Labor Day: What Does ‘Labor’ Mean, Anyway? - D.W. Gibson/DailyBeast

[WillyT]

Labor Day: What Does ‘Labor’ Mean, Anyway?
Responsibility. Pride. More than just a paycheck. To mark a holiday whose meaning is often obscured, D.W. Gibson asked the unemployed what the word ‘labor’ means to them.
D.W. Gibson - DailyBeast
Sep 3, 2012 4:45 AM EDT

<snip>

I’m not convinced this country likes Labor Day. We have, after all, given it an alternate identity.

As a kid, I remember more than one adult rushing to explain that the holiday symbolized the end of summer. This confused me, because even at 8 I knew that summer extended three weeks into September, and the name of the occasion had nothing to do with closing beaches or making me go back to school. And it just didn’t make sense: who would want to celebrate something as painful as the end of summer? That seemed like poking at a bruise.

Maybe we have redefined Labor Day to forget its violent origin: in 1894 President Grover Cleveland convinced Congress to rush approval of the federal holiday just six days after U.S. marshals broke a strike, killing workers at a railroad-car factory in Pullman, Ill. Seeking reelection, the president needed to calm angry workers across the country, and Labor Day was the sedative he offered. Since then, we’ve learned to distract ourselves from blood in the streets with mandates to retire white linens, close the barbecue pit, and zone out to the first kickoff on the big screen.

I’m telling you, we don’t like this holiday. Maybe it’s because our capitalist-driven democracy has always been reluctant to over-empower, over-glorify labor: when choosing a date for the holiday, President Cleveland and Congress made sure they maximized separation from May Day, lest the celebration bear the scent of a socialist movement.

We do not know how we feel about labor in this country, how we define it—and we certainly do not know if we want to celebrate it together. Our political leadership was at odds with labor when the holiday was born and the antagonism has endured—from President Reagan and the striking air-traffic controllers in the summer of 1981 to the thousands of demonstrators who filled the state Capitol building in Madison, Wis., during the icy temperatures of February 2011.

<snip>

More: http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/09/03/labor-day-what-does-labor-mean-anyway.html