Happy Labor Day

My employer keeps a few college students on the payroll part-time, all of them women. Contrary to popular prejudice, college students are patient, reliable, and good at detail work. Just be sure to hire women and keep a plentiful supply of free candy on hand. Works for us.

As I was packing up to leave the other day, Obsidia, the senior student, poked her head in my door and mumbled something through through her many lip piercings.

"What?"

"Do we, ah, have to work on Labor Day?" she asked, pumping up the volume for my decrepit ears.

"Absolutely not," I answered.

"Oh, SWEET," she replied with feeling. A happy worker, she snagged a Hershey Miniature from the communal candy bowl and headed back to her workstation.

Yes, it's come to this: a young person is pleasantly surprised that she doesn't have to work on Labor Day -- the day of rest appointed to honor all who labor behind plows or counters or machine tools or computer screens. For her friends working in restaurants or retail or hospitality -- where most young people get their jobs in this town -- this is just another day of minimum-wage-plus-75-cents hourly work with no benes.

When I was a kid, America pretty much shut down on Labor Day. Union labor never made up more than 25 or 30 percent of the workforce, but the unions were powerful and the standards that they set for their own employees carried over into much of the rest of the workforce. And of course the labor laws they fought for applied to everyone: the 40-hour week, the legal right to organize and strike, sick leave and benefits, paid vacation, occupational safety, a minimum wage, and more. Just about everybody took Labor Day off, and just about everybody went to a barbecue.

Since Dad was a union pipefitter, I spent more than one Labor Day at union barbecues at dusty public picnic grounds where beefy workers and their families munched chicken, drank Budweiser in cans, and Honored Labor.

Sometimes there was a speech by some official from the regional labor federation. Part of it always went like this:

"Remember: every right that workers have in America today had to be fought for, long and hard by union men like us! And if we don't stay strong and stay ready to fight again, they will try to take those rights away from us again!"

Think he was right? And with the unions a ghost of their former selves -- who'll fight this time?

Have a good Labor Day. Eat barbecue. Don't work.