Labor Day: The Owned Society

Posted on September 6, 2004 in Childhood Festivals

A nightmare comes to me, out of my past and out of a dread of what this administration might do if it continues to hold onto power. In my family, Labor Day weekend was used as a time to commit major chores — to rebuild fences, clean the garage, trim the hollies in front of the house, paint rooms. When I was young, I also had complaints against my father’s insistance of using Sunday as a day of work for these chores. But he never listened. Catholic though he was, he believed in breaking his back by breaking the hard-packed dirt beneath our feet and the branches off the trees.

Now that Bush has successfully eliminated overtime pay for many Americans, I wonder if the next step will be a redefinition of the meaning of Labor Day in keeping with the crazed Puritanism of my father: “On Labor Day, you must work twelve hour shifts to demonstrate your commitment to labor. You must give them freely and without complaint for the betterment of the economy.”

It will not surprise me if this day is renamed “Patriotism Day” — as if there was a shortage of such holidays. It will not surprise me if the forty hour workweek is stretched to forty eight with every one of us expected to work Saturdays. It will not surprise me if they profane the Sabbath with the expectation that we all spend four hours at our jobs.

We are losing our homes and our lives to a monster. If we make no stand now, we shall become the Owned Society.