unions, less than ten percent of workers in the private sector are members of a union. Furthermore, these days, only half of Americans support organized labor.

However, despite the changes over time, contemporary employees and employers should be grateful for the changes ushered in by the labor movement. Employees can be grateful for vastly improved working conditions, from reasonable hours to benefits; employers can be grateful to advocates of the labor movement because it forced them to innovate and become more efficient at production. Whether that innovation actually benefits workers is left to the eye of the beholder -- we can certainly argue either way.

I know that I have rambled, but I wanted to shove history into this post because it is far too important, especially when thought in conjunction with the issues faced today: a shrinking world where the labor pool has no borders, slowing the growth of wages and earnings in the hotly competitive secondary and tertiary sectors of the global economy; the aforementioned shift from production to financial positioning and capital structure that creates a new round of agency concerns and conflicts between management, stockholders, bondholders, and employees; and increased automation that continues to, little by little, erode the position of everyday workers that have a lot of their tasks being replaced by electronic processes. Not to mention, Labor Day is emerging as the latest holiday that shifted from mere observance to yet another major retail holiday -- me currently being here at the dealership is an example of it.

But here's the bottom line: labor back then is not too different than labor now, because as long as this is a predominantly capitalist system, little will change. Business owners and managers will always seek to meet and exceed purported benchmarks and indeed, it is often the white collar and blue collar workers that are the most affected by its consequences, whether it is being forced to work more or less hours, taking on more responsibilities, or unfortunately losing their jobs. However, it is these workers that make our world function and it is not just limited to employees of companies; this includes managers, mom and pop shops, and the self-employed. 

Labor day shouldn't be about a narrative about "the worker versus the man", it should be about positive collaboration and cooperation between workers and employers, businesses and suppliers, and businesses and customers that make for a better business. (Redundant, yes, but I would imagine you'd get my point.)