A yearly national tribute, Labor Day celebrates the internal strength, prosperity, stability, and well-being that American workers have brought to this nation. It is a widely accepted fact that labor unions played a large role in establishing the Middle Class of America, the financial backbone of the nation, but many still do not understand the full meaning of the holiday.
What Day is Labor Day and When is Labor Day Weekend
A permanent fixture of late summer, Labor Day Weekend conjures up images of another baseball winding down, the wafting scent and sizzle of seared meat, and the flocking together of clans of people for yearly family reunions. But what is labor day and when is labor day weekend?
The answer, as with many things, lies in out history. According to the Department of Labor's website, recent records indicate that in 1882 Matthew Maguire, a machinist and secretary of the Central Labor Union in New York, first proposed a holiday that celebrated the American worker.
Other theories suggest that Peter J. McGuire, general secretary of the Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners and co-founder of the American Federation of Labor, first suggested a day to honor those "who from rude nature have delved and carved all the grandeur we behold."
Either way, the Central Labor Union adopted someone's proposal for a celebratory workingman's day and appointed a committee to plan both picnic and demonstration to honor all American workers.
This idea was, evidently, further propelled by the might of the Central Labor Union, and the idea of a "workingman's holiday" was quickly embraced in many centers of industry across the country. In 1884 it was first observed on the date that would soon become its permanent seat across history: the first Monday in September.
Labor Day National Holiday
According the Department of Labor, by 1893, more than half of the states had passed ordinances in observance of the first Monday in September as a celebratory day for the working man. A year later, Congress decreed the day officially as Labor Day.
President Grover Cleveland decreed there would be a festival with a recreational gathering for workers and their families to follow. The idea that Labor Day was a day for celebration lasted for many years and is still the basis for many modern Labor Day celebrations, which include speeches by leading union officials, industrialists, educators, clerics, and government officials.
The Labor Force National Facts and Stats
The labor force in America is almost unfathomably huge. According to a report by the U.S. Census Bureau on-line, 154.5 million people 16 and older topped out the nation’s labor force as of May 2007. Broken down, that is 82.6 million men and 71.9 million women, with annual earnings (in 2005) for male and female full-time year-round workers at $41,386 and $31,858, respectively.
In addition...
- 82 percent of full-time workers 18 to 64 were cover by health insurance during all or part of 2005
- 77 percent of workers in private industry received paid vacation.
- 76 percent of workers received paid holidays.
- 71 percent have access to medical care, 46 percent to dental care, 29 percent to vision care, and 64 percent to outpatient prescription drug coverage.
But who is the labor force, really? What is it, exactly, that workers do in this country? Well, here is the breakdown (2007), again from the Census Bureau...
- 6.8 million teachers
- 784, 000 farmers and ranchers
- 767, 000 hairdressers, stylists, and cosmetologists
- 313, 000 chefs and head cooks
- 282, 000 taxi drivers and chauffeurs
- 253, 000 firefighters
- 245, 000 pharmacists
- 242, 000 roofers
- 203, 000 musicians and related workers
- 106, 000 gambling service workers
- 98, 000 tax perparers
- 96, 000 service station attendants
On top of that, there are an estimated 10.3 million independent contractors out there and 10.6 million self-employed workers, while 4.8 million people work at home. About 12 percent of workers leave their homes for the long commute to work between the dark and still hours of midnight and 5:59 a.m.
The Census Bureau also claims that there are approximately 15.4 million labor union members nationwide, with Hawaii and New York have among the highest member rates at 25 percent and 24 percent while South Carolina has one of the lowest at 2 percent.
Labor Day celebrates all workers and the vast and vital achievements of each and every American worker. An everyman's holiday, it gives us all pause to reflect on the internal strength, prosperity, stability, and well-being that American workers and unions have brought to America. The holiday, in essence, represents the cumulative efforts of all stakeholders invested in the national workforce, and without the resulting formation and broadening of the Middle Class, America surly would not have become the mighty nation that it is today.
Jeremy Perkins - The author has a B.A in Journalism and Writing, an M.A. in Information Technology, and enjoys watercolor painting, sports, coding, hiking, ...
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