Adapted from my Labor Day Instagram post.
Today is Labor Day. I asked my high school students on Friday what it means to them. Most didn’t know the origins of why we celebrate this day. I reassured them that many American adults don’t know or don’t remember.
Today is more than end of summer BBQs. It’s a celebration of all the workers in our spheres. A recognition, by our federal government (at least some parts of it at some times) that all have a right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness (though I would have urged Jefferson to change “happiness” to “contentment”). And that these rights extend to the workplace.
America is a work in progress. It is a very messy practice, elegiac at times, horrific at others. Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle is over a hundred years old and is about the awful exploitation of Eastern European immigrants in Chicago’s meat packing plants (or maybe plantations are a better name). His book contributed to dramatic change toward labor reforms and workers’ rights such that, by the mid 20th century, jobs in the meat packing industry were coveted work that provided a decent living and career.
Yet today, corporate focus over recent decades solely upon shareholders (not stakeholders) and quarterly returns have re-created many similar harsh and even cruel conditions for our 21st century immigrants. Look no farther than the conditions in the Mississippi poultry processing plants; this prior to the insane and absurd raids that rounded up 680 workers earlier this summer, separating many families. These people are willing to do work many citizens are unwilling to put up with, simply because of their immigrant status; somehow it’s still better than that from which they fled.
The irony is profound.
Today, when you get your Starbucks food and drink, when you shop at Costco, when you eat out at McDonald’s, when you use Uber, and/or when you have something delivered today by an Amazon driver, consider giving these human beings an acknowledgment of appreciation and support.
I myself am not that many generations removed from my own turn of the century immigrant families (referred to by the established classes as stupid Polacks and blockhead Swedes).
I cannot forget that almost all of us arrived at this land by emigration from places in dire straights. I will not forget.
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