Call it Management Day, Investor Day or CEO Day — but don’t call it Labor Day

For most Americans it seems that Labor Day weekend means two things: (1) A chance for a final family getaway before fall and (2) the symbolic end to summer.

Few realize why we celebrate Labor Day.

There was a time once when American and fresh-off-the-boat immigrant labor was misused in the name of capitalism and economic expansion. Our government was much complicit with this, not by purpose but by turning a blind eye. It took a number of muckraking books, most notably Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle (1906), plus exposure in the media, the rise of unions, and finally the popular overturn of government to recognize the contributions of workingmen and women throughout the U.S.Despite tremendous gains for laborers during most of the 20th century, respect, rights and economic gains of the working class have been under siege since the early 1980s, and remain cannon fodder for the investment class and many politicians today.

In Minnesota, for example, the city of Austin not too far from the Iowa border used to boast one of the highest standards of living of any working class community in the country. Citizens owned their own homes, had two cars, supported one of the best high schools in the state, and sent their kids either to college or to work, like their parents, at the locally-owned Hormel meatpacking plant, where wages were high and benefits were good, and where workers controlled the production processes.

Unfortunately, industry pressures forced the company to abandon its labor-friendly policies established in the 1930s, resulting in a devastating strike in the mid-1980s that forever changed the personality of the company and the city that is its home. Labor became a commodity subject to the lowest bid, resulting in destroyed lives and families, and the sad decline of a once prosperous community.

While employment levels today are high (according to the government), average wages for working people are down when adjusted for inflation. Yet some in America are getting fabulously rich, not by the fruits of their labor but by the nature of their position and their ability to benefit from unearned income