Most of the time, our culture and governments recognize and cater to the wealthy and powerful capital class. But on one day each year, we recognize and honor the workers and the contributions that the workers’ movement made to labor laws that protect all of us. On this Labor Day, let’s take a moment to reflect and remember those who fought for the rights of all workers, even at the expense of their own lives. We would have no safety protections, no minimum wages, no weekends or vacations, and no hope of escape without them.
Workers drive the economy that we have: making/providing and buying the goods and services that we all need, and paying the taxes that fund our schools, infrastructure, emergency services, and other social programs. Our contributions are worth far more to current society than the powers-that-be would have us think.
While we urgently need to get off the capitalist and consumer systems that are destroying people and planet (a transition to eco-socialism being a necessity), we can still honor the people bound to this system for their daily needs and thank them for their sacrifices while we fight for a better future for all of us.
The Democratic and Republican Parties are working hard to keep us from getting living wages, access to affordable public healthcare, appropriate public transit, and anything that benefits workers and communities over corporations. But it has never been them who won the things we value; it has always been the affected individuals ourselves. We must carry on the fight despite political parties’ responses.
We need living wages now for all workers (no carveouts for different types of workers like prisoners, agricultural workers, or youth) and full protections for those workers for safety, against discrimination, for job security, etc.
We need to recognize that the workers are the job creators, not the CEOs. And we need to find more ways to move away from top-down structures where the work is done at the bottom but the profits flow to the top. Workers have the power of numbers to stop supporting capitalism and start supporting themselves and their communities, but we also need local, state, and federal governments that will remove corporate welfare and bureaucratic roadblocks and channel their efforts into helping the workers keep the fruits of their own labor instead.
Outside of this, a Universal Basic Income would go the final distance toward providing short- and long-term security and stability for individuals and for communities. As automation takes over, there is no way we will ever have enough fulfilling and sustaining jobs for everyone.
It is time to rethink the idea of “work” itself, and the need to do work for corporations. There is enough work to be done outside of that structure to keep everyone satisfied. Art, music, poetry, community-building, parenting; all these things, and more, have value to the world that rises above mere money. We don’t actually have to while away our lives in depressing, humiliating, pointless jobs, but we can choose jobs or work that fulfill us and meet our own goals and needs. The wealthy and powerful want you to think this isn’t true so that you’ll keep doing what they want – keep giving them more profit and power and not rise up against the system.
It’s up to us to start doing something different. All we have to do is choose it.
Talk to your co-workers. Organize. Speak out. Support one another. And enjoy your well-deserved day off with your loved ones.