Let us
Now Honor Worthy Workers
Arthur
B. Shostak, Ph.D
Drexel University Dept. of Psychology and Sociology Phil., PA 19104
Labor Educator, CWA Local 189 member; Adjunct Sociologist, AFL-CIO George Meany Center for Labor Studies
This Essay appeared in a local OpEd page for Labor Day 2004.
Labor Day weekend invites more second thoughts than many other holidays, as we are obliged to ask where did the time go? With fall rushing at us, what did we manage to accomplish over the summer just past?
Thanks, however, to Labor Day parades coast to coast (one of the largest of which takes past annually in Philadelphia), this holiday also challenges us to think about more than summer plans gone unrealized. it prods us to remember what the fuss is really all about, and that cuts deeper than any one season's check-off list.
In this case, 122 years ago a New Jersey leader of the Carpenters Union, Peter J. McGuire, stepped off proudly in New York City at the head of the first Labor Day Parade (his original idea). When Congress five years later finally recognized the event, the nation began an annual toast to working men and women. Especially honored are those 14 million members of our nation's Labor Movement - one older than the nation itself, and the largest social movement in the country!
What is this holiday all about? A clue came from the presence of hundreds of ordinary folk at the August funerals of two Philadelphia firefighters. Reporters were struck by the fact these people had not known the fallen heroes, but they were there anyway to honor their sacrifice. The national president of the firefighters union told the congregation the men knew their job was dangerous: "It's not if we get hurt, it's when. It's not if one of us will perish, it's just who and when." They chose to take the risks - like all firefighters - not for money, but "for the good of all human life."
What is this holiday all about, what does it call us to ponder? Weeks before the two funerals in Philadelphia another very different one occurred in Brooklyn, New York. This time the Honor Guard was made up of uniformed city sanitation workers. The congregation of several hundred was filled with fellow workers in their Saturday work clothes: green uniforms and steel-tipped safety boots. Many had interrupted their regular collection routes to be present, and their half-full garbage trucks lined the nearby streets.
Two weeks earlier two of the workers had found the body of a newborn girl in among the garbage of their truck. The tragedy touched them so much they named the child "Destiny Hope" and resolved to give her a proper funeral. They spread the word, and scores of co-workers contributed to the cost of a tiny white coffin, a church service, and a burial plot. The sanitation commissioner explained to the congregation his workers wanted to help Destiny "share the love and compassion she was never able to enjoy in life." His workers "do a job that may be dirty and gritty, but their hearts are so big."
After the Mass, the coffin was carried between two rows of flags held by members of the Untouchables Motorcycle Club. They were dressed in black leather jackets bearing their logo: a skeleton in a trench coat wielding a smoking machine gun. Members are active and retired law enforcement officers. The hearse was escorted by dozens of members of the Untouchables.
What is Labor Day about? I think it is about saluting 101 events like these that occur over a year between Labor Day weekends - events where working people do the right thing, and model a form of adulthood we would all do well to adopt. Where blue-collar folk rise to the occasion, and achieve however briefly a sort of nobility that enriches participants and observers for the rest of their lives. It is about our giving a damn for one another - for fallen working class heroes and abandoned babies alike - the better to remember and promote life's finer possibilities. It is about showing up at a funeral for someone you did not actually know, but chose to come to know in your heart and soul.
__________________________________________________________
Arthur B. Shostak is an emeritus professor of industrial sociology at Drexel University (1967-2003). His 31 books include Blue Collar Life, Blue Collar Stress, Blue Collar World, Robust Unionism, and CyberUnion: Empowering Labor through Computer Technology.
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