It has been some time since Labor Day seemed so significant. The annual holiday in celebration of the American worker this year arrives with:
• Continuing debate over the minimum wage, and a burgeoning movement that has arbitrarily landed upon $15 an hour as an equitable amount. What does this have to do with Labor Day? Well, many working people in this country are barely scraping by. The Federal Reserve reports that 47 percent of Americans say they could not afford an unexpected $400 expense.
• Increased attention upon the nation’s wealth inequity. Despite technology-fueled productivity gains over the past two decades, wages for many workers have stagnated. According to research from the University of California, during the economic recovery of 2009-12, 95 percent of all income gains in the United States were accrued by the top 1 percent of earners.
• Stories about poor working conditions at some of the nation’s largest and most prominent companies. Wal-Mart has infamously held holiday food drives for employees in recent years, apparently oblivious to the fact that one way to assist workers is to pay them adequate wages. And last month, the New York Times published an expos? of Amazon.com, outlining a workplace culture that company founder and CEO Jeff Bezos said sounded “soulless” and “dystopian.”
As the St. Louis Post-Dispatch wrote editorially: “Indeed, in today’s economy, the virtues of collective action by organized workers barely register. The triumph of the Reagan Revolution is that ‘every man for himself’ is rarely questioned. ‘Liberty’ is too often conflated with selfishness.”
This is having an increasingly negative impact upon the status of the American worker. According to a study published earlier this year by Pew Charitable Trusts, all 50 states saw a shrinking percentage of middle-class families (those making between 67 percent and 200 percent of a state’s median income) from 2000 to 2013. As CBS News wrote: “The eroding middle class poses a serious challenge to the nation’s economic growth, given that households with midrange incomes fuel spending on everything from cars to housing. Yet during the past 15 years, more of those middle-income families have slipped out of the sweet spot of the American economy, thanks to a confluence of negative trends such as declining or stagnant wages and a growing income gap.”
Some small gains have been seen during 2015, but even one of the most visible of those pointed out the depth of the problem. Wal-Mart and McDonald’s increased wages for some low-paid workers, after advocates made an issue of the fact that full-time minimum-wage workers still qualify for public assistance. In other words, taxpayers are subsidizing workers at some of the nation’s largest and wealthiest corporations.
Labor Day was born in the United States during the 1880s, when unions began to develop prominence. Oregon, in 1887, was the first state to create a holiday celebrating workers, and President Grover Cleveland signed it into law as a federal observation in 1894. Throughout the 20th century, the efforts of the American worker gave the United States the world’s strongest economy and built a sturdy middle class that was the backbone of the most powerful nation on earth.
American workers remain worthy of celebration. We just hope they have a little more to celebrate in the near future.
