LABOUR DAY

It is Labour Day here in BC. The reason for the day has been lost on most of the population as they rush out to have a last "kick" at the summer holiday. This is the worst weekend for highway fatalities in the year. Yesterday, on the radio it was suggested that there will be an estimated 1149 collisions, over 400 of them with serious injuries and as many as 49 fatalities, vehicle related.
The original reason for the holiday was for the worker and then the unions. I have worked union most of my life and I will be the first to recognize their short-comings. Fortunately, in context, a good union is a very good thing in the workplace. I strongly believe that any company that gets a union in their workplace has done something unfair to their workers and the workers have asked a second party to help them organize and approach the situation as one. A company gets the union that they deserve.
In the old days, there was a visible separation between the union and the company management and I often thought of it as the lions and the wildebeest on the Serengeti in Africa. In today's workplace the union has become more closely associated with the daily operation of the company and there is, with the workers, a fear that the union is losing it's bite. I suppose that in history there will be a clearer picture of these times and it is my hope that the unionized workers get treated and paid well for their time. We should never lose sight of the fact that a company is more than machinery, it's strongest resource is the people who go to work there every day. A happy worker is a asset and if the worker is treated badly, change will happen quickly. A company is no stronger than it's weakest link.
I think that it is our responsibility to ask where something is made and then make a choice to buy something that is MADE IN USA OR CANADA. We should celebrate the workers who carried our counties, on their backs and in their IHC pickups, through the Industrial Revolution and made Canada and the USA into countries that set the standard for the world in fair labour treatment and outstanding products that were made by the North American worker. Don't disrespect our heritage and history by not trying to buy something made here by us.
If you were to buy something that was made here, be it decades ago, you have voted with your cash that it is important. After all, you may be here because you drive or own a truck of American manufacture. I hope this was a conscious choice.
Things men have made with wakened hands, and put softly life into are awake through years with transferred touch, and go on glowing for long years.
And for this reason, some old things are lovely warm still with the life of forgotten men who made them. D. H. Lawrence

I Believe the orignal contex was remembering the killing of workers trying to organize, it was a reconsillation gesture after some of the most brutal labor vs corp. fights of the late 1800's early 1900's. Most of the history has been lost.

Labor Day in the US predates the Ludlow Massacre but when Cornbinder 89 mentioned unions and fights that is what came to mind.

May have somthing to do with when it became a National Holiday, There were many factors. The real fear was that Communism was on the rise world wise at the close of th 1800's and early 1900, and that the ( labor) practices that were allowed to run un checked in the 1800's might drive workers to a communist revolt. Rememeber the "wobbley's (sp?) It was around this time that some labor laws were being inacted to try and head off an all out rebelion.
Hard to imagine today, but things like child labor, being locked into your place of work and 7 day work weeks were status quo in the 1800's

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labor_Day