Labor Day

[Kacey]

Labor Day: How it Came About; What it Means

"Labor Day differs in every essential way from the other holidays of the year in any country," said Samuel Gompers, founder and longtime president of the American Federation of Labor. "All other holidays are in a more or less degree connected with conflicts and battles of man's prowess over man, of strife and discord for greed and power, of glories achieved by one nation over another. Labor Day...is devoted to no man, living or dead, to no sect, race, or nation."​

Labor Day, the first Monday in September, is a creation of the labor movement and is dedicated to the social and economic achievements of American workers. It constitutes a yearly national tribute to the contributions workers have made to the strength, prosperity, and well-being of our country.​

Other explanations abound - who first proposed Labor Day, and why - nonetheless, the above explanation makes the most important point: that this is a day to celebrate what the American people have done for America, through their own labor.

 

[stickarts]

Thanks for the post!

 

[FearlessFreep]

Arbor Day?

Christmas?

 

[Gordon Nore]

Labour Day in Canada is celebrated on the same date as in the USA. Many countries celebrate the holiday in May.

My students tend to see it as a last holiday of the summer, as school in Canada begins on the Tuesday after Labour Day. Thus it's one holiday that doesn't really get the attention it deserves in the school system.

 

[theletch1]

Arbor Day?

Christmas?

Arbor day excludes loggers and Christmas excludes non-christians.

 

[Kacey]

Arbor Day?

Arbor Day isn't a federal holiday - it's a national observance. I believe the site I quoted was referring, specifically, to legal, federal holidays - there are quite a few holidays that are not related to religion or war

Christmas?

While Christmas is, today, widely celebrated as a secular holiday, - the source of the holiday is religious... and being Jewish myself, I don't observe Christmas except as a day I don't go to work. The same can be said for Thanksgiving, which is, predominately, not religious today - but the Puritans who first celebrated it were giving thanks to God - look at the Proclamation giving the holiday its status:

Whereas it is the duty of all Nations to acknowledge the providence of Almighty God, to obey his will, to be grateful for his benefits, and humbly to implore his protection and favor--and whereas both Houses of Congress have by their joint Committee requested me `to recommend to the People of the United States a day of public thanksgiving and prayer to be observed by acknowledging with grateful hearts the many signal favors of Almighty God especially by affording them an opportunity peaceably to establish a form of government for their safety and happiness.'

There's quite a bit more about God in the rest of the Proclamation at the site quoted above.

 

[Carol]

While y'all are celebrating Labor Day...I'm off to work

 

[BrandiJo]

While y'all are celebrating Labor Day...I'm off to work

Me too, went in at 10(sunday)PM got off at 7 am (Monday) and i go in at 10 again (monday) yay for time and a half tho

 

[exile]

I've come to associate Labor Day with a particular episode of the outstanding Canadian crime/politics/ethics drama series Da Vinci's Inquest (based on the struggles of Larry Campbell, the Vancouver coroner who became (probably the all-time best) Mayor of Vancouver), where Dominic Da Vinci, Campbell's fictional persona, goes with his mother to visit the grave of his father—a stonemason—in a large cemetary. The camera pans slowly up to the gravestone while they stand there in silence, and then up the stone itself, so that you can read the epitaph carved there:

These hands built this city.

Somehow that's the soul of Labor Day, for me.

 

[FearlessFreep]

Arbor Day isn't a federal holiday - it's a national observance. I believe the site I quoted was referring, specifically, to legal, federal holidays - there are quite a few holidays that are not related to religion or war ..

I guess the point is that you can make anything exclusive f you define the terms narrowly enough. Since the original quote said "Any country", I think a limitation of "federal holiday" is a bit arbitrary.

 

[Gordon Nore]

The camera pans slowly up to the gravestone while they stand there in silence, and then up the stone itself, so that you can read the epitaph carved there:

These hands built this city.

Somehow that's the soul of Labor Day, for me.

What a wonderful image. I worry the message behind Labour Day is lost in the polarizing discussion of unions and labour politics. In downtown Toronto, in one of the major subway interchanges, a large painting was put up when I was young -- it commemorated the lives of workers lost in building our vast subway system.

BTW: I haven't seen that episode of Da Vinci's Inquest; however, I'm glad the program is seen outside Canada. It's a very good drama about a colourful real-life figure.

 

[exile]

What a wonderful image.

I agree, Gordon—inexpressibly moving, I found it.

I worry the message behind Labour Day is lost in the polarizing discussion of unions and labour politics. In downtown Toronto, in one of the major subway interchanges, a large painting was put up when I was young -- it commemorated the lives of workers lost in building our vast subway system.

That kind of commemoration is an essential part of our collective memory, to remind people that things didn't just `get here', somehow. Blood, tears, toil and sweat went as much into building the city as into any war.

BTW: I haven't seen that episode of Da Vinci's Inquest; however, I'm glad the program is seen outside Canada. It's a very good drama about a colourful real-life figure.

It was shown here on BBC America—there are certain Canadian programs that they pick up, interestingly. We're waiting for the followup, Da Vinci's City Hall to be show here, but no luck, so far. My wife and I moved to Columbus from Vancouver, so the show has a particular fascination for us. The really extraordinary thing about it, I've always felt, was the nature of the dialogue—it's the most natural, seemingly unscripted conversation I've ever heard in a television program—you listen and you think, yes, that really is how people talk to each other. And I have to say, I really love the persona of Dominic Da Vinci. When he says, with that craggy intensity, I speak for the dead!, you know what he's saying, and you believe it.

 

[Carol]

What a wonderful image. I worry the message behind Labour Day is lost in the polarizing discussion of unions and labour politics.

I don't know if its politics so much as it is that it seems to be a bit outdated.

Pay a contractor $125/hour to do something a few times and the sheen of Labor Day doesn't seem quite as bright.

 

[shesulsa]

My husband is a union laborer. He works for a sand & gravel company on the *very* polluted Willamette River in downtown Portland.

The boathouse where he catches the tug which takes him to the island is skanky with used condoms, feminine products and other raw sewage.

If he is sick enough to stay home, he does not get paid for the day.

If someone else doesn't do their job, as foreman he has to do that job in addition to his own.

If a barge comes in 5 minutes before shift change, he has to stay 5-6 hours until it's done processing.

This week he will have to work 12-16 hours every day because he didn't work today.

This week, he will receive about 7 memos about fatalities or disabling injuries that have happened on the job at his company.

He has broken his jaw and crushed his hand at work - both accidents due to faulty machinery which STILL hasn't been fixed or replaced.

The men and women at his company work so hard, their sig others feel as though we've worked right along side them as they have no energy left for home life.

Every cent the laborers at his place of work have earned, they have truly earned with blood, sweat and tears only to have some white collar steal half the pension for the union; the price the criminal pays is reducing him to only one half-million dollar home and parol.

To me, Labor Day is the day they CAN'T force him to work because a barge came in or someone's sick, the belt broke or a laborer died. It is our day of refuge from The Man.

So how it started I haven't researched or honestly read the links you all have provided - I just know what it means in my life. Christmas is kinda like that too.