[TB] Labor Day
Does your labor count?
There is much to thank working people for. Mostly everything actually, not just with lip service, though that is likely all working people will receive as compensation. I was a Labor Day baby, as my mother often reminded me, so I was able to have the first birthday party of the school year and the last pool party before it closed on Labor Day. I remember the chill of the pool in the Indian Summer in Denver, the smell of the marigolds grown huge in the front yard.
But as I got older and had to work on Labor Day, most often as a waitress, the meaning got lost. It is difficult, even now, to contemplate the underlying meaning of this holiday. It is a holiday brought about by damn socialists. The days of ignoring the relevance of unions is over now, thankfully. but what does this mean for the average person in a right to work state?
Now that I am nearing retirement I see what the span of 50 years of work looks like. I know what it feels like to work doing manual labor as well as teaching and making work for production. All of this work can be divided up into a couple of categories: Money and Satisfaction.
The satisfaction comes from the least obvious places sometimes. For example, when I was a waitress at a local restaurant, (back when I had at least one baby at home) I realized there was tremendous satisfaction in setting up for service. All the quiet moments wrapping silverware, filling condiments, or polishing the glasses. Alone in the space focussed on preparation became a zen experience and comforting because of the sameness each day. The procedure and the objects stayed fast and unblemished by time. The ghost of me, (or another wait staff) is there, right now, at 10:30 am setting up for lunch.
The satisfaction of labor is roughly equatable to the satisfaction of parenthood. So that is why the second important category: Money is actually the essential part of labor.
(So why DO teachers get paid so poorly?)
How did capitalism evolve so average working people barely catch a break? Thank god for the 20th century laws around the weekend child labor and minimum wages were put into effect, but what about the actual reality of getting by without being able to afford rent, groceries, and god forbid you get sick. When on the other side of the capitalist coin you have billionaires. What is wrong with that picture?
When I was a freshman in Boulder I had a philosophy professor who put it like this: Democracy and Capitalism are diametrically opposed. Democracy is equal rights for all, Capitalism is profit at any cost. So how do we coexist? The lovers of democracy together with cutthroat business interests? I think this is the essential question for our time, and what better time to contemplate then Labor Day?
I guess we can all use a break, capitalists and waitresses alike.