Labor Day: 2007

Friends,

Labor Day began as a celebration of the struggle for workers' rights, the battle for the 8 hour day, and the role of labor unions as an instrument for social justice.  As usual, the mainstream media (with some notable exceptions) treated Labor Day as a three-day weekend, or as a day for sales on sheets and pillowcases. Few papers used Labor Day as an opportunity to assess the status of working Americans or the labor movement.  Indeed, few daily papers even have a "labor beat" reporter anymore. A reporter for a big-city newspaper called me two days before Labor Day to interview me for a story about the labor movement's agenda for the next year. He had just gotten the assignment and admitted he knew very little about the labor movement.  This is typical of most major daily papers. They all have huge "business" sections, but not a single labor reporter.

In that void, the liberal/progressive  weeklies and the blogosphere  (and a  handful of daily papers ) did pay some attention to  labor issues. A number of articles focused on the economic hardships facing American workers and their families. Some of them drew on excellent new reports on by United a Fair Economy and the Institute for Policy Studies, the Economic Policy Institute, the Los Angeles Alliance for a New Economy, UC-Berkeley's Labor Center, UCLA's Labor Center, and the Center for American Progress

Few newspaper or bloggers  wrote about some of the labor movement's recent victories, against great odds, including the expansion of living wage and minimum wage laws in many cities and states, organizing successes  at various workplaces, and the labor movement's key role in securing a Democratic majority in Congress last November.

The Huffington Post ran a few pieces about labor issues, including articles by SEIU president Andy Stern, AFSCME president Gerald McEntee,  Michael Fauntroy, and Craig Jones.

I wrote "Labor Day Report Card" for the Huffington Post that compared workers' status and rights in the US with their counterparts in other democratic nations (a comparison that doesn't make the US look very good ) and the importance of winning labor law reform (the Employee Free Choice Act) after a Democrat wins the White House in 2008. (A shorter version appeared in the Philadelphia Inquirer.)

Barbara Ehrenreich had two great columns in The Nation recently about the US economy and workers rights. In The American Prospect, Thomas Geoghegan, Richard Kahlenberg, and Robert Reich, had excellent articles about Labor Day topics.  Eric Lotke also had a great piece in Common Sense.

What will progressives  be doing a year from now -- Labor Day 2008?  It will be the final stretch in perhaps the most important presidential election in our lifetime. I'm hoping that the Democratic nominee will be John Edwards, but whether its Edwards, Obama, Clinton or Richardson, its critical that a Democrat win the White House and that the Democrats expand their majority in Congress.  That's a precondition -- but not a guarantee -- for improving the plight of American families and workers.