Labor Day

Labor day is a strange holiday.

Its supposed to celebrate the contribution of labor to our great country but very little is actually going on to do that.

There are some tweets and a few celebrations, but mostly it is more celebrated as marking the end of the summer season and in much of the country the start of the school year.

Labor has lost much of its cohesiveness as Unions have become less relevant to most.

American labor has changed significantly since labor day was first proposed.

It used to be primarily men doing what today would be considered back breaking work but which at one time was perfectly normal.

Long hours, dangerous conditions, injuries and even death were the risk many took working in the mines, the factories, construction and the farms.

If you read the works of Upton Sinclair or other reformers from the first half of the 20th century you get an idea of the conditions.

It was labor unions primarily that forced changes to the working conditions and increases in wages.

We are now in a world where manual labor and unions are not the norm they once were, and workers are living in the "gig" economy where they have to become entrepreneurs often.

Still, we celebrate labor day without much actually reminders of the labor we celebrate.

Enjoy the day and maybe reflect on how hard and dangerous many jobs used to be.