Labor Day—not much of a celebration to me

 

By SJ Otto

This Monday is Labor Day. It is the first holiday of the fall, season. It is a minor holiday. People do celebrate it. They go to the lake, in their boats. People go on picnics. I call this holiday a fake labor holiday. Originally May 1 was our labor holiday. But as Marxist regimes took up that day as THEIR labor holiday, leaders in the US needed a different labor holiday. So they picked on in the fall. While the day was originally supposed to honor the labor movement, it has been used to de-politicize the day. The majority of the US is anti-labor union, so that part of the holiday has been taken away.

So what will I do to honor this great day? Probably nothing. Since I‘m retired, I don’t work anymore. I can go to the park, lake, swimming pool, or river, or anywhere else I want to go to enjoy the outdoors. So there is really nothing special about this day.

I celebrate the labor movement on May Day, May 1, the original day for celebrating labor. And that day is political. Labor Day should be political. Workers should have the right to join a labor union if they want. That is a right that working people in the US have been loosing out on for many years. That is a major reason that working wages have lagged so far behind all the other economic indicators. The economy comes back and yet wages never go up. As labor unions lose their power, working people keep losing ground. That is what our corporate masters want. And that is what they are getting.

Until working people wake up and demand their rights, they will continue to lose ground and the power of their wages will disappear.

So I will ignore this day. I might drink a beer or glass of wine. I may go to Lake Afton or the Walnut River to swim. That is about it.

Here is my beer can and wine glass.

Labor Day and commercialism—What could be more American?

On Monday, I visited my favorite ducks and geese at the park next to the Zoo.