Labor Day was a holiday founded in true grass-roots origins. As the industrial revolution took people off the farms and put them in factories, union sentiment set in among the exploited and underserved workers who were working in impoverished conditions to increase the wealth of the magnates and robber barons of the day, municipalities started passing local legislation for a day that honored the social and economic achievements of American workers.
President Grover Cleveland codified Labor Day nationally by making it a federal holiday that would be celebrated on the first Monday of September on June 28th, 1894. Keep in mind that workers banding together and speaking up for wages, benefits, and safety were still being referred to as reds, agitators, socialists, and communists. It was an age of blacklists, whereas a worker’s name who appeared on such a list was denied employment, and the list itself was highly subjective in that the people who produced the lists or added a name never acknowledged the legitimacy of a worker’s grievances.
Here we are now at Labor Day 2026, over a hundred and thirty two years after the establishment of a day that honors and celebrates workers, and the meaning of Labor Day has been so diluted by the enemies of the working class as to become simply an indicator of the end of summer, and nothing else.
Make no mistake, Labor Day is about America’s Labor Movement, organized labor, and UNIONS.
While you enjoy your Labor Day holiday, take time to STOP, LOOK, and LISTEN to those who speak about Labor Day. The gut-less will simply cite workers as a homogeneous group including all workers, regardless of union affiliation.
More egregious are those who use Labor Day for activism against unions and workers and will instead use their platform to spread propaganda that lauds corporations and businesses for the supposed stewardship over workers and how grateful workers should be for such magnanimous consideration.
If you find yourself in a union, with wages, benefits, and safety defined in your collective bargaining agreement, count yourself lucky, but don’t forget about those workers who work as “at will ” employees with no protections, or guarantees concerning their workplace and livelihood.
The early industrialists considered unions as a tiger with no teeth until President Franklin Delano Roosevelt passed the Fair Labor Standards Act in 1935 that recognized unions as legitimate and democratic entities that had a right to collectively bargain for the workers they represent.
This represented a huge shift in American workplaces. Almost immediately, anti- Roosevelt/New Deal forces united against the President’s policies and the power it gave to what they considered the unwashed masses. When World War II exploded, Roosevelt made sweeping deals with corporations and unions to keep the war machine and supplies flowing.
Montgomery Ward’s CEO, Sewell Avery, was amassing huge profits from war materiale sales while ignoring three unions that represented his workers, Fed up with Avery, in 1944, Roosevelt ordered the National Guard to seize control of the businesses Chicago based headquarters and the guardsmen forcibly removed Avery from the building by carrying him out while he sat in his office chair (full story available on The People’s World website).
There was even an effort to overthrow Roosevelt that was launched by the wealthy that was called The Business Plot. The banker’s coup failed when they approached retired Marine Major General Smedley Butler, who was to be recruited to add an air of legitimacy to the plot. Butler listened intently, met with financiers and their strategists and then exposed the entire plan. One patriot pulled the rug out from under the cabal, yet none of those involved were ever convicted and held accountable for it.
That was then and this is now. Every New Deal reform that regulated the risky and unrestricted lender and securities rules that caused the Great Depression, created government oversight for healthy food and drugs, established safety rules for workplaces to protect workers, and built a social safety net to protect the aged and unemployed has been under attack since their passing. The union busting industry, shrouded in secrecy and cloaked in legal chicanery exists for this reason.
The sad truth is that workers are losing the battle. The AFL-CIO’s Executive Paywatch proves this fact conclusively. CEO’s are making an estimated 312 times the pay of their employees. Such a gap didn’t happen overnight. Worker pay has stagnated since 1979, not even keeping up with inflation and the cost of living. Apathy among workers bears much of the blame, as well as the forces bankrolled by the rich that divide workers along economic, political, and demographical lines.
Take the time this Labor Day holiday to reflect on the things won by organized labor and paid for in blood, sweat, and tears of past workers. Watch a pro-union movie (if you can find one) like Matewan, Norma Rae, or Harlan County, USA.
Most of all, have a happy and safe Labor Day!
Click on any of the highlighted links above and you will arrive at the U.S. Department of Labor’s History of Labor Day, because Labor history isn’t taught in school and is something you have to research and teach yourself. The website Americans Who Tell The Truth’s bio of Major General Smedley Butler is also one of the links highlighted above. If you’re really brave, you can click on the link to the AFL-CIO’s Executive Paywatch site for the latest state of income inequality.