Today, as you mark the passage of summer by sacrificing bits of animals flesh at the altar of the great and powerful Kingsford, perhaps it's appropriate to take a few moments to remember the birth of this holiday and why it's appropriate today.
First, some history.
Labor Day came about as a federal holiday after the Pullman Strike of 1894 that started in, of course, Pullman, Ill... .
Pullman was a company town, owned and operated by the Pullman Co. and George Pullman. When hard economic times hit the railroad car manufacturer, Pullman laid off thousands of employees and cut the wages of those who remained. Interestingly, while Pullman was putting people out into the streets and slashing wages by 20 to 50 percent and refusing to reduce the rent on company-owned housing, the company still paid its wealthy investors its usual 8-percent dividend and had a cash surplus of more than $2 million.
Sound vaguely familiar?
Well, it will.
The Pullman employees went on strike, demanding higher pay and lower rents. Railroad workers across the country joined the strike. There was rioting and general civil unrest.
President Grover Cleveland - whose administration was closely aligned with business interests and who was no fan of working people - declared the strike a federal crime and deployed 12,000 troops to break the strike, according to a history of the strike at PBS Online.
Before it was all over, 34 people were dead and dozens were wounded.
Cleveland, facing re-election that year, signed a law making the first Monday in September a national holiday to honor labor - an attempt to appease working men and women and try to make them forget that Cleveland essentially declared war on people who had to work for a living.
Thirty-four killed and dozens wounded and you get a day off. Sounds fair enough.
It didn't work. Cleveland lost.
But we got to keep Labor Day.
What, you ask, does that have to do with anything?
Well, glad you asked.
Last week, just in time for Labor Day, there was some economic news that flew under the radar, what with that creepy suspected pedophile being cleared in the JonBenet thing and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld calling a majority of the American population, essentially, traitors.
The economic news wasn't pretty.
The U.S. Census reported that wages for American workers have declined by 2 percent since 2003. Over the same period, productivity has increased, corporate profits have increased and investment income for the richest Americans has skyrocketed, thanks, in part, to tax breaks on investment income.
The U.S. Census reported that between 2000 and 2005, the median income in this country dropped 5.9 percent. Additionally, the Census found that from 2004 to 2005, the number of Americans without health insurance increased by 1.3 million.
So to review, people are working harder, producing more, for less money while the rich get richer, at your expense.
The investment bank Goldman Sachs says so, too. Its economists reported that "the most important contributor to high profit margins over the past five years has been the decline in labor's share of national income."
A lot of this isn't news to anyone paying attention. You probably know someone who, just a few years ago, was making a decent living and is now barely scraping by. Take an afternoon and visit the unemployment office - now called Pennsylvania CareerLINK - to get an idea of what's going on out there.
The Census news came right before USA Today reported that Radio Shack laid off 400 employees nationally - via e-mail.
Talk about spam.
Now, that's cold. A Radio Shack employee opening his or her e-mail, expecting the usual jokes from friends, offers to make millions of dollars by assisting Nigerian oil ministers and ads for non-prescription drugs intended to enhance parts of their anatomies, instead gets a friendly: Dear Radio Shack Employee, You're canned. Have a great day!
What's most interesting is that the day the news broke about Radio Shack firing people via e-mail, the company's stock price went up.
Sounds kind of familiar, doesn't it?
Workers being laid off. Wages cut. Stock prices and profits go up.
It used to be that businesses often said their most important assets were their employees. Now, they seem to be saying that their employees are a burden.
George Pullman, from his seat at the right hand of Satan, is smiling.
Happy Labor Day!
Mike Argento, whose column appears Mondays and Fridays in Living and Sundays in Viewpoints, can be reached at 771-2046 or at mike@ydr.com. Read more Argento columns at ydr.com/mike or at http://www.yorkblog.com - Argento's Front Stoop.
Can't believe I actually agree with Mike on this one. I've been working in York County for 43 years and can absolutely confirm that employers view employees much differently these days. No loyalty. No empathy for their employees' personal problems/situations. But then, most employees don't care a rip about the health of the enterprise either. Maybe we deserve each other.