Celebrate Essential Component of Labor Day—You

Americans love Labor Day. We love barbeque. We love long weekends. We love parades. But we need to remember an essential part of this glorious celebration.

Americans love Labor Day. We love barbeque. We love long weekends. We love parades. But we’ve forgotten an essential part of this glorious celebration.

We’ve forgotten it’s a holiday commemorating us, American workers, and our effort to build something greater than ourselves.

It’s about the more than 153 million people in the American workforce showing up to work every day, the U.S. Department of Labor reported. 

It’s about 3 million teachers returning to the classroom this past month to teach our children, according to our serious number-crunching bureaucrats at the U.S. Census Bureau.

It’s 117,000 bakers catering to your sweet tooth. It’s 1.5 million janitors, and 395,000 beauticians.

It’s the nearly 11,000 employed actors and the untold number of aspiring actors performing in your community theater group.

One thing is clear today—when 10,000 union workers took to the streets in New York in 1882, they were rallying not only for themselves, but for the past and future accomplishments of all American workers.

Then by 1893, U.S. President Grover Cleveland designated the first Monday in September as a federal holiday, highlighting the efforts of the American worker—Labor Day.

And now, in light of a lingering 9.1 percent national unemployment rate, the White House grapples with its implications for the nation's labor force.

Before a joint session of Congress this week, the president will propose steps "to put more money in the paychecks of working and middle class families; to make it easier for small businesses to hire workers; (and) to put construction crews to work rebuilding our nation’s infrastructure," according to a press release from White House advisors.

How we talk about labor today is often in terms of who was downsized, layed off, or not layed off, who got another job, and who couldn't. 

And now, even the naming of the founder of Labor Day remains a nearly 130-year-old debate between claims from union secretaries with strikingly similar names, according to the Department of Labor.

Some believe Peter J. McGuire of the Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners was the first to suggest a day to honor those “who from rude nature have delved and carved all the grandeur we 

behold.”

Others believe Matthew Maguire with the Central Labor Union of New Jersey was the founder.

While the labor movement spurred the holiday more than a century ago, it remains about you.

So, whether you are working in a cubicle or as the brawn inside a coal mine, remember to raise a grilled bratwurst to you and your fellow American workers.