In years past, labor was often tough and tiring

One-hundred twenty-six years ago this coming Friday, 10,000 workers marched from City Hall to Union Square in New York City to press their demands for better conditions and to honor the importance of their labor. At the time, employers routinely required 12-hour days, seven days of each week from workers. Obviously they did not get paid for that day. The federal holiday began 12 years later.

While there are still a few cities with parades and speeches about the critical value of honest labor, most of us just took yesterday as a day of leisure with family or friends, marking the unofficial end of summer and beginning of fall. Although now past for another year, I offer some thoughts on the subject of labor.

First, it is easy to take the holiday for granted because most of us have never known the grim, harsh working conditions of 12 hours of back-breaking physical work in a manufacturing sweat shop or deep in the bowels of a coal mine. Primarily for reasons of economic advantage, new machinery makes even the most hazardous or wearisome job today seem like a picnic compared with those of just a few decades ago. Ask your parents or grandparents about the good old days of their youth.

Second, the topic of work is subject to wide range in attitude or viewpoint. For many, labor means the low-paid efforts of one who would definitely rather be doing something else for a living. Is a crane operator engaged in labor even though he or she now sits in an air-conditioned cab filled with electronics and gets paid more than many professionals? Sometimes I feel I must be cheating somehow through life because I so thoroughly love almost every task I do for my employers (clients) although I routinely spend 50-plus hours per week at it. (Occasionally it stinks!)

Does my high level of satisfaction mean that I do not actually work for a living? Listening to typical political rhetoric, I might be led to believe that my effort cannot be real labor because I don’t come home dirty and grimy from my usual 10 hours of research, thinking, decision-making and communicating.

Why not consider labor to be any form of effort – whether of brain or brawn or both – aimed to produce positive benefits for oneself and humanity? An emphasis on contributing to achieve a desired result seems much more profitable than discussions about whether a person is blue collar, white collar or no collar.

Therefore I would honor all those regularly giving effort to the betterment of family, community or the world at large, whether as volunteers or highest paid professional athletes. But I am still personally thankful for those who persevered through their days of physical effort in difficult and often dangerous circumstances that got us to this point of relative ease. Thank you.