>
Pullman workers leaving factory, c. 1890s

Think about working at a job where management treats it employees poorly. Think about very unsafe working conditions or being required to work overtime without pay or you lose you job. Imagine yourself in such a job and then getting together with other employees and protesting to management. You protest because deep down you believe that, as a human being, you are really no different than those humans running the company and that all humans should be treated with at least a minimum level of honor and respect, plus you like having a job and want to keep working.

Then imagine management does not listen so you go on strike. And then imagine soldiers and police officers come in and shoot you and others dead. Your family, your children hear the news. The soldiers and police are lightly reprimanded (but also receive praise from the non-working classes) and politicians makes a few speeches about how things should change. But you are dead, or you spouse is dead, or your friends are dead and the company makes promises to change, and the captains of industry confer in the back rooms of their exclusive clubs, and 30 years later things have not really changed.

I am not a Luddite, or an anti-capitalist, or a unionist per se. But I am a student of human nature and I know that power seeks more power, and that any system that is powered by human greed and self preservation is destined for trouble. Sometimes I want to smash the machines, and distribute the wealth, and call all workers to unite. But, in truth, I know there is no structural solution, there is only the radical solution of the human heart changing from death to life. However, one can still fight for what is good. And that might mean structural change.

1937 Woolworth Strike for 40 Hour work week

Labor Day was a little bone tossed by big government to the working classes as part of an appeasement for the Pullman Strike debacle of 1894. It’s really not much on the one hand, but we can make it what we will. I am choosing to remember that we live in a world of imbalances, where those in power all to often wield it unfairly over those without power, and that tragedies of labor are now being offshored and therefore unseen by so-called more advanced societies like ours. Let us remember that many of the “rights” we enjoy – 40 hour work week, fair wages, paid overtime, health and safety standards, equal opportunity, etc. – were pushed into existence by the working class and resisted all along the way by the capitalist class. This is not a judgment, just the documented facts of history, and something we should remember. And we should remember that there is a lot of work to be done.

At Starbucks protesting for Union, 2009

Happy Labor Day!