Today, via Twitter:

Joshua Lyman ‏@joshualyman

Thank a Union Member. They fought for your weekend, your lunch break, your pension, your safety and are still fighting today. #p2 9:32 AM – 1 Sep 2014

Jeff Mazur ‏@jmaz

Some of these pols sending out #LaborDay greetings are like Jesse Helms wishing us a happy MLK Jr. Day. 2:47 PM – 1 Sep 2014

Heh. Or Ronald Reagan (r):

John Fugelsang ‏@JohnFugelsang

Where free unions & collective bargaining are forbidden, freedom is lost. – Ronald Reagan. Happy Labor Day 2:15 PM – 1 Sep 2014

El Guapo ‏@TheDailyRefried

Labor unions have been systematically undermined with the help of elected officials working in conjunction with corporations #HappyLaborDay 2:26 PM – 1 Sep 2014

Robert Reich ‏@RBReich

The biggest Labor Day sale is of our Congress, to the highest bidders. 1:48 PM – 1 Sep 2014

Congress?:

Speaker John Boehner ‏@SpeakerBoehner

This #LaborDay, we tip our cap to America’s workers & pledge to keep doing all we can to bring jobs home. [….] 1:29 PM – 1 Sep 2014

I grew up on the romance of the the early labor movement. My father was a full-on supporter of unions and I knew what solidarity meant before I was old enough to go to school. Today, we talk about the need to defend FDR’s New Deal, which many of us consider the single most important factor in the creation of today’s  strong though embattled middle class. The New Deal, however, and programs like Social Security, would have been impossible without the fifty to sixty years of labor ferment, often violent, that preceded the Great Depression, and the sacrifices of the individuals who fought in the name of solidarity. So, in honor of that history, I’ve put up a song that reflects the union spirit:

And here’s a song about the archetypal union man:

Some more suggestions for celebrating Labor Day: Get a copy of Labor’s Untold Story: The Adventure Story of the Battles, Betrayals and Victories of American Working Men and Women by Richard Boyer and Herbert Morals, and begin reading it. John Dos Passos’ U.S.A. Trilogy is also a great, if pessimistic, mix of fiction, news clippings and biographical sketches that present the social ferment of the 1920 and 30s. It’s not just history, but one of the greatest literary achievements of the 20th century. For those who prefer movies, my favorites are the 1999 film, Cradle will Rock, and, of course, John Sales’ Matewan.

*1st paragraph slightly edited.  

Representative Vicky Hartzler (r) sent out her weekly constituent e-mail. It opens with:

From: Representative Vicky Hartzler [….]

Date: Sat, Sep 1, 2012 [….]

Subject: View From the Capitol – Congresswoman Vicky Hartzler’s Newsletter for the Week of August 27-31, 2012

To: [….]

Labor Day heralds the end of the traditional summer driving season. And, many Missourians hitting the road for the last bit of summer fun….

That’s it for Labor Day.

The e-mail continues with previous boilerplate blaming President Obama for higher gas prices now than when he took office (debunked here) and blaming  “Senate liberals” for not helping republicans further coddle big oil. Who knew that Tom Harkin (D) had such power? She also throws in a gratuitous jab at the Environmental Protection Agency for good measure.

Why Labor Day is a holiday (since 1894):

Labor Day, the first Monday in September, is a creation of the labor movement and is dedicated to the social and economic achievements of American workers. It constitutes a yearly national tribute to the contributions workers have made to the strength, prosperity, and well-being of our country.

[….]

Those damn union thugs.

James Hoffa, President of the Teamsters, had a few things to say in Detroit (via Media Matters):

http://cloudfront.mediamatters.org/static/flash/pl55.swf

James Hoffa, Jr: …Everybody here’s gotta vote. If we go back and we keep the eye on the prize, let’s take these son a bitches out and give America back to America where we belong. [cheers] Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you…

Right wingnuttia is apparently going berserk:

…Republican consultant Brad Blakeman decried the comments as “thuggery at its best” and “the kind of remarks you’d expect out of Tony Soprano,” and commented that “when a union president says ‘let’s take these sons of bitches out,’ that usually means someone’s legs are going to get broken, somebody’s going to disappear.” Meanwhile, anchor Megyn Kelly somehow did not mention Henry’s previous explanation that the comments were references to voting Republicans out of office…

…Andrew Breitbart operative and CNN contributor Dana Loesch quickly followed up the attack on Twitter, claiming soon after the Fox segment and Henry tweet that Hoffa “threatens tea party voters” and that if Obama “doesn’t condemn then he is sanctioning violence against fellow Americans by silence”…

[emphasis added]

Evidently teabaggers don’t believe in the legitimacy of anyone’s vote except their own.

Because Labor Day messages about the meaning of the holiday shouldn’t all come from corporate owned media outlets and their talking heads:

Richard Trumka, President, AFL-CIO: Hi, I’m Rich Trumka, wishing you and your working family a very happy Labor Day, two thousand eleven.

Labor Day’s the one time of year when we stop and take a moment to recognize the value of work and all who do it. It’s when we honor the electrical workers who’ve got the east coast power back on after Hurricane Irene, the teachers and coaches who educate our children and help keep them on the right path, and the bus drivers who get us to work each day.

It’s a time when we think about our own work, how we help build our communities and make America strong and how proud we are of the work that we do.

It’s also a time to think about the millions of men and women who’ve lost their jobs and spent weeks, months, even years struggling to get back to work.

This Labor Day I want to thank you for your activism to improve the lives of working families and to ask you if you can commit to doing even more. Will you pledge today to join me in waging a massive America wants to work campaign for good jobs?

Together, as activists, it’s our job to demand that our leaders , local and state officials, Congress and the President take big bold action now to create good jobs and to put America back to work.

So, today, right now, pledge to be even more active than you’ve been in the past and to help lead the America wants to work campaign to put America back to work.

You can sign the pledge by e-mail or online at AFL-CIO dot org. Or you can get out your mobile phone now and text pledge to 235246. We’ll keep you informed about the America wants to work campaign and when and how you can make a difference.

Thank you brothers and sisters. Thank you for the work that you do and have a happy Labor Day.

This Labor Day, whether you are grilling in the back yard, catching those last rays of summer sun, or catching a game, it’s worth remembering why people all across America have this day off – to celebrate the value and dignity of the hard work that men and women do every day in America. As Samuel Gompers, head of the American Federation of Labor, said in 1898, Labor Day is

“the day for which the toilers in past centuries looked forward, when their rights and their wrongs would be discussed…that the workers of our day may not only lay down their tools of labor for a holiday, but upon which they may touch shoulders in marching phalanx and feel the stronger for it.”

Let’s also remember that the guy who had the original idea of Labor Day, Peter. J. McGuire, had a strong connection to St. Louis – his skillful organizing of St. Louis carpenters led to the foundation of the United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners of America. From his AFL-CIO bio:

Moving to St. Louis, Mo., in 1877, McGuire helped win the Missouri legislature’s support for one of the first Bureaus of Labor Statistics in the United States. Still in his 20s, McGuire was appointed deputy commissioner of the new bureau but resigned in 1879 to organize a union of carpenters. McGuire had come to see trade unions as indispensable to his socialist vision and to believe he should turn his energies to organizing and building a labor movement.

Within two years, McGuire had organized St. Louis carpenters thoroughly and won such impressive wage gains for them that it attracted the attention of carpenters everywhere. McGuire then issued a call for a national meeting of carpenters’ unions in Chicago. The 1881 meeting resulted in the formation of the United Brotherhood of Carpenters (UBC). McGuire was elected UBC secretary, the organization’s chief administrative officer. That same year, McGuire wrote the convention call for the national conference of labor unions that established the Federation of Organized Trades and Labor Unions (FOTLU), the organizational forerunner of the American Federation of Labor.

Labor Day was eventually enshrined as a US holiday by Congress as an attempt at conciliation of the new labor movement after the aftermath of the Pullman Strike. Of course, the struggle on behalf of workers’ rights didn’t end with the declaration of a one-day holiday. As Missouri Secretary of State Robin Carnahan notes, “Labor Day should also serve as a reminder that there is still much to be done to help working Missourians and their families, especially those who struggle to access adequate and affordable health care.”

Consider this a Labor Day open thread.