Labor Day as a System Prop

As millions of US-Americans and Canadians joyously head of for picnics an barbeques, only a scattering of activists will pay tribute to the ideas and historic ideals of Labor Day. But what is in the name, does anyone recall the history and the events that lead up to establishing the day? Possibly only few people do and even fewer may realize that the September labor day is in essence an "anti-labor day" a diversion from the international dimensions of the labor - capital relation. While many workers in the USA and Canada may indeed emphasize the importance of the working people in generating their countries' wealth, most of the very same workers can be expected to be reluctant or unwilling to regard themselves as a class. This was not always so and this is precisely one of the main reasons for legislating Labor Day in North America. A day to make mention (however hardly much more fanfare or official celebrations) of the effort made by workers in keeping the economic system up and running. No mention of how this very system degrades, robs and exploits workers (even on Labor day, as many shops, with their low-paid workers for that matter, are open for business). But let us have a long look back to how it all started, in the USA.

"Pullman, Illinois was a company town, founded in 1880 by George Pullman, president of the railroad sleeping car company. Pullman designed and built the town to stand as a utopian workers' community insulated from the moral (and political) seductions of nearby Chicago. The town was strictly, almost feudally, organized: row houses for the assembly and craft workers; modest Victorians for the managers; and a luxurious hotel where Pullman himself lived and where visiting customers, suppliers, and salesman would lodge while in town. Its residents all worked for the Pullman company, their paychecks drawn from Pullman bank, and their rent, set by Pullman, deducted automatically from their weekly paychecks. The town, and the company, operated smoothly and successfully for more than a decade. But in 1893, the Pullman Company was caught in the nationwide economic depression. Orders for railroad sleeping cars declined, and George Pullman was forced to lay off hundreds of employees. Those who remained endured wage cuts, even while rents in Pullman remained consistent. Take-home paychecks plummeted. And so the employees walked out, demanding lower rents and higher pay. The American Railway Union, led by a young Eugene V. Debs, came to the cause of the striking workers, and railroad workers across the nation boycotted trains carrying Pullman cars. Rioting, pillaging, and burning of railroad cars soon ensued; mobs of non-union workers joined in. The strike instantly became a national issue. President Grover Cleveland, faced with nervous railroad executives and interrupted mail trains, declared the strike a federal crime and deployed 12,000 troops to break the strike. Violence erupted, and two men were killed when U.S. deputy marshals fired on protesters in Kensington, near Chicago, but the strike was doomed.

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