As regularly noted in this space this time of year, Samuel Gompers once pointed out something as striking as it is often unnoticed about Labor Day: This weekend’s holiday is “devoted to no man, living or dead, to no sect, race or nation.”
Christmas is the only religious holiday that became a National Holiday in the U.S. Memorial Day and Veterans Day importantly commemorate those who, respectively, died in or enlisted in military service to our country. New Year’s Day is self-explanatory (even without getting into the ancient rituals of winter celebrations). Other days are dedicated to specific people or events: the signing of the Declaration of Independence, Thanksgiving, Abraham Lincoln, George Washington, Christopher Columbus, Martin Luther King Jr. and, most recently, the end to slavery marked by Juneteenth.
But Labor Day is for all those who do something so fundamental we relentlessly overlook it: Work, day in and day out, for years and decades, with no expectation of special recognition.
Well, once a year, they get it anyway.
And while we may devoutly wish to forget the astounding impact of the COVID 19 pandemic, on Labor Day it particularly merits attention.
Remember when government started defining “essential workers?” Remember how long the list grew? Police, firefighters, medical workers, garbage collectors, grocery store employees (from stock buyers to shelf stockers to cashiers), food processing plant workers, farmers, truck drivers who deliver essential goods, transportation getting workers to those essential jobs, road maintenance workers who paved, patched and plowed the way for all those vehicles. Water, electricity and sewer sustainers, telephone/cell phone people, pharmaceutical companies and — yes — you may recall some people experiencing a shortage of toilet paper.
It became evident that listing “non-essential workers” would be easier.
But even after vaccines became available and the worst of the pandemic seemed to fade (more accurately, it shifted from a pandemic of unknown danger to a more manageable endemic requiring constant attention and vaccine updates), we kept learning how important the regular performance of unsung laborers really is, suddenly finding there weren’t enough people to fill all the “essential” positions in a recovering economy.
So while you have your cookouts or family reunions, while lounging on a lawn chair with a cold beer or sipping some chilled chardonnay on the sofa while watching a favored sports event or parade or just binging a beloved TV show, please stop to remember what this holiday weekend is really about.
People doing what has to be done, keeping every aspect of everything that matters from failing, making sure that all those politicians, overpaid business execs, old media pundits and new media “influencers” can crow about their accomplishments.
This is about your mothers and fathers, brothers and sisters, grandparents and great-grandparents, aunts and uncles, and everyone else who just did their jobs, who keep doing their jobs, who will always work not because they want some profound acknowledgment but because they know if the daily labor of most of us in this nation ever stops, everything stops.
Happy Labor Day.
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