LABOR DAY 2006

This newspaper recorded the events of Labor Day 1904 with unusual enthusiasm, describing a parade of more than 2,000 union members in Bangor as “filled with good-fellowship and triumph … a potent example typified in thousands of silent, stalwart men, of the strength and force and dignity which labor organization brings.”

In particular it admired the keynote address – “admirably clear, concise and forceful … illuminated by shafts if keen, at times almost satirical wit” – delivered by J.F. Sheehan of Massachusetts, who laid the groundwork for the development of unions:

“It is often said that the union men of America are discontented,” Mr. Sheehan orated. “If this be so – and I deny it not – then it is a virtue and not a vice. The discontent that urges a man to rise above the lowly station where his lot is cast; that makes more money, better homes, nobler men and truer women; that has shortened the hours

of labor and improved the scale of pay; that has given the United States the political liberty and social equality which it enjoys now; and which lastly, the trade unions of the land are going to ferment until it has equalized the scale between employers and employed until the American working man can stand up to all the world and say: ‘I am a man, with a man’s feelings and a man’s rights; I will be the faithful employ of any; but the unconsidered slave of none – this discontent, I say, must be hailed as a glory rather than as a sin!'”

Ever since President Grover Cleveland signed an act making the first Monday in September a legal holiday to honor America’s workers, Labor Day has been a holiday of conflicting themes, an odd mixture of the somber and the frivolous. Even 19th-century labor organizer Peter J. McGuire, credited with conceiving Labor Day, admitted the holiday designed to honor work was timed to “come at the most pleasant season of the year, nearly midway between the Fourth of July and Thanksgiving, and would fill a wide gap in the chronology of legal holidays.”

It is a gap filled with gusto. Americans, whether watching the Labor Day telethon, a worthy event to be sure, or stock car races or baseball or, better still, enjoying the last real summer weekend out-of-doors with family and friends, seem always to enjoy themselves. Where once there were parades, picnics now rule the day.

Keeping in mind Mr. McGuire’s intent, today also provides the opportunity to assess how far the labor force has progressed, or failed to progress, over the years. The trend is not encouraging.

In the mid-’90s, there were crippling strikes, such as at United Parcel Service, General Motors, Northwest Airlines and the Communication Workers of America. The turn of the century brought an acceleration in plant closings, massive layoffs and formerly good jobs being shipped overseas to become bad jobs. This year, the economy expanded without the unemployment falling as outsourcing and offshoring replaced corporate malfeasance and its devastating effect upon investments and pensions, as if the downward spiral afflicting workers inevitably had to draw in retired workers as well.

Wages – for workers, anyway – creep along at a pace behind inflation and the once-contentious issue of wage parity, the extent to which hourly pay should keep pace with CEO salaries, now seems quaint. Workers no doubt would welcome a return to the days when their biggest complaint was that the boss made 100, or even 150, times more money that they did. And even as the economy grew last year, according to a recent Census report, income stagnated. The flat income figure arrived with the news that workers are more productive than ever.

The connection between organized labor and wages generally was made clear a couple of years ago in the annual report, “The State of Working America,” by Lawrence Mishel, Jared Bernstein and Sylvia Allegretto of the Economic Policy Institute. They measured the decline of labor from about one-fourth of the working population a generation ago to about one-eighth by 2004.

Their conclusion is worth recalling today: “This falling rate of unionization has lowered wages, not only because some workers no longer receive the higher union wage, but also because there is less pressure on non-union employers to raise wages,” they wrote. The gap in wages and benefits between union nonunion and union then was $30.76 an hour vs. $18.11.

Overcoming stagnant wages will take a lot more than the festivities planned for today, but helping workers to the fruits of their labors has never been a picnic.