When I was a child, viewing the world through a child’s lens, I considered the Labor Day weekend the swan song of summer, signaling the end of unstructured time and lazy days, the final hurrah before school started and cooler temps turned the leaves pale and fragile. All that is moot, I suppose, now that most school years begin in August and leaves turn on a dime, responding to the caprice of a jet stream pushed by the air flow spurred by arctic melt-off. And since the origin of Labor Day was to celebrate and promote the hard-won achievements of unions for the beleaguered working class — like the minimum wage, overtime pay, a five-day work week, the end of child labor — I’m pretty sure that Labor Day itself is — well — moot.
No longer a day of national pride or activism, Labor Day at least gives us a long weekend away from work, or what serves as one in this age of iPhones and intrusive technology. Thirty-four million Americans are estimated to travel this weekend, only 30% by plane. That’s a lot of cars on the road, easily exceeded by the number of hot dogs, hamburgers and beer sold. For the business class, this is the last big summer push, and for their employees, especially those manning the convenience stores and fast food joints around the nation, it represents another $7.25 per hour ($8.80 on average.)
It’s the rare service employee who gets a 40-hour week, but even should they have that opportunity they will earn well under the poverty level for a family of three (a bit over $1,800). Economists suggest that adjusted for inflation the minimum wage in 1968 would be over $10.50 now, while the Economic Policy Institute has pointed out that “if the minimum wage had kept up with productivity growth [since 1968], it would now be $18.67 per hour.” Robert Reich has suggested that both McDonalds and Wal-Mart, representative of low-pay employers, could easily afford to pay their workers $15.00 an hour without too big a bite from their profits.